Whitesboro was only school from Lone Star state to go century without earning postseason bid until Friday's 60-7 win over Pilot Point.
Maybe there's hope for Chicago Cubs and Buffalo Bills after all.
Whitesboro (Texas), the only school in Texas to go 100 years without a playoff appearance, will make one next week after defeating visiting Pilot Point 60-7 on Friday night.
The victory gave Whitesboro a 7-3 record and its first win over Pilot Point since 1976.
Whitesboro, a town of almost 4,000 residents located 60 miles North of Dallas near the Oklahoma border, has been waiting for this day for decades. The school has been around since 1911, but its first full season was 1936.
"Whitesboro making the playoffs
is like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series," TexasHSFootball.com owner and state historian Christopher Lyke told MaxPreps on Friday. "How big is it? That big for that town."
According to numerous sources, Whitesboro's
playoff-less streak is by far the longest in the state.
"We're
extremely excited," senior wide receiver and defensive back Garrett
Hickman told the Herald Democrat, Whiteboro's local newspaper. "I think everybody realizes how big it is."
According to the newspaper, there were 26 seasons since 1937 in which Whitesboro didn't win any district games and 21 it won less than two games overall. The 1948 team went a school-best 9-1 but lost a district title game, prohibiting it from moving on. In 1960, the Bearcats won a co-championship but was denied a playoff spot by a head-to-head tiebreaker with Honey Grove.
Eddie Gill has been Whitesboro's coach for six seasons, the longest tenure for the Bearcats since the 1940s.
"I tell you what, Coach Gill has done a great job with them and his son (Jordan Gill) is a great quarterback," Aubrey coach G.A. Moore, the state's winningest coach, told the Herald Democrat. "They've got some good football players."
Pilot Point found that out the hard way on Friday.
