High School Football Playoff Run Boosts College Prospects
from Fort Worth Star-Telegram
He finished third among Class 5A area players with five regular-season interceptions and helped guide Mansfield to the playoffs, but defensive back Jordon Finch’s voice mail wasn’t filled with messages from college recruiters. In fact, during the regular season, he drew hardly any interest at all. But like other area players, a long and successful playoff run kept his hope of playing college football alive. The Tigers advanced to the Division II Region I semifinals and pulled a major upset on the way, defeating Abilene, then the No. 3-ranked team in the state. The attention the Tigers generated en route to their successful season certainly paid dividends for players like Finch. More

Swimming: Murata Makes Big Splash After All
from San Antonio Express-News
Believers Academy's Megan Murata fought off the flu two weeks ago, only to leave the pool one time Saturday feeling completely sick to her stomach. The junior appeared to have broken a divisional state record in an event at the TAPPS state swimming and diving championships at Davis Natatorium but learned upon getting out of the water that she had been disqualified for twitching prior to leaving the block. She shook off what could have been devastating news, however, by proceeding to narrowly break a Division III state record in the 100-yard backstroke about an hour later. Murata finished in 1 minute, 1.21 seconds, clipping the old mark by one-hundredth of a second. More

Texas Spreads its Wealth of Quarterbacks Around
from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia didn’t get a Lone Star State replacement for Dallas native Matthew Stafford, but plenty of other schools found their future quarterbacks from Texas. At least 11 quarterbacks from Texas signed with BCS schools, highlighted by Garrett Gilbert of Austin, Scout.com’s No. 2-rated signal caller, who signed with Texas. His signature helped Texas land a high ranking, no worse than No. 6, from Scout.com and Rivals.com. More

Moody Gets New Head Football Coach
from KIII TV3
The CCISD Board of Trustees voted to hire former Woodsboro head football coach Charlie McMath as the new football coach and athletic coordinator at Moody High School. McMath spent the 2008 season as passing coordinator at Texas City High School. He had worked previously at La Marque and Bryan as an offensive assistant. More

'Science' of High School Recruiting Makes Gurus of Us All
from Fort Worth Star-Telegram
In the old days of football recruiting, it was just us, the newspapers. We drew up the blue-chip lists, we followed the courtships, and we trumpeted the successes. It was fun. It was distasteful. It was much ado about nothing, and about everything, if you followed college football. Now, alas, there are so-called recruiting gurus, recruiting magazines and recruiting Web sites, like Scout.com and Rivals.com, that feed fans’ and alumni’s boundless thirsts for signing information. More

Austin High Tabs Leander's Williams as Next Coach
from Austin American-Statesman
After 19 years in Leander, L.D. Williams is making the move to Austin. Williams, 45, was hired on Thursday as the head coach at Austin High. He spent the past 19 seasons at Leander, serving most recently as the Lions' offensive coordinator. It will be his first head coaching position. At Austin High, Williams will replace Rodney Vincent, who left in December to take over the Vista Ridge program. More