As Trey Smith and the rest of his Bronchos teammates stepped on the practice field Monday, they put their focus forward.
It’s not like they had much choice.
Ready or not — it’s here.
“There’s no going back now.”
Odessa High opens District 2-6A play this weekend, when the Bronchos travel to face Amarillo Tascosa at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Amarillo.
There’s six games left on the schedule for Odessa High, all against district foes, and Smith and the Bronchos know that those six games are going to decide where their season ends.
“Now these are for keeps,” the junior quarterback continued. “That’s the one biggest thing. These are for keeps.
“These are going to get us one step closer to our goal of reaching the playoffs.”
Odessa High is 2-2 after splitting four nondistrict games to open the season, but the fact remains, until Friday, all seven of the teams in District 2-6A are 0-0 in the league.
The top four finishers in district play will earn playoff berths at season’s end.
“That’s our biggest goal, is playoffs,” Smith said. “That’s the one thing.”
Odessa High’s quest starts in Amarillo.
“It’s a new season,” Odessa High head coach Danny Servance put it simply Monday.
Yes, while the Bronchos put plenty of effort into winning games for their school through these first four weeks of the season, the fact remains that none of their wins and losses thus far will have an effect on their playoff chances.
That’s still all ahead of them.
“That’s what I always tell our guys, is that when we start, we’ve got three seasons to play,” Servance said, alluding to nondistrict, district and the playoffs. “One of them is over. We were .500 there.
“You forget about what happened up to this point. Now everybody is 0-0. What counts now is what we do from Friday here on out.”
Monday, the Bronchos got back to work with that in mind.
“We handle it the same,” senior receiver Zay Brown said. “We come out a little harder, obviously, because it’s district, and these games count more. But we’re really just taking it the same way.”
>> TALL ORDER: Odessa High knows it’s in for a challenge when it comes to cracking that top four in the league.
Four teams will make the playoffs in the district. Four teams are undefeated going into the league schedule. Obviously, at 2-2, Odessa High isn’t one of those teams — so the Bronchos are going to have to climb ahead of one of those to make the postseason.
Amarillo Tascosa is one of those unbeatens. The Rebels went 4-0 in nondistrict, as did San Angelo Central and Midland Lee. Permian went 3-0.
As district opens, Odessa High seems to be starting on the outside looking in, along with Midland High (0-4) and Wolfforth Frenship (0-4).
But, looking at their surroundings, the Bronchos are embracing the chance to try to climb up and into the district’s top four, and the challenges that’ll come along the way.
“We’re taking it one game at a time, definitely, and focusing on that one game and not looking too forward — but we also know what it’s going to take for us to reach that spot,” Smith said.
“And that means we’re going to have to beat one of those undefeated teams.”
San Angelo Central is ranked sixth in Class 6A Region I in the Texas High School Coaches Association’s poll, while Permian is in ninth in those same regional rankings.
Meanwhile, Amarillo Tascosa and Permian both received votes just outside Class 6A’s top 10 as ranked by the Associated Press.
“We always talk about district being the toughest in the state,” Servance said. “I mean, it’s a meat-grinder, once you get in there. There’s no nights where you can take a play off or take a game off. Everybody’s playing hard, everybody’s playing good, everybody’s well-coached, and they’re going to give you their best.
“Everybody has a lot of pride in what they do and in their programs, and this area just has great tradition of playing great football, so that’s what we expect every Friday night from our opponents.”
>> BATTLE TESTED: In four weeks, it seems like Odessa High has seen it all.
The Bronchos won a late-comeback thriller on the opening night of the season to beat Lubbock Monterey in the last seconds of the game.
They’ve also lost a heartbreaker, back in Week 3, dropping a one-point nail-biter to Lubbock Coronado, as a potential winning field goal was deflected in the final minutes.
Odessa High has also nursed a steady lead to a win, when the Bronchos jumped out 28-7 lead on its way to beat Amarillo High in Week 2.
Last week, the Bronchos felt the sting of losing by several scores, when they fell into a big hole at Abilene High and couldn’t climb out of it to fall 31-21.
While the Bronchos would’ve loved to have won every game, if nothing else, the nondistrict schedule has pitted them in different situations that could help them through a long upcoming district season.
“That’s the plan,” Servance said. “You always try to go in and schedule nondistrict games that’ll get you ready for your district schedule.
“We didn’t have an easy opponent throughout our nondistrict schedule. It definitely got us ready for our district schedule.”
Now, after experiencing the ups and downs, the Bronchos say they’re a better team for it.
“The losses hurt a lot. I know that. But the wins — I think the wins let us know that we can do it, and it’s possible for us to do it,” Smith said.
“It makes us hungry for more.”
