Varsity Football joins 6A, dominating the leaderboards

By: Alyssa Mclain

The district has officially moved up to 6A, which places the school at the largest classification in the state. We are now entering a newer and more challenging league of competition. 

Considering that 6A is the largest classification level, it does not have a max, making DSHS on the smaller side of the schools they are grouped with. Westlake, a competitor school, is ranked number 11 in the country for high school football. Westlake has a larger student population, with almost 3,000 students, compared to Dripping only having a little over 2,000 students.

This makes the depth of students for competition more vast in these larger schools. However, the team is not one to tremble at the competition put in front of them. These competing teams have taken on the new competition with an open mind, learning and growing with the challenges that they face. This has led Dripping to enter the top 100 teams in the nation, ranked at 93. 

They are led by the head coach, Galen Zimmerman, who started coaching at DSHS in 2014, where he piloted the team from their losing streaks to now, 10 years later, district titles. 

“We have to be as prepared as possible for each game, and we worry about us,” Zimmerman said. “We’re trying to be the best version of this team that we can be.”

Through hard work and coaches pushing these student athletes they can rise up to the competitive varsity team.

“Starting out, I sucked, I was on the C team,” senior middle linebacker Daniel Sedillo said. “Sophomore year, I was on the B-team, and was pretty much told I would never see the field.”

Coach Zimmerman tells us there are three parts of a football season; pre-season, the official season and postseason. The pre-season and postseason are known as the off-season, where the team prepares and trains for the season.

“Seasons are won and lost in the off-season, so this started back in December,” Zimmerman said. “With the off-season, there was a commitment to the weight room, there was a commitment to nutrition, trying to put some weight on.”

The transition to 6A called for a lot of hard work and preparation in the off-season. The football team has already hit the ground running this season and has brought home wins in their first six games. This season has been a challenge entering into the 6A pool of competition. 

“I see Dripping Springs surprising a lot of people this year,” senior tight end Boston Papp said. “Especially people that don’t think we can compete with good 6A programs.” 

These first few wins have placed the team at 10 in the state, showing that Dripping is rising to the top.  

Published 10/15/2022 – October Edition