Football season is so close you can smell it — so close that some teams literally cannot wait to get out on the field.
That’s why high schools like Holy Cross and Lytle hold midnight practice — to start organized team practices as early as they can.
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Per UIL guidelines, 12:01 a.m. is the earliest teams can begin fall practice, with the date falling on Aug. 3 this year for teams that did not hold spring training. Only a relative handful of teams actually start practice at that time. One of the motivating factors, besides the love of the game, is to beat the Texas heat while the sun is still set.
“The energy is different out here,” Lytle wide receiver/running back Clayton Jopling said. “Everybody else is asleep right now, and we’re out here putting in the work.”
Lytle brought the tradition to their school when head coach Mike Trevino took the reins in 2023.
“We talked about it right before we got on the bus and I said, ‘I can probably count, on my hand, how many teams still continue to do the midnight madness tradition,’” Trevino said.
“We always try to resemble ourselves as different,” he continued. “I want us to practice different, I want us to play different, I want us to speak different, I want us to lead different. I love different.”
On the other hand, Holy Cross coach Mike Harrison, entering his 20th season at the school, was inspired by a different dynamic: the appetite of their football-loving community.
“A few years ago, we ran into a team that was doing a midnight madness, and they talked about how they got the community involved and how people came out and supported it, and I thought, ‘What an incredible opportunity for us to rally our community here.’” Harrison said.
Fans answered the call. Senior linebacker A.J. Eguia said the bleachers filled up like they do for a game.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Eguia said.
An opportunity this special and this anticipated means players don’t even need a nap to charge up, according to Trevino.
He talked about the environment of his team waiting to get off the bus for midnight practice.
“It’s like a hot pot of boiling water. ... When the clock strikes midnight, I don’t think there can be any more excitement,” Trevino said.
For Holy Cross, it’s the same story, despite the inevitability of having to field a different team every year.
“They’ve still got pretty good enthusiasm, you can hear them,” Harrison said on cue, pointing behind him as players came yelling out of the whistle.
Football season is nearing, and perhaps nothing can tell that story better in Texas every year than midnight madness.
“Football is something that our entire community rallies around — sports in general, football specifically — and it’s important,” Harrison said. “It’s important to us to have that sense of community, and I think tonight really did that.”
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