Josh Fostel has coached at Eula High School for 23 years. He won a state championship with the boys’ basketball team, then switched to the girls when his twin daughters, Layla and Laney, reached ninth grade. 

He’s been a part of a lot of games, but he’s never seen an atmosphere like the Eula girls’ state semifinal basketball game against Borden County. 

Fostel still scrolls through pictures of the crowd from that night, photo after photo of people in Eula gear lined up along the baseline wall because the bleachers were packed. The school sold 1,300 tickets and handed out another 400 passes. Abilene Wylie’s basketball gym, the game site, only had a 1,400 capacity. 

That night represents how the Eula girls captured their town’s heart over the best athletic season in school history. Eula won the region in three sports. Basketball won the program’s most games ever and reached its first state championship. Cross Country made its first medal stand at the state meet. Track’s 4x200-meter and 4x400 relays were the first two teams to reach the medal stand at the state meet.

As the year went on, the girls became local celebrities. People stopped them as they walked around town. Everyone wanted a picture with the Dream Team. And somewhere along the line of selfies, the girls realized that the pride in this small 1A high school was far bigger than themselves. 

Eula is technically not a town in Texas. It doesn’t have its own local government, a zip code, or a football team. But its citizens chafe at state tournaments when they’re referenced as Clyde Eula, the town eight miles north. Just because they aren’t a town doesn’t mean they aren’t a community. The community is the high school.

But while the community saw the wins, it didn’t have a front-row seat to the work required for them like Fostel did. 

“They’re here at 6:30 a.m. in the morning, right from the school day’s start,” Fostel said. “They’re either in the gym or the batting cage. If it’s cross country, they’re here at 5:30 a.m. It doesn’t always happen in sports, but you hope that all that work will eventually turn into the kind of success they want to have.”

According to the athletes, their close bonds made it easier to get out of bed for those early morning wake-up calls. Most of the girls were friends since elementary school. 

“It’s a lot easier to work hard when you have your friends there with you,” senior Layla Fostel said. “It’s no fun to get up and spend three-hour practices with people you don’t like.”

That work ethic is even more impressive considering that, at a 1A school, most of the regional championship teams had the same athletes competing in multiple sports. After playing the state championship basketball game at 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 27, the same crew was on the softball field in Eula the next day at noon.

Senior Hallie Cauthon was Eula’s Iron Woman. Cauthon was a member of both relay teams, started on the basketball team, placed second in the state cross country meet, qualified for the state golf tournament and also played softball. After spring break, there were weeks when she only attended school for two days because of all the athletic commitments.

Cauthon says it was easier to motivate herself to play every sport for an entire year once she realized she only had one year left of high school. 

“Yeah, you’ll be tired,” Cauthon said. “But you only get to do it once.”

Plus, the thrill of winning the region provided an extra incentive to play in as many sports as possible.

“When you get that feeling, you just want to feel it again,” said sophomore Reagan Barr, a member of the relays, basketball, cross country and softball team.

Cauthon and the Fostel twins have graduated from Eula, but their senior class’s legacy won’t leave the locker room any time soon. Growing up, they saw the work the boys’ basketball team put in work before school and decided they needed to do the same. Now, the girls coming after them will follow their example. 

“You can do everything as long as you put in the work and don’t expect things to be handed to you,” junior Emma Damron said. “If you put your head down, work really hard and get a couple of your friends up here with you, you can go however far you want to go.”

While the graduating seniors will miss hoisting trophies, they’ll remember the bus rides on the way to and from those championship games more fondly. So will their coaches. 

“Playing together is great and all, but the team bonding that we have on the way to events and the way back from events is probably some of my favorite times I’ve ever spent here at Eula,” senior Laney Fostel said.