I chatted with Todd Dodge, head coach of the 2019 6-A Division II State Champion Westlake Chaparrals Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming season and potential impact Covid-19 may play on Texas high school football this fall. He is one of the sources for a story I am working on to finish out my college tenure and it was an honor to speak with him.

Background: He is a Texas native and played collegiate football for the Texas Longhorns from 1982-1985. He has coached all around the state of Texas, most notably at Southlake Carroll (2000-2006) and Austin Westlake (2014-present). He has five state championships titles (’02,’04,’05,’06, and ’19) and seven appearances in his 21 year tenure as a high school head coach. During the ’04 (National Prep Poll, USA Today), ’05 (National Prep Poll, Freeman Maxpreps), and ’06 (USA Today, Freeman Maxpreps) seasons, Southlake Carroll was recognized as the High School Football National Champions. His career high school coaching record is 204-70 (74.4%). Dodge also has experience as a Head Coach at North Texas University, as well as a one-year stint as a quarterbacks coach at the University of Pittsburgh. Todd has coached his son, Riley Dodge, on both the high school and collegiate level . Riley is now the current head coach at Southlake Carroll, where his father Todd first found notable success as a head coach. In 2019, Riley led the Dragons to a 13-1 record, their only loss coming in the quarterfinals against the eventual 6-A Division-I State Champion Duncanville Panthers. Todd Dodge and the Westlake Chapparals are set to begin UIL’s 100th football season by taking on Riley Dodge and the Southlake Carroll Dragons Friday, August 28 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

*K= Interviewer Kamron Selby, TD= Interviewee Todd Dodge*

K – Good morning, Coach Dodge.

TD – Hey, how are you doing this morning?

K – Doing great. How you doing sir?

TD – Doing awesome. Just driving in on Highway 71 from Horseshoe Bay and heading to Westlake campus.

K – Well, first off I wanted to say congratulations on this past season bringing home a state championship for Westlake. I’m from the Austin area from a small town called Lockhart, and I’ve played at the Westlake stadium a couple times when I was in youth football, so I was definitely following y’all towards the end of last season and it was pretty exciting to see y’all bring one home.

TD – Absolutely. It was a lot of fun.

K – Yeah, so definitely a privilege to talk to you sir. I guess I wanted to start off with a general question. How would you describe the importance of high school football in the state of Texas, and what separates it from other states.

TD – Our state has always embraced and wrapped itself around Texas high school football. The players have to realize that they’re role models in their communities. Say if they wear number 22, there will be kids all over town running around with the 22 jerseys because they idol a 16-17 year-old kid. And so there’s a real responsibility there. One of the things we do at Westlake is we make sure that they understand that you’re watching them all the time. And they need to make sure that they’re being role models for those younger athletes. I mean it’s not uncommon to have 10,000 people at a high school football game while there’s only 15,000 people that live in that town. So, I tell our players all the time that they need to thank the Good Lord that they live in the great state of Texas and their parents landed in that community because they are able to play Texas high school football. Because it is the most talked about.

K – Absolutely. A follow up question based on what you said about your community. How much of an impact would it be on your organization if there were games without fans this season?

TD – Oh it would detrimental. You know for the community because it’s such a rally. It’s such an event every Friday night. To make it all the way to the state championship game, you have to play 16 games and it’s for those people. It’s an outlet for people to come together and it would be sad, but you’re probably going to be dealing with some of that and it’s going to look different for a little while.

K – Yes, sir. I mean I couldn’t even fathom. Like you said, tens of thousands of people in attendance for games of high schoolers and they’re going from that many to zero would be a huge, huge alteration for such a big program like you have.

TD – Obviously football players are the ones that are in the arena, but there’s so many organizations that they get a benefit from a Friday night football game. You’ve got support organizations that are doing fundraisers around football games running concession stands. You know, and it truly is. It doesn’t just stop with the football players on the field. I mean every Friday night at Westlake High School, there’s upwards of 600 students that are involved directly or indirectly in a high school football game.

