For Rice Consolidated head coach Brad Dumont, rankings and polls don’t greatly affect how he or his team go about their business in Colorado County, just southwest of metropolitan Houston. But there is one message that he believes a state ranking delivers: his team sets a high standard for itself.
“It means to us that people know where we are,” says Dumont of media polls and rankings, “and, at the end, we expect to be at the top.”
Apparently, others share that expectation for Dumont’s 2010 team.
TexasHSFootball.com published its Class 2A preseason rankings on Wednesday and the Raiders are the top-ranked team in Division I/Region IV, as well as the fifth-ranked 2A Division I team in the state.
Daingerfield earned the No. 1 spot in the Division I rankings, while Arp is the THSF preseason top-ranked Division II team. As with Class 1A, this is the first year of the restructured Class 2A with schools separated into two divisions based on enrollments for the entire season, not just the playoffs.
For Rice Consolidated, that means they’ve been moved into a district, District 14-2A-I, which will provide a strong test for them before they even qualify for the playoffs. Edna, Vanderbilt Industrial, Hempstead and Hallettsville are also a part of the seven-team district, and all are also ranked in the THSF Region IV Top-16.
Edna (No. 3) and Industrial (No. 5) are ranked by THSF among the top five in the region.
“(Our district) went from strong to stronger,” says Dumont. “Five teams were in the playoffs last year, with all of them playing more than one playoff game.”
But the return of a healthy quarterback in senior Myles Dumont, who completed 64% of his passes for over 2,000 yards despite battling injury in 2009, and a highly-regarded offensive line lead observers to believe that Rice Consolidated should be the team that the others are chasing this year.
Dumont won't exactly buy into the preseason hype, though. He believes the team speed across the district is as good as any other in the state and says he expects a battle every week this fall, adding, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the winner (of the district) had one loss.”
Combine the strong district with the fact that the Raiders have an early-season non-district match-up against Refugio, who is state-ranked No. 2 in the THSF Class 2A Division II rankings, and you understand why Dumont is more concerned with what will take place on the field than with what is written on paper.
Still, the coach does see the benefit to such a tough regular-season road.
“Whoever gets out (as district champion) should be the regional favorite.”
If the preseason rankings are right, it should be Rice Consolidated.
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TexasHSFootball.com 2010 Class 2A Preseason State Rankings
Division I: 1. Daingerfield; 2. Tatum; 3. Bushland; 4. Newton; 5. Rice Consolidated; 6. Muleshoe; 7. Cameron Yoe; 8. Godley; 9.Littlefield; 10. Blanco; 11. Grandview; 12. Jefferson; 13. Edna; 14. Callisburg; 15. Brady; 16. Melissa; 17. Lago Vista; 18. McGregor; 19. Vanderbilt Industrial; 20. Crane.
Division II: 1. Arp; 2. Refugio; 3. Idalou; 4. Lexington; 5. Linden-Kildare; 6. Omaha Paul Pewitt; 7. Cisco; 8. San Saba; 9. Schulenburg; 10. Gunter; 11. Sonora; 12. Lone Oak; 13. Italy; 14. New Waverly; 15. Hughes Springs; 16. Poth; 17. Elysian Fields; 18. Holliday; 19. Corrigan-Camden; 20. Sanford-Fritch.
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