Tascosa High School coach talks upcoming 2024 season

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — With the start of camp just weeks away for high school football teams, coaches including Tascosa High School’s Ken Plunk are setting their expectation for the upcoming season.

The Rebels finished the 2023 season with a 5-7 record, after going 1-5 in the first six games of the season. This season Coach Plunk is determined to get back to the standard of Tascosa football.

“I think we have a really good group coming back,” said Plunk. “We stumbled a little bit early last season. I don’t think we played very well early in the season but picked it up late.”

Tascosa has a number of key returners coming back this season that are expected to lead on and off the field. A few of the veterans include T.J. Tillman, Aushaun Wilson, Shepard Stapp, Coltyn Fulton and Charlie McKinney.

“We were an extremely young team last year, but I think that excuse is gone,” said Plunk. “We’re not a young team anymore. We have to perform. We have to hold ourselves to the Tascosa standard and play really good football the entire season through.”

The 2024 season starts off with Tascosa facing Palo Duro on Aug. 29, followed by Legacy on Sep. 6 and Lubbock -Cooper on Sep.13. The Rebels will then have their bi-week before beginning district play against Coronado on Sep. 27.

“You have to use your non district to get better and in getting better you would like to get wins,” said Plunk. “I mean, certainly they’re all important. We’re going to take each one of them, we want to go one and oh. We want to win the first one and then after that’s done, we start back over.”

In the final give games of the season Tascosa is set to take on Lubbock Oct. 3, Lubbock-Monterey on Oct. 18 , Abilene Oct. 25, Caprock on Oct. 31, and Amarillo High on Nov. 8.

“We want to play our best football, obviously, during the district where we are getting qualified for the playoffs,” shared Plunk. “But that takes nothing away from the fact that I think you do get better in the non-district when you when you have some good wins.”

In order to get Tascosa football back to their standard of play, Coach Plunk plans to challenge them along the way.

“I’m going to challenge them to do the things that we tell them to do,” explained Plunk. “I’m gonna challenge them to not be a scoreboard watcher, just to play hard. Take the things that we learned last year, and sometimes we learned them in adverse situations, take those lessons we learned last year, and let’s apply them to this year.”

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