K – Yeah, it’s such a big, big event. And I’m hoping that eventually down the line that it’ll get back to whatever a norm might look like but it’s going to be a tough gig for a couple months. Last week, summer workout and conditioning programs were able to resume, per UIL. Can you tell me how that’s been going so far being reunited with coaches and players?

TD – I told our players and our coaches we all are becoming really efficient with the zoom meetings. So even though we’ve got them back, we keep them in small groups. They’re working hard, they know that they’re behind right now as far as conditioning. They have no control over that all we can control is what we have in front of us and we’re also thankful that we have that we were able to get back on June 8. I never, I never thought that would happen. I thought it would be more like, you know, July one, but anyway. We got small goals right now and I told her team last week and said, You know, we’re not looking past the first four days. We are working out Monday through Thursday. And we’re running upwards of 250 kids through our program at 50 kids at a time. 25 in the weight room and 25 out on the field and they run or lift. And then we slip them after 40 minutes. And they go home and we bring another group. And as you can imagine the kids are, they’re very attentive and they care. There is a sense of real grind and real work. Our kids have got work ethics and they work hard. And I can see it because they all thought it could get taken away from us and this is just gives us hope that we will play. But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. I get asked, probably five times a day, you know, “are you gonna play your first game of the year”. I don’t know. But you know what, as right now it’s on our schedule. It’s on our calendar to be in AT&T stadium for about three o’clock. On August 28, until somebody tells us different. That’s what we’re getting prepared for.

K – You always have to take it a day at a time. You kind of brought it up so I wanted to, I guess, ask a follow up. You’re going start your season where you ended your last one, and this one’s actually going to be against your son and Southlake Carroll. Can you talk about what that game means to you both on a professional and personal level?

TD – Well on a professional level, we both feel very flattered that the UIL reached out to us to include us in the game that will kick off the 100th year of football in the UIL. That’s kind of how they presented it to us and to be honest with you, personally, we both are not really excited about the idea to begin with, because I don’t necessarily like competing with people I am close with. I’ve competed against good friends of mine throughout my career, but it’s not something that I just absolutely love to do. Our programs at Southlake Carroll and in Westlake are so similar. You can’t even imagine what all we’re having to change, just to play one game you’re talking about the verbiage that we use at the line of scrimmage. And the signals that you use and so forth so it’s very interesting. But, you know, in the big picture of things, for us here at Westlake, it’s never a given that my kids on my football team at Westlake are going to get a chance to play this game that we’re going to play on the 28th of August. It started getting planned over a year in advance. And you know what, I had to kind of put my own personal feelings aside. So anyway, I will go up there and it’ll be a great experience for our kids, our fans, and our student body. We all have aspirations when thinking about us making it to AT&T last year so basically you’re right, we will play back-to-back games there. And that’s something that’s pretty exciting.

K – Yeah, that’s a huge memory for a lot of these young kids. Obviously, not everybody gets to play there and so it’s a huge thing if you not only get to play at the Cowboys stadium once, but to play there once again if you are a returning letterman makes it all the more special. So for this next question, I don’t know if this pertains to higher level schools such as those in 6-A, but is there potential that your organization could reduce roster numbers on all levels to help assist with the safety, and this protocol?

