Danny Medina is an assistant principal at Fort Hancock High School where he helped build the greatest six-man football dynasty in Texas history nearly four decades ago.

His title has changed, but his style has not. He is Fort Hancock’s drill sergeant.

Whenever a student earns a trip to Medina’s office, they enter a mini-museum of Fort Hancock football. Medina has all five state championship trophies from his eight-year stretch from 1986 to 1993 — four of them as head coach. He’s cut out every newspaper clipping from the era and framed it in a collage. Medina is 73 years old now, but his inner ball coach comes out when he points to these mementos and describes the discipline that earned them.

“We busted our asses in the weight room back in the 80s and 90s,” Medina said.

When the bell rang for the athletic period, every high school boy in Fort Hancock was in the weight room for 45 minutes of speed lifting. Then, they grabbed their shoulder pads and went to the field for 45 minutes of conditioning. Only after they’d finished bear crawling the field - from the 10-yard line and back, to the 20-yard line and back, and so on - and their tongues hung out of their mouths, cracked bone dry in the West Texas heat, did football practice start.

Fort Hancock’s extraordinary run was accomplished with ordinary athletes. The other teams were physically as talented. They could run as fast. They could deliver the same hits. But they couldn’t do it for as long. The boys who came through this program graduated as men who knew there were no shortcuts to success.

“It takes a lot of heart to be a champion,” said Harvey Vargas, a wide receiver from the Class of 1990. “It’s not just given to you.”

Medina doesn’t see that heart anymore.

Fort Hancock is a quiet town 55 miles east of El Paso with two claims to fame. It’s the city in the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” where Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding crosses the Mexican border to meet his friend, Andy Dufresne.

It’s also one of four high schools in Texas to win four consecutive state football championships. Lake Travis and Celina are still powerhouses. Sealy puts up occasional double-digit win seasons.

Fort Hancock is the trivia question most would miss. The Mustangs have not played 11-man football since 2007, even though they’re above the UIL’s 104.9-person total enrollment requirement. Instead, Fort Hancock plays an outlaw six-man football schedule. At most, they’ve had 13 boys on the team at a time.

Medina has told the superintendent that, if it were him, he’d shut down the program for a few years. But he has no plans of leaving Fort Hancock. He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with his family on the weekends. Every Monday morning, he drives back to Fort Hancock for another week leading the family he found here. The championship trophies in his office are his morning coffee. The longer he stays, the more his legacy moves away from those trophies and towards the fight to get Fort Hancock back there.

Fort Hancock did not have a storied history before Medina took the head coaching job in 1986. The program alternated between six- and 11-man football with the changing oil market. They played 11-man when enrollment spiked for a boom, and six-man when it went bust. When the program dropped to six-man in 1984, Fort Hancock couldn’t field a team because nobody wanted to play.

“I still have a year of eligibility!” said Armando Aguilar, the 1986 state championship team quarterback and a current Fort Hancock assistant coach.

But Medina started a six-man team at Fort Hancock’s middle school, where he implemented a spread offense and workout regimen. By the time they were high school upperclassmen, the only thing stronger than the muscles they’d developed from Medina’s practices were the bonds his players forged surviving them.

Case in point, Medina told Vargas, a wide receiver, to run a three-yard curl route in one game because the defender gave him 10 yards of cushion all afternoon. Of course, the next play, the cornerback pressed. Vargas and quarterback Jaime Aguilar glanced at each other, and Vargas ran a streak route for a touchdown. When Vargas and Aguilar returned to the sideline, slapping each other on the helmet, Medina ripped them for running the wrong route.

“They (the linemen) knew where to block and where I was cutting like they could read my mind,” said Manny Galindo, a star running back from the Class of 1990.

In a form of football with more off-schedule plays, these relationships allowed Fort Hancock players to communicate without speaking. But, more importantly, they gave the boys something bigger than themselves to play for.

“It was about playing for each other and playing for our town,” Vargas said. “(We were) trying to bring something beautiful, to put Fort Hancock on the map.”

From 1988-92, the Mustangs won four-straight state championships and went on a 70-game winning streak. On Friday nights, the town was deserted. Fort Hancock’s field didn’t have enough bleachers for the fans, so everyone parked their cars around the football field and watched their pride and joy. The townsfolk would leave earlier than the team bus for a road playoff game to hang banners over the highway overpasses along the route. Fort Hancock even got a write-up in the USA Today.

“We made believers out of this town,” Vargas said.

The dynasty ended when Fort Hancock was bumped to 11-man football again in 1994. Medina finished his six-man coaching career with a 109–8 record. He stayed on for two years as the 11-man head coach. His 5-4 record in 1994 was Fort Hancock’s last winning season in 11-man football.

Medina retired in 2004 but returned after two years to lead the athletic program. He coached the outlaw six-man team, leading them to a 10–0 record one season.

His coaching career officially ended when the district tabbed him as its next middle school principal. But football is still in Medina’s heart. For all his wisdom, he doesn’t have an answer for what happened to Fort Hancock.

“I’ve tried to answer that question in so many ways,” Medina said. “And I’ve been here.”

A program’s decay is like the aging process. It’s not noticed by people around it daily. But the contrast is stark for those who check back in after 40 years.

One thing he does know: the boys he coached were passionate about football. Before the Fort Hancock teams won state championships, the players dreamed about it together in elementary school. They all lived within a two-block radius. In a small town with one Family Dollar store, there wasn’t much to do except play tackle football on the gravel street and burn tires in the desert.

Medina sees too many kids floating through high school, not treating their four years like the precious time they’ll never get back. The first act of his career was about winning championships. The second is getting kids to practice. Each is of equal importance to this town.

“These years they have here in high school are so important to participate,” Medina said. “That’s what I try to push: participate in all sports. Not everyone is going to be a starter, and that’s ok. You all have your roles to play.”

He’s blunt in his assessment of what’s changed.

“These kids nowadays, they have no idea which college football team is playing, much less on Sundays,” Medina said. “They don’t care. It’s sorry, but it’s the truth. There’s no love for the game anymore.”

And Fort Hancock isn’t alone. Nationwide, participation in boys’ sports has declined in the past two decades, a trend that’s hit low-income communities especially hard.

Former players like Aguilar and Galindo see it too. They talk about how hard it is to get kids into the gym, how often phones and screens win the tug-of-war for attention. They try to do what their coach did: hold kids accountable, teach them to care about something bigger than themselves.

“We try to open the basketball gyms. For football, we open the weight rooms,” Aguilar said. “Kids nowadays don’t want to show up. Maybe technology took over.”

It’s not about chasing titles anymore. It’s about making sure there are still teams to put on the field. Because the pain of discipline is less than the pain of regret. The pain from growing up and having kids of your own with no stories worth telling them.

Editor’s Note: This story has been lightly updated after publication for clarity and tone. The reporting and quotes remain unchanged.