![]() Some years back, an opposing team’s fans started to root for Gainesville. But it is Gainesville that has proven a recent vehicle for positive attention. Of the six facilities for juvenile offenders in Texas, the only other to put out sports teams is Giddings state school near Austin. “The ones going off are really good kids,” says the veteran of 30 years coaching in public schools. Head coach Henry Thomas, who has worked at Gainesville for three years, is not too downbeat about losing some of his players. As Luera puts it: “It’s as hard to get released as it is to get to play on a sports team. To be able to play, they need exemplary records of behavior and evidence of classroom progress. Many team members are coming to the end of their sentences. Incredibly, they made the playoffs for the first time since 2011. This year’s football season started out with a roster of just 18 – some of whom are playing tonight – to cover offense, defense and special teams. This season, the basketball roster started out with 10 boys, but was down to eight by tonight. “These are some strong kids – and good athletes. ![]() “It takes great courage and integrity to go and play when you’re outnumbered and out-furnished,” she says. Earlier, Luera painted a picture of the struggle. The game ends 70-58 for the Reicher Cougars. The team is in the ascendancy and Reicher look ragged. By the middle of the fourth, they cut the deficit to seven, and Luera, seated on the front bleacher, is growing excited. They trail by seven after the first quarter, a gap that opens up to 12 by the beginning of the fourth. Gainesville start well but soon begin to slip. They’ve won four games, but none of them district match-ups, so the playoffs look unlikely. ![]() The Tornadoes are having a difficult season. Tonight, it is almost exclusively the guards dispatched to keep a watchful eye who make up the visiting support. Then, juvenile correction officers, school administrators and volunteers make up the Gainesville State fanbase at their borrowed home: Gainesville middle school for basketball, Gainesville high for football. Attendance at the game is spotty, but that’s not unlike a Gainesville State home match. They take to the court wearing the Gainesville State black and white, the school’s Tornadoes nickname festooned across their shirts. “Another is so many of these kids have not had a chance in life you know, if you don’t know who your dad is, mom might not be around either.” She has a picture on her wall of a squad of 16 boys, who played both basketball and football. Dotty Luera, the maximum security center’s community relations coordinator, disagrees. Almost everything else is raised via an associated non-profit.Ĭritics might suggest these young offenders don’t deserve much more. The school doesn’t have a home arena for basketball, nor a stadium for football. The Texas juvenile justice department facility is home to about 270 teenage prisoners, locked up for felony crimes like robbery. But Gainesville State doesn’t figure in that mix. Teams can attract big-money sponsorship deals. In some places, fans turn out in the tens of thousands. High school sports are serious business in Texas. ![]() The school bus belonged to the visitors, a small team of student-inmates on the three-hour journey south for the latest chapter in a quest for sporting redemption. Waco’s Reicher Catholic high shool were playing host to Gainesville state school, a juvenile correctional facility near the Texas-Oklahoma border. ![]()
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