No more rehearsals

The fun's over now.

Or does it begin tonight?

That's the question when Tascosa and Amarillo High begin play in District 2-5A this week. Tascosa visits Lubbock Monterey at 7:30 tonight at Lowrey Field to open the nine-game district season. Amarillo High opens 2-5A on Friday by hosting Lubbock Coronado at Dick Bivins Stadium.

As one of only two 10-team 5A districts in the state, schools from Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa and San Angelo have one week of dress rehearsal before the real season starts, so the time for tinkering with lineups is just about over.

For Tascosa and new coach Ken Plunk, the challenge is not only getting on the same page with a new system but trying to master it in time for a district game less than a month after starting fall practice.

"I think the big deal is it provides more of a sense of urgency," Plunk said. "There's no margin for error, and it frustrates you in forcing you to make decisions. It's just something you have to deal with."

While this is new territory for Plunk, who came to Tascosa after two years at Randall, Amarillo High coach Brad Thiessen already is familiar with it.

AHS is flying as high as anyone after last week's 56-0 rout of Randall. But Thiessen thinks his team should be a little more cautious entering this week.

"Our reality check came from a year ago," Thiessen said. "We won an emotional ballgame (35-13 against Randall), then we went down to Coronado and they beat us pretty good (36-28). We've had a real good week of practice."

While next week's game between AHS and Tascosa will have important implications, it won't be until a week later that the Amarillo schools will see how far they've come. They'll play the Odessa schools, with Amarillo High hosting Odessa Permian and Tascosa visiting Odessa High.

The Odessa and Midland schools not only claimed all four of the district's playoff spots last season, they were undefeated against the Amarillo and Lubbock schools. That's a gap which must be closed if either Amarillo school is to crack the postseason picture.

"There's a little motivation in that," Thiessen said. "I've been in this long enough to know that these things go in cycles."

The last few years have been an up cycle for the Permian Basin schools. Permian has gone three rounds deep into the playoffs in each of the past three years, and Gary Gaines, who coached Permian's 1989 state champions, has returned to the sideline. Odessa High broke a decade-long playoff drought last season, Midland Lee has been to the postseason five straight years, and Midland High has become an annual contender under former Hereford coach Craig Yenzer.

But Plunk doesn't think that means Permian Basin teams are necessarily that much better than area teams.

"Last year was a bit of a fluke," Plunk said. "The teams that were in this district up here before had a bit of a down year. I don't think it's going to be that way long term."

Or could there be a change as early as this year? While AHS and Tascosa opened with wins, all four Midland and Odessa schools opened with losses.

But Thiessen isn't putting much weight on that, either.

"We knew that even though they all lost last week, they all lost to good football teams," Thiessen said.