No one warned Ingram Tom Moore head coach Tate DeMasco to bring a change of clothes to the bi-district playoff game in the event of a Gatorade bath. He was sopping wet, sticking to the bus seat on the 80-mile drive back to Ingram, a ride so uncomfortable it convinced him this couldn’t be a dream — that his Warriors truly won the first playoff game since 2014. 

After an upset 24-17 win over Hondo, a normal coach would’ve used the moment to boast to his team that they’d done what nobody believed they could. But DeMasco is not a normal coach, and this is not a normal season. They’d done what they themselves didn’t think they could, becoming the first Ingram Moore football team in 41 years to reach the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, months after the second-deadliest flood in Texas history ripped through their town and lives on July 4th.

“Some of y’all didn’t believe that we could get this done,” DeMasco said. “I’m not BSing you when I tell you that.”

That Independence Day at 4:00 a.m., the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes. A natural disaster that lasted less than an hour set this community on a years-long recovery process. In the weeks after, Ingram didn’t even know if it would have a football season. DeMasco and the coaches from all the school’s teams pulled off 18-hour days driving boxes of food around the town and cleaning people’s gutted houses. Football was the furthest thing from their minds. 

Ingram started 0-4. A daunting non-district schedule combined with their devastated town created a perfect storm, putting the season on the brink. But then they clawed back, just like their community did. The coaches stopped playing athletes both ways so they could focus on one side of the ball and play with more energy. The defensive staff implemented new stunts along the defensive line, which increased pressure on opposing quarterbacks. 

But no football explanation does justice to what’s happened on the field. This team and town are battle-tested. This summer they were torn to shreds, and this fall they’re built different. 

“Whatever we’re going through right now is not as tough as what people were going through at 4:00 in the morning on July 4th,” DeMasco said. “This is easy compared to that.”

By now, the players have grown numb to the new normal. Mercy Chefs and the Blind Faith Foundation are mainstays at CityWest Church, preparing hot meals for victims piecing their lives back together. The closets in the football office are still filled to the brim with non-perishables, and DeMasco and other volunteers coordinate where they land four times a week. The kids are even used to DPS troopers and police officers watching football practice, clinging to the fence like it’s the one sense of normalcy in a war zone.

Keiran Grant was one of those troopers stationed in the stadium parking lot this past week. He was so invested in football practice that DeMasco thought a kid must’ve gotten in trouble. But Grant just loves ball. He was on Cuero’s state championship team in 2018 and played at Army. DeMasco invited him to speak at the team dinner before the playoff game. 

Grant shared with the boys the secret to their success that he’d witnessed at practice. Sure, the other team might be bigger, stronger and faster. But they haven’t been through what Ingram has. They weren’t like senior defensive tackle Chris Alva, who’d taken his dad’s backhoe and started clearing Schumacher Crossing so the military trucks could cross the last bridge into Camp Mystic, the Christian girls’ summer camp where 25 campers, two counselors and the camp’s director died. They didn’t see what senior wide receiver Hunter Cobb did as he filled up rescue vehicles with gasoline for days on end. 

“You’re looking at kids that lost loved ones, pets and even their whole houses,” said Danny Burch, an Ingram High School parent. “A lot of these families are living on each other’s couches and floors with other family members. There are kids that aren’t homeless, but they don’t have their own home.”

There are no words to describe the wreckage, nor photos that can capture all the material possessions Ingram lost. No matter how long this community rebuilds, it will never be the same. They’ve gained lifelong friendships through healing together with shared scar tissue. They’ve been through too much to go back to the way things were before. 

Miles Murayama lives five minutes from the high school football stadium, but he never knew DeMasco until after the flood, when the coach came driving down the street in his pickup truck to pass out hot meals. Murayama lives in the Bumble Bee subdivision, a blue-collar neighborhood sandwiched between the Guadalupe River and Bee Creek. Every house in his neighborhood was totaled. 

Murayama and DeMasco would bust each other’s chops like lifelong friends. Murayama, who works for UPS, told DeMasco he could drive the team bus this season because he holds a CDL license. DeMasco said it must stand for “Can’t Do Labor.” Murayama is an army veteran who believes leaders are born, not made. He sensed DeMasco was a born leader, and after the river flooded his house, he clung to DeMasco’s energy like a life raft. 

