PROSPER – Tommy Allison’s phone is buzzing from the moment he pulls into Prosper Walnut Grove’s parking lot at 5:30 a.m. until long after he leaves work with the setting sun. As the athletic director of one of Prosper ISD’s newest high schools, he’s constantly pulled in a thousand different directions. There’s always a fire to put out.

Don’t get him wrong, he’s never had more fun in his career than he’s having right now. A deeply spiritual man who says he grew up with a Bible in one hand and a ball in the other, Allison thanks God every day he got this job. But anyone in his position would have a little trepidation when receiving a text message. There’s no telling what crisis awaits on the other end.

But Allison’s spirits soar when he sees the text is from Brett Claypoole, the school’s culinary arts teacher.

“Ribs will be done in 30 minutes,” Claypoole said.

Allison was prepared for anything when he signed on to open a new high school. But never in his wildest dreams could he have predicted he’d become the unofficial mascot for Prosper Walnut Grove’s barbecue team. It’s one of those "pinch me" moments where he can’t believe he hit the lottery to coach this group of kids at this beautiful, brand-new school, and he gets to taste-test barbecue.

“I’m the one that tries the ribs,” Allison says. “They’re always going to be good though, because I want them to call me back every week.”

But, as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Because before Prosper Walnut Grove’s team travels to Granite Shoals to compete in the Texas High School Barbecue State Championships, when they really need a speech to get the juices flowing, they tap Allison in. And Allison brings the heat, dialing up a Miracle-esque pump-up speech, his face morphing from the gentle Christian man into the fiery football coach. In these moments, it’s easy to see how he’s led Prosper Walnut Grove’s football team to a 23-3 record with back-to-back district championships in their first two years of varsity football.

Spurred by Allison’s motivational speech, Prosper Walnut Grove’s pitmasters won a state championship in the dessert category with a delectable carrot cake. The team gifted Allison the movie poster to Miracle, the film about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team beating the heavily favored Russians, which inspired his pep talk.

The poster, which hangs framed in his office, is a good daily reminder for Allison. One, he considers it a miracle he got this job. But it also takes a miracle-style effort to have the success across the entire school that Prosper Walnut Grove has enjoyed. This year, the school won the Class 5A Lone Star Cup for overall achievement in UIL events, including sports, academics, and fine arts.

“That’s the mindset of our kids – what can I do to be my best today?” Allison said, now speaking for every kid in the school and not just the football players. “Our kids do whatever we ask of them. They love to compete. They love to win. And it’s worked so far.

“Hopefully, it’ll keep working.”

Because a new challenge looms on the horizon. This fall, Prosper Walnut Grove makes the jump from Class 5A Division II all the way to Texas’s largest classification: 6A. It’s an exciting time to be a Wildcat. Walnut Grove will finally get to play fellow Prosper ISD schools, the flagship Prosper Eagles and Rock Hill, with rosters chock-full of kids they played Little League sports and went to school with. But there are also whispers outside the walls of the locker room, questions swirling about whether the Wildcats are ready to play with the big dogs. Except, those people haven’t been paying attention to one of the most untold stories in Texas high school football – how Walnut Grove emerged seemingly out of thin air in a town that was forever rabid about its one school, then developed its own cult following in three short years.

“Our administration expects us to be excellent as coaches and teachers,” offensive coordinator Carson Meger said. “And that trickles down to where we expect our kids to be excellent. I think the moral of the story for us has been, if you expect something out of people, they’re usually going to rise to that standard that you set.”

When I watched Walnut Grove play Anna last year, I was struck by both the pride of the team and the pride the community had in them. The Wildcats were down 38-17 with 3:35 left in the third quarter. All hope seemed lost. The air was sucked out of Prosper ISD Children’s Health Stadium. And then, the Wildcats put together a drive. Then, they got a stop. Walnut Grove started a comeback, slowly at first, then in a torrent of 28 unanswered points. It was as if the players had made up their minds that they wouldn’t take their first loss of the season in embarrassing fashion, then said, ‘Wait, we can win this thing.’ And whenever adversity struck, the fans picked them up. Or, whenever the fans’ energy lulled, Walnut Grove got a sack to re-energize the crowd. It was like a beautiful Texas high school football orchestra, both the team and community in perfect sync.

