Newcastle receives preseason top-10 ranking from DCTF

Newcastle receives preseason top-10 ranking from DCTF News Staff Fri, 06/28/2024 - 3:02 pm

• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) The Newcastle Bobcats earned a spot in the preseason top 10 for Class 1A Division I from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. The Bobcats will start the season ranked ninth in the division and will look for another successful year.
• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) The Newcastle Bobcats gather for a moment after their bi-district win over Woodson last fall. The team received a preseason top 10 selection from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. The Bobcats will begin the 2024 season ranked ninth in Class 1A Division I.

TC Gordon sports@grahamleader.com

Dave Campbell’s Texas Football recently released its annual football magazine and a large part of that involves the preseason top-10 rankings for each class in Texas high school football.

One of the last but not least of the rankings to come out was the Class 1A Division I and II six-man football rankings. The Newcastle Bobcats, who compete in 1A DI, were selected as the ninth-place team in the preseason selections.

The Bobcats sit behind the eighth-ranked Knox City Greyhounds and ahead of the tenth-place Buena Vista Longhorns.

Class 1A DI is topped by the reigning six-man DI champs in the Gordon Longhorns. The runner-up team, the Westbrook Wildcats, will start the year in third place.

Newcastle had a successful season in fall 2023 as the team finished the year with a 10-2 record overall. The Bobcats went 9-1 in the regular season with their only loss coming by 12 points to the Jonesboro Eagles, who received a fourth-place ranking for this upcoming year.

In the playoffs, the Bobcats won a bi-district championship with a 55-0 thrashing of the Woodson Cowboys, then were faced with a difficult match-up against the perennial power Benjamin Mustangs.

Offense dominated the game between the two teams as they combined for 196 points which ended as a 112-84 Newcastle loss.

This year, Newcastle has moved up to 1A DI while Benjamin remained in DII where the Mustangs received a fifth-place preseason selection.

The Bobcats are led, once again, by head coach Isiah Archer. He’ll face a somewhat tall task with the graduation of multiple seniors who contributed heavily on both sides of the ball. But Newcastle will likely remain a force in Class 1A and the Bobcats will look forward to yet another successful season.

• Sports