Going to the state championship game for high school football each year is not normal. But for the players at South Oak Cliff High School it has been since 2021.
The Golden Bears’ football team has made it their new normal.
SOC is one of eight schools in Texas UIL history to be returning to the UIL state championship for a fifth straight season. For the freshmen that came into the program off of two back-to-back wins in 2021 and 2022, this is their last shot before graduation.
Jamarion Phillips, a senior linebacker, is one of those students. He committed to play at Baylor in April.
“I can’t take it for granted,” he said. “I just got to go out there, and I just got to do what I do best. I got to go out there and play football and hopefully at the end of the game, I have the ring.”
Head coach Jason Todd echoes that statement.
“It means a lot to be able to go five years in a row, and to finally get their third one after being denied the last two years. It would mean a lot, most importantly for the kids because they’re the ones that put in a lot of hard work,” he said.
All that hard work is going to face the Randle High School Lions of Richmond. The team is currently undefeated and includes five-star junior running back Landen Williams-Callis, whom Phillips said is a pretty good opponent.
“That’s a lot of hype, but we just got to go out there and play our game,” he said.
Todd said that having their own dominance throughout their 14-1 season to due to the “kids buying in as a culture thing in South Oak Cliff.” Playing high caliber teams early in the season, such as Duncanville, North Shore and Desoto, also set the standard.
“What we try to do, we just can’t get outcoached in the playoffs because we know our kids are going to play hard,” Todd said.
Part of that reason for playing hard draws back to the neighborhood culture.
“It means a lot to represent Oak Cliff, this community, because a lot of people look in on this community and doubt us,” Phillips said. “Just going out there and playing for our community, showing that even though y’all say this about our community, it doesn’t look the best like y’all, we’re still good. And athletics is just like y’all’s kids are, not even, if not better.”
For Saturday’s game, Todd said he hopes to prove that.
“I think it’s the greatest story because nobody ever said this could happen here,” Todd said. “You always had to leave these types of places in people’s eyes to go to other places to be successful. One-horse towns, suburbs, had to move away. But we showed that we can do it right here in the hood.”
South Oak Cliff High School will play Richmond Randle for the Texas 5A Division II State Championship at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 20, at AT&T Stadium.
