No. 2 N'western caps crazy summer with Carroll upset

Northwestern senior Tommy Streeter, an uncommitted D-I prospect, had 140 receiving yards and three TDs against Carroll. Jeff Etessam/Icon SMI

DALLAS -- In a postgame celebration on the sidelines, Marcus Forston donned a cowboy hat, inciting a roar from the fans of Miami's Northwestern High School.

The nation's second-ranked Bulls had messed with Texas, and Forston, the team's star defensive tackle, seemed ready to take home a trophy of the evening's conquest: a 29-21 victory over No. 1 Southlake (Texas) Carroll.

In a rare meeting of the nation's top two high school teams, Northwestern came to Dallas, saw the football factory of Carroll High and conquered in the Saturday-night event billed by promoters as the "Clash of Champions," before a capacity crowd of 31,896 at Southern Methodist University's Ford Stadium and a nationally-televised audience on ESPNU. Both teams are defending champions in the largest divisions of football-crazed Florida and Texas, and the game became a matter of state pride. "You don't know a team from Florida," Forston, one of the team's five University of Miami recruits, said moments after the game. "You've never played them before. You don't put fuel on the fire."

Forston was objecting to what he perceived to be an overstated confidence from Carroll fans and the local press. It was not entirely unfounded: The Dragons entered 80-1 in their last 81 games and, had they won, would have set a Texas big-school record with a 50-game winning streak. But Northwestern was coming off its own undefeated 15-win season, and for a year, at least, won bragging rights for the Sunshine State.

"We're going to go back home and celebrate," said the Bulls' Jacory Harris, also a future Hurricane. "We did it for the state of Florida."

This wasn't your father's high school football game, and not just because it was televised, had its own Web site, drew a sellout crowd to a college stadium, featured teams three states and one time zone apart and had former NFL stars Michael Irvin, Nate Newton and Deion Sanders on the sidelines. Neither team ran the ball exceptionally well -- Carroll's Texas-bound running back Tre Newton (Nate's son) had 39 yards on 13 carries and Northwestern gained 99 yards on 22 attempts from its platoon of Daquan Hargrett and Tyresse Jones -- and both featured no-huddle, pass-happy, four-receiver spread offenses with highly recruited quarterbacks working from the shotgun. There were more TV timeouts than there were huddles or snaps under center.

With footballs flying through the warm Texas air, it was Harris who won the battle of the passers over North Texas-bound Riley Dodge. With the exception of a 75-yard touchdown pass on an out-and-up route to Tommy Streeter, Harris showed remarkable patience, eschewing the big plays the Bulls are used to making back in Florida for a chains-moving short passing game. The 6-foot-4 Harris finished 21 of 28 for 280 yards, four TDs and no interceptions.

"We knew they had a good football team," said first-year Carroll coach Hal Wasson, whose predecessor, Todd Dodge (Riley's father), became head coach at North Texas. "They were very composed and did a good job. My hat's off to them."

The official game program boasted the Dragons routinely compile "Video Game Numbers" -- complete with a Tecmo Super Bowl screen grab -- though they fell a little short of that. Dodge turned in a fine performance with 22-of-31 passing for 260 yards, two TDs and two interceptions; but as a team, Carroll turned the ball over five times. Backup quarterback Kyle Padron threw a pick in relief of Dodge, who was shaken up and left for a few plays in the third quarter, and Carroll lost two fumbles.

Northwestern lost three fumbles, one of which Dragons linebacker Derek Tomlin returned 30 yards for a TD, but still came out plus-two in turnover differential -- a deciding factor in an otherwise evenly played matchup of similarly schemed teams.

"For the most part we mirror each other in terms of offense," said Northwestern coach Billy Rolle, in year one of his second stint with the Bulls. "We kind of knew what they were going to do in terms of coverage."

The similarities between the schools, however, end with football. And that point was accentuated all weekend. In addition to its cheerleaders, Carroll featured a formidable band size of about 200 -- "they look like an army," quipped one incredulous member of the media -- and a dance team of roughly 100 members; Northwestern's band, cheerleaders and dancers barely filled half their allotted section of seats.

Considerable ink was expended in the press, too. The Bulls were greeted in their hotels, by D -- a Dallas-area glossy magazine with Dragons quarterback Dodge on the cover, highlighting a story that explains why the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb Southlake is "Perfect City, USA" -- and by a front page story in the USA Today examining the discrepancies between the schools. According to the article, Carroll receives high academic ratings and has a student body that's 89 percent white, with just one percent of its students receiving free or reduced-price lunches; Northwestern, in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, gets an "F" rating from the state of Florida and is 93 percent black, with two-thirds of its students eligible for free or reduced lunch.

"It was [out of place]. It had nothing to do with how we are," Harris said. "We both put on our clothes. We both put on shoes. We do the same things. We're both human beings, so why degrade us like that and put that stuff in the paper?"

Added Streeter, an uncommitted Division I prospect and the game MVP with four receptions for 140 yards and three TDs: "It was a slap in the face. All the articles I read compared their community to our community, saying how their kids come to school in Mercedes Benzes and Hummers, while most of our school is on free and reduced lunch. I thought that wasn't appropriate before a big game like this. Football is football. In Dade County, we play hard every play."

The persisting off-field legacy for Northwestern is a sex scandal with alleged cover-up last season, in which star running back Antwain Easterling, then 18, had consensual sex with a 14-year-old girl, leading to his arrest on a charge of lewd and lascivious battery on a minor (he has since entered a pretrial diversion program for first-time offenders that will clear his record), yet was allowed to play two days later in the state title game. He rushed for 157 yards and a TD in a 34-14 win.

In the offseason, the Miami-Dade schools superintendent dismissed the entire football coaching staff, leaving Forston, Harris and two fellow Miami commitments, linebacker Sean Spence and receiver Aldarius Johnson, to lead practices for two weeks before Rolle and his assistants were hired.

"Nobody ever go through the things that we've gone through, the adversity we face at our school," Harris said. "The Antwain Easterling situation -- even though that's in the past, they still bring that up every time they write an article about us. They got to begin it with 'Antwain Easterling had sex with a 14-year-old girl.'"

The Bulls are more than ready to put that incident in the past. They know it'll take time but hope that a win like Saturday's begins to return conversations about Northwestern back to the normal high school topics of academics and athletics.

"I don't think one win just does that," Rolle said. "It's a process. We've still got to teach the kids, coach the kids."

Northwestern has a new coach and a new principal, who have pledged to make that happen, with more rigorous standards for athletes.

"I hope this game gives us a brighter outlook," Streeter said. "Any time people think of Northwestern, they think of the Antwain Easterling scandal and things like that, giving people a negative look at the school.

"Our school is a great school, and a lot of good comes from it."