"We're about to win this whole thing."
-Jeff Traylor
Chapter 1: A Game of Inches
You could have heard a pin drop in Longview's Lobo Stadium.
Twelve thousand hushed fans huddled together in the November cold watched as referees brought out the chains. One stretched the iron links to their limit while the other leaned over to measure the seemingly imperceptible distance between a yard marker and the nose of a football.
On the previous play, Jackson Sikes of the Gilmer Buckeyes-all 180 pounds of him-had dove at the legs of Daylon Mack, star fullback for the Gladewater Bears. Mack, who weighed 300 pounds and ran a 4.9 40-yard dash, was on the radar of college football coaches across the country.
Before Sikes's maneuver, Gladewater had had the ball on the Gilmer 19-yard line, leading 35-33, and they'd opted to go for a first down and put the game out of reach rather than kicking a field goal on fourth and two. The call was fullback dive, a simple play. It had worked for at least two yards nearly the entire game.
Everyone in the stadium knew who was getting the ball. After surveying the defensive line, the quarterback took the snap, pivoted left, and handed the ball to Mack, who then bulldozed his way through a wall of defenders and was now bearing down on Sikes.
The linebacker had already been pummeled by the big guy once in the game, when he lined up in the fullback position to deliver a wham block to Mack, who doubled as a defensive tackle, in order to let Gilmer's tailback scamper by on a trap play. Instead, Mack plowed into Sikes at the line of scrimmage and crumpled him on contact.
With the incident still fresh in Sikes's memory, the junior adapted his approach and plunged into Mack's legs instead of hitting him high up, throwing him off his balance, so the other Buckeye defensive players could tackle him to the ground, just shy of a first down.
The refs gave their verdict: "Short by an inch! Turnover on downs! Gilmer football!"
The crowd erupted-and now Gilmer had the ball on their 18-yard line with 1:10 left on the clock. The showdown between Gilmer and Gladewater harkened back to another power match three decades earlier that had become the stuff of East Texas lore: the 1984 Gladewater-Daingerfield playoff game.
The two schools entered the contest each boasting a 13-0 record. The winner would advance to the semifinals of the state playoffs.
Daingerfield had won the previous season's 3A state title, and had ended the season with 631 points, allowing only eight points to rivals that season, and zero on defense. (They still hold the NFHS national record for the most shutouts in a single season.)
The contest ended in a 27-27 tie after Daingerfield blocked Gladewater's extra point attempt with 17 seconds left. At the time, the University Interscholastic League (UIL) hadn't implemented overtime, so the team that advanced would be the one who had more penetrations.
Daingerfield had six, Gladewater had five. Daingerfield advanced.
"I was a junior in high school, sitting in the end zone at Tyler's Rose Stadium, watching the greatest game I had ever seen," recalled the Buckeyes' coach, Jeff Traylor, a Gilmer kid. "I wanted to be in that moment so bad. It's why I wanted to become a coach."
In East Texas, coaches are at the pinnacle of their town because a community's identity is its high school football team. The 1984 teams were led by Daingerfield's Dennis Alexander and Gladewater's Jack Murphy- both legendary head coaches. Each would leave his imprint on a future generation of East Texas high school football coaches, including Traylor.
"The matchup was what you'd dream about," said Traylor. "Rose was the premier place in those days. It was Cowboys Stadium in my eyes."
***
Three decades later, many in the crowd had that iconic game on their minds when Gilmer faced Gladewater in Longview's Lobo stadium, the Rose Stadium of its day and a prime location for a playoff game. Lobo had Division-1 amenities, including a press box and massive stands that could hold the Lobo Band's Big Green Marching Machine. Those lucky enough to be in the stadium had waited in line for hours to claim their seats. Beyond the Jumbotron, an overflow crowd from the stadium sat on blankets in a grassy bowl to watch the game. The only hindrance to their view of the field was a rectangular bed of bushes that spelled out "Lobos," just in case they forgot whose house they were in.
