By Kevin Lonnquist
NTX Varsity Sports Columnist
Cliff Watkins could not have asked for a better situation at Glen Rose.
His football teams won district championships and went to the playoffs. Two advanced as far as the state semifinals.
The overall athletics department presented competitive teams in most team sports. Well rounded, it was.
However, when the Decatur head football coach and athletic director’s position opened in April, Watkins couldn’t ignore his attraction. By mid-May he succeeded Steve Huff.
“It came down to the success that Decatur is able to have in all sports,’’ Watkins said. “It’s a great opportunity for me as an athletic director and head football coach.”
Decatur is also in Wise County, which became the epicenter for excellence in high school athletics competition. It has the state championship trophies from the 2025-26 calendar to prove it. Six to be exact.
>Class 4A Decatur won two with volleyball in November and girls basketball this past March.
>Class 4A Bridgeport won with boys soccer this past April.
>Class 3A Paradise won two with boys basketball and baseball in March and two weeks ago.
>Class 3A Boyd won with baseball earlier this month.
This corridor of Decatur, Boyd, Paradise and Bridgeport is separated from each other by 20 miles or less. If you looked at a map of Texas and narrowed to Wise County, these four form a nice tight square.
Some cities like to nickname themselves something like, “TitleTown, USA”. Wise County lived it. Think about the rarity of this feat.
“I’ve been doing this a while. Like 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,’’ Bridgeport athletic director and head football coach Aaron Cupp said. “Just to see the collection of talent and commitment in such a small geographical area is a testament to the support from the schools.’’
Winning state championships is a hard business. A team must be better than its opponents for six rounds to hoist the biggest piece of hardware the UIL awards along with wearing gold medals. Aside from baseball, these are one-game scenarios.
Just the slightest misstep could mean the ending of a season early. But for these six teams, they had the talent, skill level, depth and mental toughness to persevere.
For Decatur girls basketball and volleyball, the pressure to repeat from the 2024-25 state titles began the day the season started. However, they withstood every challenge and met the moment in Class 4A Division I.
Bridgeport boys soccer fell short playing for a state title in 2025 when it lost in the state semifinals. However, a new head coach in Brandan Medrano blended, the team gelled and ended 2026 as the last ones standing in 4A Division II.
Boyd’s baseball program has prided itself on success. It has played in the state semifinals in three of the last four years. Won it all in 2023. After being eliminated in the 2025 state semifinals, the Yellow Jackets finished this year with the 3A Division I state championship.
Paradise’s boys basketball and baseball programs took two different paths. Basketball lost in the state finals last year but found a way to survive and win its 3A Division II title. Baseball had never been as far as the regional semifinals. But it got on a roll and finished things off with its own 3A Division II title.
You always consider the funneling through with a group of talented athletes. That always happens. However, the building blocks and the history were there. Belief made the difference.
“Speaking for Paradise, the most important thing was the establishment of a Godly program,’’ Paradise head football coach and athletic director Tommy Koch said. “It was about doing things the right way. And if we did that, good things would follow. We also hired the right coaches in the last five years.’’
There’s really no reason as to why this happened. Coincidence. The perfect storm, if you will.
However, these titles are a product of the commitment beginning from the school board and superintendent to the rest of the district.
Demographics are changing in Wise County. More people are moving there. With the growth of DFW at more than eight million people, they all can’t fit in Tarrant and Parker County. A Texas Demographic Center studied unveiled the population growth of Wise County has surged from nearly 68,600 to nearly 84,000 in 2025. That’s a jump of more than 20 percent. With more people comes more potential athletes.
While Paradise’s development is steady, more housing developments are coming into Boyd. Decatur is seeing a mix of developments and apartment complexes. It would not be a surprise to witness all four of these communities moving into a higher classification before the end of this decade.
Participation numbers and tweaks to the junior high programs are changing for the better. Koch said there are currently 100 players in the Panthers football program.
Should those numbers relatively stay the same when fall camp starts in August, the program could field three high school teams – varsity, junior varsity and freshmen – the for the first time in school history. Plus, there is a new high school building opening in July.
“We needed an upgrade. The school board and community prioritized athletics,’’ Koch said. “They made an investment. They saw that athletics had exploded and wanted to keep it that way.’’
Cupp noted a restructure in the junior high athletics period where high school coaches would have more access to those athletes. Paradise’s revised junior high athletics period offers more weight training and working on speed and agility.
“It just starts with developing the relationships,’’ Cupp said. “We’re going to be talking the same verbiage as they come through to the high school. Our coaches can now pour into our kids. It’s going to be a critical element to how we do things.’’
The encore for Bridgeport, Boyd, Decatur and Paradise in 2026-27 begins on Aug. 1 when the new athletics calendar begins. Faces will change. But the expectations won’t.
Maybe what we tracked in Wise County for 2025-26 was a once-in-a-lifetime series of events. Within that box, four communities experienced the result everybody else wanted.
“You see the competition and what they’re doing,’’ Koch said, “and you raise the stakes.’’