That passion normally comes from a decades-long institution, a history of familial ties to a school that carries a weight every kid is determined to hold up. Except no player on the field that night grew up with dreams of being a Walnut Grove Wildcat. They wanted to be Prosper Eagles.

“Whenever I moved here, there was only one high school: Prosper High School,” all-district offensive lineman Jackson Hooker said. “Originally, that’s where we thought we were gonna go. (When Rock Hill opened) We moved, actually, to a new house right here just so that we could go to Prosper High School because we didn’t know that Walnut Grove was being built.”

Some players, like junior wide receiver Chase Jolley, even had brothers who played for Prosper. He spent every Friday night decked out in Eagle green, cheering on Mason, a First Team All-District outside linebacker. Prosper football was a brotherly bond. Now, it’s turned into a sibling rivalry.

“I’m glad we get to play them (Prosper) this year,” Jolley said. “Hopefully we beat them so I can talk to my brother about how we’re better than Prosper. He’ll be at that game, too.”

This is the phenomenon that so interests me about Walnut Grove’s story. I grew up in Frisco, the city directly to the south. Today, the cities are remarkably similar, affluent suburbs that boomed along the Dallas North Tollway’s construction. But in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Prosper was farmland and gravel roads. I played Little League sports with Prosper kids because Prosper didn’t have enough kids in the city yet for their own leagues or the facilities to host them. It was extremely easy to spot a Prosper kid from a Frisco one. Their cars had a bedazzled ‘P’ on the back windshield. Their teams were all the Eagles. And, honestly, I didn’t like them. But most of that animosity came from a jealousy of the pride they took in their one school. The Frisco I grew up in was already creeping toward double-digit high schools. 

But now, Prosper has four high schools of its own. And yet it's somehow redirected the passion it had for the Eagles into the passion it has for Walnut Grove without losing an ounce of it. It’s a remarkable accomplishment by Allison and his staff. In 2023, the first year the school opened, all upperclassmen were given the choice of whether they wanted to go to Walnut Grove or stay at Prosper or Rock Hill. The football team had to play a non-UIL, outlaw schedule, traveling to Arkansas, Lubbock, and San Antonio just to play 10 games.

“That was a big challenge for us that first year, was to try to make a name for ourselves,” Allison said. “Try to make something that is cool to be a Walnut Grove Wildcat.”

What Allison’s players have found is that even if they dreamed of continuing a legacy at Prosper, they’ve found it just as rewarding to start a new one at Walnut Grove. It’s like everything they do – from a saying plastered on the wall to a trophy put in the case – will have lasting reverberations. And players like defensive tackle Kris Williams say that Allison has trusted them with that responsibility, and it makes them want to run through a brick wall for him.

“His belief in his players is the main thing,” Williams said. “He took a chance on another freshman and me when he let us start on varsity. He just takes chances on people. He builds people up. If you’re willing to work for him, you’re willing to do everything you can for him and the team, you’re going to accomplish a lot.”

And Walnut Grove has, to the tune of a 23-3 record with two district championships. And to those who believe they can’t win at that level in 6A, they say that no one thought they could win at that level at 5A either. Not in a district with perennial top 20 teams in the state like Melissa, Anna, and Lovejoy.

“The product has already been sold and proven,” Meger said. “Everything is not just a hope and a wish anymore. All this stuff we talk about, it works.”

Or, to put it in barbecue terms for the pitmasters’ unofficial mascot, Allison has the winning recipe. He can’t give away all the goods, but here’s the secret ingredient.

“I’m having a blast,” Allison said. “I’m having the time of my life. I’ve done this for 30 years now, and I feel like a kid again.”