The Gilmer-Gladewater matchup had kicked off with each team's superstars demonstrating their value on the region's biggest stage. Gilmer received the ball first, and immediately showed why it had one of the most prolific offenses in Texas high school football history. Quarterback McLane Carter took a short snap on Gilmer's 10-yard line and tossed a short swing pass to running back Kris Boyd. The play was designed to give the Buckeyes some breathing room by attacking the outside, since the ever-dangerous Mack was known for clogging the middle. Boyd took the simple toss and surprised Gladewater's defenders by turning on the jets and going 90 yards for an opening drive touchdown.
Just like that it was 7-0 Gilmer.
This was completely counter to Gladewater's game plan. While Gilmer was known for its stratospheric scoring and flashy, high-tempo offense, the Bears were a grind-it-out team that was going to run the ball, eat up the clock, and stand its ground on defense.
Gladewater Coach John Berry stuck with the winning plan that had taken his team this far. When the Bears' next drive wasn't fruitful and Gilmer got the ball back, Berry's best player, Daylon Mack, delivered a hit on quarterback McLane Carter that made the entire stadium gasp. It let everyone know that the Bears weren't going anywhere, and it allowed Gladewater to recapture momentum. On its next drive, they scored by way of a 15-yard quarterback keeper.
After a failed two-point conversion, the score was 7-6.
Gilmer responded with an attack on the Bears with the vertical passing game. Senior quarterback McLane Carter had a 74 percent completion percentage on the year. His receivers didn't help his numbers this time though; and after consecutive dropped passes, Gilmer was forced to punt.
Gladewater took over on its own 48-yard line, and decisively marched down the field on the backs of its power running game. The drive was finished off by Mack taking it in from 11 yards out. After the two-point conversion was good, the score now read Gladewater 14, Gilmer 7.
"Daylon was so powerful," Gilmer defensive coordinator Todd Barr later recalled. "He was the perfect back. If he's on your team, he's going to get you four or five yards per down."
While Mack's night had already been impressive, it was the next drive that cemented his status as one of the top high school players in Texas.
After Gladewater intercepted a pass from Gilmer utility player Blake Lynch, the Bears started on its own 34 with the crowd on their side. The first play was a handoff to Mack on a fullback dive. He took it 10 yards before five different defenders eventually took him to the ground. The crowd loved it. He was a man among boys.
Berry called Mack's number three more times on this drive before he crossed the goal line for his second touchdown of the night. Gladewater was now up 21-7, and in complete control of the game.
Gilmer had not been tested since it played at Tatum during the third week of the season and squeaked out a narrow victory. But the program prided itself on its culture of toughness, hard work, and resilience.
"We focus on outworking other teams," said Kurt Traylor. "You look at the top five programs every year. It's the same ones. Our kids believed they were going to be successful. They truly believed they outworked everyone. The work we put in the dark will shine in the light. I hate to say the word brainwash, but we believed it at Gilmer."
The staff also shared these sentiments, relentlessly out-preparing other coaches.
"When I joined the staff, I was in awe," said Kerry Lane, a young, promising coach on Traylor's staff. "I had never seen that many good coaches on one staff before. Gilmer is on a whole different level than any other place in this area, a level that would rival most college programs. You've got 30-minute position meetings every day, on both sides of the ball. Coaches fine combed every second of practice to make sure they're at peak efficiency. It works though. Our kids didn't flinch in a game, but you saw other teams crumble."
Gilmer responded to its two-touchdown deficit by adjusting its planned attack on the Bears. Rather than rely on the vertical passing game, the players started doing a zone-read play called "Thelma," where Carter would hand the ball off to Boyd from the shotgun. They ran the same play five straight times averaging almost eight yards a play. The end result was another Kris Boyd touchdown.
Deciding to gamble after reclaiming the momentum, Gilmer did an onside kick and got the ball back. Eight plays later, Boyd found the end zone again. The score now read 21-21 as the first half...
