Barry Norton Quotations

It's an honor to be a part of arguably the best and biggest high school football event ever put together in the country. Nine of the teams either won state championships or sectional titles last year. There are going to be some great teams there.

They had called across the state to different head football coaches, along with the media and college coaches to ask for recommendations for Texas High and to find out what our program would mean to this particular event. They said everything came back as a can't-miss proposition. They were told ours is a team they need to have. I'm really proud of that.

We don't even like to say who the starters are at safety. We've played a lot of kids, and not just in mop-up situations. That's kept us fresh on defense.

Obviously our No. 2 goal every year is to find depth. We'd like to come out of the spring with a solid, two-deep chart and find as many players as we can who we think can contribute to the varsity team.

And I think we're deserving of being there. I think our program is one of the top ones in Texas. When we got the invitation I called a staff meeting and asked our coaches why we shouldn't go to this event, and no one could come up with a reason why not. It's going to be an opportunity our kids may never have another chance to do.

I wouldn't mind watching a couple and flying out on Saturday evening. We just filled the last game on our schedule with Waxahachie on the week following the Ohio trip, and I'm kind of a stickler about working weekends to get ready for the next game.

It's just been a case of making some adjustments here and there and playing harder in the second half.

We want to make sure the kids know the new things we're adding by the time practice gets here in the fall. We want to come out of the spring knowing what we can do and who we can do it with. We have a lot of questions, but there are a lot of people here who can provide the answers.

I thought the workout went well. There was a lot of enthusiasm, and the kids were having fun, although you could see them start dragging a little bit at the end because they're not used to carrying their pads. But it was a great first day.