Photo courtesy of Dallas ISD
Your South Oak Cliff Golden Bears took quite a beating from Duncanville High School in the first game of the season Friday.
Duncanville won 41-3.
That’s particularly painful because the Duncanville head coach, Reginald Samples, is a SOC alumnus.
Samples was USA Today’s 2019 All USA coach of the year. Duncanville recruited him away from Dallas ISD after decades of coaching at Lincoln and Skyline high schools.
However, Samples wasn’t on the field Friday. He was serving a one-game suspension for allowing a volunteer, who was not a full-time employee of the school district, to coach athletes, in violation of University Interscholastic League rules. The UIL also put the team on one year of probation for that violation.
Samples’ record with DISD was 286-83, and the Dallas Morning News reported earlier this year that he’s 51-6 in four years with Duncanville. But he’s never taken a team all the way to a championship. The Duncanville team went undefeated all season under Samples’ leadership in 2018 but lost in the final three seconds by a Hail Mary pass that ended the state title game. When he was head coach at Lincoln High School in 2004, that team lost the state title game by a blocked field goal in double overtime.
Duncanville has one of the best teams in Texas high school football, ranked No. 2 in the state.
If you see them coming close to a title again this year, it’s OK to root for them. Samples is an Oak Cliff guy, and he has it coming.
Here are more photos from the SOC v. Duncanville game, courtesy of DISD.