TD – No we would not. I mean all of those things, you know, you have to have in the back of your mind, you have to have a plan. Because you never know, but then that’s something that has been mandated to us. Obviously, we have certain rules in place for social distances outside the box. I mean I’ve thought of all kinds of things, because we had a lot of time to, kind of, brainstorm on just ideas to make things safer. We talked about not having lockers where they just basically bring their stuff to school every day and we have the ability because we practice at 5:30 in the morning until 7:30. Our kids don’t have their first period class, until 8:45, so our varsity football team has about an hour after they step off the field until they have to be a first period class. So they are able to go home shower and come back, you know, that kind of stuff. And that’s something that we’re not necessarily going to do, but those are the kind of thoughts that you have to constantly be thinking about what we can do. Right now with what we’re doing with summer conditioning, I mean, who would ever think or thought that all over the state of Texas, the first thing that an athlete would do when they step on campus was get their temperature taken? Every day. And I am so proud of the way we can put the plan together and execute the plan and our players taking care of their health. They’re the ones that are being productive within the plan. But, you know, where we’ve got a weight room of has a capacity of 125 during regular terms, and we’ve been at 25 kids in their time at a time, so there’s no words we’re spread out all over big leg room. We’re out on the field. We’re working in groups of anywhere from six to 10 at a time, no bigger than that. But we’re getting better you know and the thing that I tell our team all the time, we have we have right now one thing in common with every other team in Texas. We have everybody has jumped in to start training on June 8. And as of right now, no one’s told us differently, we’re going start practice on August 3. And so what we do with our time between June 8 and August 3, that’s on us.

K – Yeah, absolutely. I think is a cool thing. Like we said earlier, how we were able to start this early, and it’s truly about who’s willing to put in the work in these tough times to get prepared for next season. So I guess I only have one more question for you coach. If there were either players or parents that had growing concerns about playing during the pandemic as potential cases arise, how would you handle their concerns about potentially hanging it up or not playing for a little while, without being forced to?

TD – Yeah so all of the coaches in the state are having to prepare for that happening. And in this situation, I think you have to think outside the box because you know, there are going to be some people that just say, “you know what, I’m just not ready to turn my son loose on this.” And obviously all we can do is go by the guidelines in front of us and then just be very diligent to be as safe as we possibly can. But, I mean, I’d have to support a player and obviously keep that door open. It’s going to be a different deal than in the past. I mean, obviously, I think anybody that has been a coach for a while has probably had someone that leaves a program because the parents were afraid of them getting an injury. And they are just very honest, you know, think he’s going to get hurt. Well, I’m sorry, I cannot guarantee they won’t get hurt, but that shows, if that’s your attitude, we’re going have to part ways, and probably won’t come back together. Because we have people coming in and out of the pandemic, it is a little different because I think obviously at some point, this thing’s going to be over and we are going to have the vaccine for it. But during this during this season, we have to be prepared for that. I was talking to Riley, my son, yesterday. There’s going to be some very interesting things that happen in the 2020 high school football season, all the way to professional football, and Pop Warner and everything in between. You’re going to have teams and they’re going to be rocking along, having great seasons and all of the sudden the star player is going to get sick. And he’s going be quarantined for 14 days and everybody that’s in real close contact with him will be as well. I mean, you could have a quarterback room for instance, and this is for discussion sake, but more in the sense that you give a quarterback room and the starting quarterback tests positive. And then all of his other quarterback teammates, because he’s around those players more than anybody else, they get tested, and then they go to the position coach. All of the sudden you have no quarterback for Friday night. And we try not to think about those things too much, but those are interesting. But, to me, if we get to play football I think it is worth those hurdles, so as long as we are doing our best to keep our players safe. The one thing that I’ve learned is don’t be afraid of setting a date and leading people towards said date. And if what you were going to do on that day doesn’t happen, at least you were prepared for it. And you go with Plan B, and recalibrate so to speak. But, you know, we just been trying to do right here, instead of saying the “what ifs,” and there’s no way, you know, all that kind of stuff that we hear so much. You know, we’re going to be practicing on August 3, you know what, let’s get ready. So that’s our attitude. We could all sit around and go, “well you know we’re not gonna play anyway,” you know, and just said, we’re not going to train in about mid-August, they say “oh by the way, you will be playing on August 28.” So, this preparation right now is so good for the mental well-being of all of us, to be honest with you.

K – Yeah, it’s definitely going to show a lot of character for a lot of people, but awesome coach, well I really appreciate your time this morning, It was awesome, talking to you. I loved the interview, and hopefully one day we will cross paths, and I’ll be able to speak to you again.

TD – Absolutely Kamron, it was a pleasure.