DeMasco invited Murayama to the team’s first practice. When it was over, DeMasco introduced Murayama and had him say a few words to the team in the post-practice huddle. Murayama began stopping by morning practice almost every day after he got off the night shift. On the week of the homecoming game, DeMasco reached out again.

“Hey, what are you doing?” DeMasco asked. “Are you coming to the football game?”

Murayama hemmed and hawed. It was late in the week to call out of work.

“Please, can you be there?” DeMasco asked.

When Murayama showed up, DeMasco presented him with a sideline pass. Murayama watched the entire game next to the players, living and dying on every snap with them. 

“He asked me to be part of the team,” Murayama said.

Truthfully, Murayama and the hundreds of Ingram community members whose homes were wrecked were part of the team long before that homecoming night. This season was only possible because the football team learned from the townsfolk how to fight through adversity. 

In the playoff game against Hondo, junior quarterback Logan Spalding was sacked, resulting in a fumble returned for a touchdown. Instead of cratering, he responded with two touchdown passes in the second half. The game-winning score was to Cobb, who had dropped five passes in the district championship the week before against Llano, but bounced back for a career night in the bi-district round with nine catches for 123 yards. 

DeMasco had been preaching to the team for four years that winning a playoff game was possible. But he knew some of his players would never believe until it became a reality. 

“We were close last year,” DeMasco said. “And I think some of them still probably had those thoughts in their brain that, ‘Oh, if we get here, something bad is going to happen. Somebody is going to fumble. Somebody is going to miss a block. Something bad’s gonna happen.’ It didn’t happen last night.”

But that’s not entirely true. The fumble-six did happen, and those drops did as well. But after this summer, this team had the tools to overcome the ebbs and flows of the game that they didn’t possess before. Every time Hondo threatened to snatch momentum, the Ingram players could glance at the packed stands, all the people from the different neighborhoods who had rebuilt their lives and now cheered them on, and remember where they came from. 

“It felt great seeing that so many people came to support our bi-district game,” Alva, the defensive tackle, said. “I just felt like…” 

He trails off, searching for the word before realizing he doesn’t have it.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how it felt. I’ve never felt that. But it was an unreal feeling for sure.” 

There’s never been this much pride in Ingram for their Warriors.

 “It’s just very motivating to know that the team knows how much work went into the flood relief,” Burch said. “They used that same motivation that they used to help people to instead train and get ready for this year.”

Murayama called off work for the first round playoff game, and he insists he’ll do so again next week. He went down to the winning locker room to congratulate the coaching staff. As he watched DeMasco beaming with the trophy, all he could see was his sunburned face back in July, beaming with a box of food and a quick joke that could bring a little light to that dark day. 

“Right away, I thought about the Lord,” Murayama said. “I said, ‘Man, is this a team where Tate got blessed for all he did for the community?’”

Ingram was lost amid much of the summer media coverage of the floods. That’s not an indictment on the news media, but yet another example of how Ingram is encroached upon by the larger town of Kerrville. Ingram, six miles west, does not have a delineating town line or town square. It’s easy to mistake it as part of Kerrville, except Kerrville’s city government services do not extend to Ingram. That’s what made DeMasco and the entire athletic department’s response all the more necessary. 

DeMasco cringes at the idea that he was the ringleader of the recovery effort. And while he did lead all the coaches in the school as the athletic director, he was one of many who answered the call, not the one shining leader. But given his leadership position as the head football coach, his service, day in and day out, made everyone work harder. 

“The community would’ve responded even if Tate wasn’t here,” Burch said. “But I think it helped perpetuate the situation, seeing Tate take the lead without being asked. He was a role model. It spurred me. I’m ex-law enforcement who would’ve been there every day, but it was nice to see Tate and all the other coaches there every day.”

When Dave Campbell’s TexasFootball shadowed DeMasco in the summer, he said that the time Ingram would need the most help was when the news coverage ceased. Ingram will be rebuilding much longer than the media can give it the top story treatment. This historic football season is keeping their town’s fight in the spotlight. 

“Our West Kerr community needed that victory last night,” DeMasco said.