Catholic schools on the cusp of regional finals
After years without a league home, Strake, Dallas Jesuit put down roots
Brandon Hickman and Klay Kubiak exchanged text messages after their teams’ area round playoff wins last week.
Congratulations were in order. Both the Dallas Jesuit and Strake Jesuit football head coaches are in rare air.
Strake Jesuit knocked off last year’s Class 6A Division II state runner-up Beaumont West Brook in a resounding 63-35 win by way of seven Dylan Campbell touchdowns.
Dallas Jesuit had a statement win of its own with a 27-25 win over the Longview team that beat that West Brook team in last year’s state final. EJ Smith, son of the NFL Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith, meets every expectation as a highly recruited tailback.
Strake Jesuit meets Cypress Creek on Friday at NRG Stadium, a place Kubiak knows all too well, His father, Gary, was the Texans coach for eight seasons.
Dallas Jesuit faces Klein Collins on Saturday in Waco.
With wins, both schools could make the regional finals for the first time.
“It’s just cool to see another Jesuit school succeeding at the UIL level,” Kubiak said. “We have a unique bond. We share a lot of similarities and we have so much in common.”
These schools indeed are linked at the hip athletically, considering they are all-boys private Catholic schools competing in a public school division. Strake Jesuit’s (2,208) and Dallas Jesuit’s (2,234) enrollment numbers aren’t usually far apart and put the schools on the small side of Class 6A.
The schools don’t have a feeder system of middle schools to form a pipeline of talent. Kubiak notes his school gets student-athletes from all across the Houston area. The schools are not easy to get into with rigorous academic slates. They are private schools abiding by UIL rule, meaning there is no exception from recruiting. And in football, numbers often make a difference. Always being the smaller school in the district makes a difference.
It’s not seen a hindrance, though. Kubiak, for example, says the football program always has been rooted in development and coaching up players. The school embraces being the private school competing in the UIL.
“I don’t see them as disadvantages at all,” Kubiak said. “They’re just differences that we embrace. We run our program our way. We don’t compare ourselves to UIL schools. We just try to be Strake Jesuit and I think our kids embrace that and they like being different and it’s worked out so far for us.”
It may not be at the clip North Shore or The Woodlands experiences, but the two schools have found more than enough athletic success since they started competing in the UIL in 2004.
Dallas Jesuit has been more of the playoff mainstay in football with eight straight playoff appearances before last year’s 2-8 mark. Strake Jesuit has seven playoff appearances and consecutive doubledigit win seasons for the first time since the switch to UIL.
Strake Jesuit has made its name in other sports, too, like the Rasheed Sulaimon years in basketball and Matt Boling-mania in track and field last year.
Both schools are much older than their history in the UIL, too, with Dallas Jesuit nearly 80-years-old and Strake Jesuit approaching 60.
The schools used to compete in the Texas Christian Interscholastic League, which merged with the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools in 2000. Strake Jesuit and Dallas Jesuit were not permitted to join the new-look TAPPS division as they were considered too large. The schools were independents for three seasons as they fought for inclusion in the UIL.
“One year we had to go play Ruston, La.,and Killeen. We were traveling all over the place to play,” said current Morton Ranch football head coach Ron Counter, who was the head coach at Strake Jesuit for 13 years and oversaw the school’s move to the UIL.
Counter is describing Strake Jesuit’s three-year tenure as an independent program during the fight to get into the UIL. The schools eventually got in in 2004 but had to join the largest UIL classification where they remain.
One of those independent years was a 10-0 season, Counter remembers, and there was nothing to play for.
“That’s what it was all about,” Counter said. “Just trying to give the kids an opportunity since TAPPS wouldn’t allow us in, UIL wouldn’t allow us in. Somebody let us in and let the kids compete.”
And now, both are one win away the reginal finals.