This year, DeSoto HS (TX) was on a roll, finishing the regular season undefeated under head coach Todd Peterman, just a year removed from a rough 2016 season, by Peterman's standards.
Last season Peterman's DeSoto squad struggled to a 6-6 finish and had nationally recognized teams like IMG Academy (FL) and Steele (TX). Granted, some teams would love a .500 season, but that doesn't cut it in big time Texas high school football, and definitely wasn't acceptable in Peterman's eyes.
So many coaches around the country envy head high school football coaches at big programs in Texas, and even more wonder just how tough is it to be a head high school in the Lone Star State? Well, Peterman offered an interesting analogy to the Dallas News, using last season as an example.
"I'm too young to have gone to Vietnam, but you talk about post-traumatic stress disorder and I don't remember much about last year. So many things were going on and you can only worry about thing at a time, that's what we're doing this year."
Clearly Peterman doesn't mean that in the literal sense, but it does shine some light on what things are like for high profile programs in the state of Texas. Now undefeated, Peterman has DeSoto being viewed as one of the top programs in the entire country.
The big difference between this undefeated season and the 6-6 finish to 2015, according to Peterman? Just a few more bounces of the ball in their direction.
"If you look at the 6-6 games, we were right there with Steele, up 14 on IMG Academy in the first half, fast-forward to this year and we're tied with Mansfield at halftime -so there are things that went our way this year that didn't last year. The key has been the kids staying consistent. Even in games when we're better than our opponent, we would do things in past years like get stupid penalties. Well, this year we have only three personal fouls and one of those was mine, my first one."
Listen to the full Dallas News podcast with Peterman below.