{"id":410242,"date":"2026-08-18T23:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/410242\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:12:09","slug":"fort-worth-nolan-wont-be-able-to-compete-for-playoffs-or-state-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/410242\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth Nolan won’t be able to compete for playoffs or state title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, the Fort Worth Nolan football team was outscored 454-110 while compiling a 1-9 record. Nolan went winless in its\u00a0TAPPS Division I district \u2014 playing at the highest level for private schools in Texas \u2014 and the team lost seven games by more than 30 points.<\/p>\n

That was quite a downfall for a program that won seven state titles and played in nine state championship games from 2004 to 2013.<\/p>\n

But there will be a dramatic change this season, as Nolan goes into Friday\u2019s season opener against McKinney Christian<\/a> having dropped out of a TAPPS district. Nolan will still be a part of TAPPS, but it will compete as a non-aligned school, meaning there will be no opportunity to compete in the playoffs or to play for a state championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the best thing for the program, for the kids, for their safety,\u201d said Tony Savino, who is in his first full season as Nolan\u2019s head coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nolan is doing that even though its participation numbers have increased from last year. Nolan has about 41 players on its varsity and about 33 on the junior varsity as TAPPS schools start games a week earlier<\/a> than normal.<\/p>\n

The problem, Savino said, was that a lot of the players were underdeveloped.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of kids that hadn\u2019t spent any time in the weight room. We\u2019re talking about kids that are juniors and seniors,\u201d Savino said. \u201cWe needed to hit the reset button, and I think doing this was the best way for us to do that so that these kids can get a chance to develop physically and mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Injuries and weekly blowouts led to the decision. Now, instead of playing the largest private schools in the state, Nolan will have a schedule that includes smaller TAPPS schools, private schools from the Southwest Preparatory Conference and one Class 4A public school (Life Waxahachie).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that with who we had to play week in and week out, talking with our players and our administration, our kids were kind of just tired of getting five or six guys hurt every week and losing by 60 points,\u201d Savino said. \u201cWe wanted to give them a chance to taste some success at the high school level and be able to play games they believed were a little bit more competitive for where our program was. Playing some of the teams in our district was a gauntlet for our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though it won\u2019t be in a true district and even though it won\u2019t be able to compete for a playoff spot, there is still a lot for Nolan to play for. TAPPS will have its non-aligned teams \u2014 Savino said there are 13 of those statewide \u2014 compete for what TAPPS is calling bowl games.<\/p>\n

Those will be one extra game at the end of the season that will be for the highest-qualifying non-aligned teams. The state\u2019s non-aligned teams will also award all-district and academic all-district awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou still have a chance to go play for something and to play with pride,\u201d Savino said. \u201cOur kids are excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dropping down to TAPPS Division II was not an option for Nolan because of its enrollment. Savino said the school has about 575 students, which is well over the cutoff line of 398 for Division I schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, the Fort Worth Nolan football team was outscored 454-110 while compiling a 1-9 record. Nolan went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-410242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}