Watching the game tonight I started thinking about how good girls basketball is here in the panhandle. I went back, and I must admit it was even better than I recalled. Starting in 1990, when I got into hs, here are the state champs from the panhandle

90-91
1A Nazareth
2A Abernathy
3A Tulia
4A Levelland
5A Amarillo Tascosa
A clean sweep! amazing!

91-92
2A Panhandle
3A Canyon
4A Canyon Randall

92-93
3A Dimmitt
5A Amarillo

93-94
1A Sudan
5A Amarillo

94-95
1A Sudan

95-96
1A Nazareth
4A Canyon

96-97
1A Whiteface
4A Levelland

97-98
4A Canyon Randall

98-99
1A Vega

99-00
1A Nazareth
2A Farwell
4A Canyon

00-01
1A - Nazareth
4A - Plainview

01-02
1A - Nazareth
4A - Plainview

02-03
3A - Canyon
4A - Plainview

03-04
2A - Shallowater
3A - Canyon

04-05
1A - Nazareth
3A - Canyon

05-06
shut out

06-07
1A - Nazareth
3A - Canyon

07-08
1A - Follett
3A - Canyon

08-09
1A - Sudan

09-10
1A - Smyer

10-11
1A - Smyer
4A - Canyon

20 years, 40 titles out of 100. that's pretty amazing, 40% of titles come to the panhandle. What % of schools are in the panhandle?

Wow, that's an amazing stat! Here's the UIL alignment page: http://www.uiltexas.org/alignments/category/align-basketball

You didn't go far enough back. It has been dominant for decades. A lot of that credit goes to Wayland Baptist and the Flying Queens. Lots of coaches came out of that program (Marsha Sharp)

In the late 70s, early 80s WBU had the Queen's Classic girls BB tournament over Thanksgiving. Hale Center, Nazareth and Canyon were among the teams that kicked butt there and later on in the state tourney.

Some guy named Blair used to bring his team up from South Oak Cliff to play in the tourney. Seems like he had some success later on, too.

I believe it was about '82 or so that the teams from this region swept the state tournament. Joe Lombard was still at Nazareth (class B) his wife Babs was at Hale Center (class A) and it seems like Canyon and Plainview may have been the 2A and 3A champs. Don't recall who won 4A, and there was no 5A at the time.


It was strange to me to find out that big schools added girls BB in the 1970s, when my mom (Sparenberg class of '47) played high school BB, and all my hometown had girls BB as long as I can remember.

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 4/6/2011 11:19p).]

up until the early 80's the girls played a half court type game where three stayed on defense and 3 stayed on offense and they couldn't pass the mid-court line

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What % of schools are in the panhandle?

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Look at what % of the population is in the area versus the rest of the state. I'm sure DFW, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin all all bigger than the total population of the panhandle.

I thought of that, but I figured that might be artificially low, since the big towns have huge schools, where all the 1a schools in the panhandle probably don't have as many kids as a big 5a

There are lots of little towns that surround the big areas. Two that I can think of with championship billboards on the highway are Brock, which is west of FW and Krum, which is north of FW. I think they are 1A or 2A schools.

Also, I think Southlake Carroll used to be a 3A school, but it's now a 5A.

One of the coolest things, especially when you consider programs like Canyon and Naz, is that you see a lot of familiar last names on these teams even over several generations.

Not sure what has happened to Naz over the last 2 or 3 years - this year I think they finished third in their district. By their standard, that's about as bad of a season as you can have.

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Two that I can think of with championship billboards on the highway are Brock, which is west of FW and Krum, which is north of FW. I think they are 1A or 2A schools.

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Brock's success is relatively recent (over the past decade and a half) for the most part. They've had more success on the girls side but have had boys success too. They have been more successful in 2A than they were in class A. They had a girls team a few years ago that was as good as anyone in the state, no matter what classification. I believe the big story of that team was they had beaten one of the 5A state qualifiers earlier in the season (I believe it was SA Taft).

Krum had boys success in the 90s with Hamm's sons, Chris Arledge, and a convenient move in from Whitesboro (I forget his name - Barry something) but most of the success in the late 90s and 2000s belonged to their rival Ponder and another rival Peaster.

Canyon had a girls team in the early 2000s that finished the year ranked #1 in the nation - and they did it as a public 3A school. To say that's astounding isn't really doing it justice.

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I believe it was about '82 or so that the teams from this region swept the state tournament. Joe Lombard was still at Nazareth (class B) his wife Babs was at Hale Center (class A) and it seems like Canyon and Plainview may have been the 2A and 3A champs. Don't recall who won 4A, and there was no 5A at the time.

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I think they eliminated class B in '79. Not 100% sure though.

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Brock's success is relatively recent (over the past decade and a half) for the most part.

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...was just pointing out that small towns surround large cities, not that they have won more or less overall titles

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...was just pointing out that small towns surround large cities, not that they have won more or less overall titles

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No problem. I just geek out over this stuff, so any excuse to talk about it is too good to pass up.

The eliminated class B prior to the 1980-81 season.

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One of the coolest things, especially when you consider programs like Canyon and Naz, is that you see a lot of familiar last names on these teams even over several generations.

Not sure what has happened to Naz over the last 2 or 3 years - this year I think they finished third in their district. By their standard, that's about as bad of a season as you can have.

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I grew up in Nazareth my entire life. When you grow up surrounded with winning, it just comes to be expected. Anything less than a state championship was pretty much a failure.

What you said about the kids coming from the same generation is a big part of the success. More and more though, it seems that those names are more few and far between and that's a big part of the reason why the past few years the success hasn't been up to the 'usual standard'.