Compass Academy now enters its fourth year of playing varsity football and head coach Floyd White is upbeat about not only the progress that has been made in a short amount of time but also where the program can go from here.
“Our kids right now are excited as well as me and the coaching staff,” White said. “Everyone’s excited. We took a lot of big strides last year in terms of not only learning how to win but learning how to compete and learning how to get after it. Our kids have another offseason under their belt. They’ve gotten tremendously stronger and faster. Right now, we’re as excited as we were last year and probably even more because it’s a new year with a new staff. Every year has its new challenges and its new dreams. We’re excited about that.”
While the Cougars might be coming off a 4-7 overall record, 2-4 in District 1-3A D-II, this year’s team will have the first senior class that has been competing at the UIL level all four years.
“One of the biggest strengths that we have is our leadership by our senior group,” White said. “They’re going to be tremendous. They were all juniors last year but they played quite a significant role in what they were doing and what we were doing in the building process. When you have that kind of leadership and it’s self-driven, it makes everything else fall into place. Our senior leadership is going to be strong this year. Some of the things we’ve gotten better at is we’ve gotten stronger. We’ve gone from a team that had just a few months to really move our skeletons to now going out and throwing around 300-400-pound squats and 200-300-pound benches. We’re excited with the direction we’ve come in the strength aspect of our program.”
The team returns nine starters on offense and six on defense.
That includes wide receivers and defensive backs Tanner Gahr and Ricardo Salinas who are both expected to make an impact.
“Those two were both All-District players for us last season,” White said. “I don’t see how they’re not some of the top players in the district again this year.”
Also coming back is quarterback Diego Franco who was all a First-Team All-District member from last year.
“Franco has made so many strides,” White said. “He’s really worked to improve his game from basketball to even the state 7-on-7 qualifiers. We’ve had tremendous games from him.”
Running back Isaiah Salinas is another returning leader for the Cougars and will be hoping to stay healthy this year after missing time in 2022 due to injuries.
“Salinas was becoming a real leader for us last year but he ended up hurting his elbow and missing quite a bit of time,” White said. “But he’s one of the players our kids are looking up to for leadership.”
Compass Academy also returns running back Christian Davalos who was named last year’s District Newcomer of the Year.
“He was a standout player last year,” White said of Davalos. “Everyone looks to him as a leader too. He’s going to do a lot of good things.”
White said one of the bigger things to work on will be adapting to a new offensive system.
“We’ll have to change it up a bit just for the simple fact that we’ve added a few new staff members,” White said. “That’s going to be the biggest challenge; adapting to what we were doing offensively. Another thing is we have to consistently learn to overcome those challenges. That doesn’t happen overnight, no matter how much success you’ve had. You’re always learning to adapt to a dynamic environment.”
Playing in a four-team district with Crane, Alpine and Tornillo, the Cougars are once again guaranteed a spot in the playoffs.
“It’s a cool aspect of being in this district,” White said. “But at this time, we’re not talking about playoffs. We’re talking about trying to improve our district standing. We want to get out there and challenge the Alpines and the Cranes right now for the top of the district because we feel like we have the kids that can do it. We’re not playing second fiddle to anyone anymore. We’re going to go out there and show that we belong with all the other good teams.”
With the exception of the team’s season-opener against Sterling City on Aug. 26 at Astound Broadband Stadium, the Cougars won’t have to worry about leaving Odessa just to play a home game this year.
Previously, the Cougars’ played most of their home games at Greenwood’s Purser Field.
That won’t be the case this year as the team will play their other four home games at Ratliff Stadium.
“We’re very blessed,” White said. “We have a good relationship with ECISD and Tracey Borchardt and we were able to work out a deal. They were very accommodating. We’ve worked around the schedules because there’s Permian and Odessa High but we found our niche where we can go out there and play a few Saturday afternoon games.”
