This week marks the 30th anniversary of Lake Highlands winning the Class 5A state football championship. Notes Lake Highlands resident and sports writer Keith Whitmire, “I don’t think anyone who lived here at that time could ever forget it.”
Scott Johnson certainly won’t forget it.
He played on the championship team, graduated, went on to University of Texas, married his college sweetheart Michelle McFadden and now lives in Lake Highlands with their kids Mary Margaret (a senior Wrangler headed to UT) and Matthew (president of the Lake Highlands Freshman Center student council).
Johnson recalls the big game, where they went up against “freakishly talented” opposition at the Houston Astrodome in front of a crowd of about 38,000. He says about 12,000 of them were in from Lake Highlands. Wow.
After the jump, read his recap of that day and a few notes on why he has made Lake Highlands home:
Obviously winning state was tremendous, but for us it was as much relief as anything. For our class, the history had always been to win; in junior high, the only game LH or FM ever lost was to each other.
When we came together as a sophomore team, we went 10-0. The next year we were shattered with some on varsity and some on JV, but together again as seniors we would end up 15-0.
Believe me, we talked about the streak a lot, and we were determined to see it through.
Along the way, there were plenty of games that easily could have gone the other way, but someone would always manage to make a play and we’d keep on winning. We had a lot of good players. I think we ended up with 12 or 13 guys that went on to play Div I football, but there were plenty of teams far more talented. But we had coaches and players with tremendous heart and character (and characters) that refused to accept defeat and always held together because we believed in each other.
Of course the community was great and incredibly supportive, but that’s just Lake Highlands; I think that part is just indigenous to this place.
Playing in the Astrodome was tremendous, though the place was a pit. The field was horrible (there were nail heads sticking up where they’d overlay turf over the cut-outs for the baseball field!) but the place was packed (38,000 I think?!) and there had to be 12,000 from LH. How cool is that?!
We beat Yates, an inner city Houston team that was freakishly talented. They were bigger and stronger and faster. We were winning our playoff games 17-14 and 7-3, and they’re winning theirs 54-21. So we show up in Houston, and they’re playing a rap song about Yates on the RADIO! Clearly, we had no chance.
But yet; 19-6, and it wasn’t that close. Destiny fulfilled. For Yates, I think it was death by a thousand cuts. We were boring, we were methodical, we were disciplined, and then we were champions.
Our team was very close. There are a great many of us who stay in touch; coaches, players and classmates alike. Facebook is a great ally in that regard, but we keep track of each other and many of is get together fairly regularly.
Earlier this year Alvin Rettig, our star running back and a Detroit cop for the last 20 years, showed up in town unannounced. He shot me a note, I made a few calls, and a couple of hours later we had a dozen guys gathered around the table. And another dozen who would have been there if they possibly could have. Our coaches are the same way; you run into one of them, and he’ll tell what the other 11 are doing right now. It’s just that kind of group.
So why did I choose to raise my family in LH? Well, it’s not because we won state; Lord knows I had very little to do with that feat (if our team had 40 Scott Johnson’s on it, we certainly wouldn’t be talking about our football team 30 years later!). The reason I came back is because, like most who’ve lived here, there is just no place like Lake Highlands.
There has always been such a tremendous sense of community here; we support each other, we look out for each other, and we enjoy being with each other. I wanted my children to have that experience, to feel like they belong to something special. And I have certainly been very pleased with the way that has turned out for them.
