Texas Baseball – The “Mound Showdown”

Editor’s Note: This column features accounts of longstanding and interesting high school sports rivalries. If your school has a special game or event of historical significance, and you would like to have it considered for publication, please send information to Nate Perry at nperry@nfhs.org.

Football is “king” in the state of Texas. It’s a matter of fact rather than opinion, and one that requires little verification beyond a Google search of the nation’s largest high school stadiums.

But while its cavernous gridiron cathedrals are proof of which game reigns over the Lone Star State, there are also geographic pockets that stand in opposition to the throne. One such pocket is the city of Flower Mound, a northern suburb of the ever-expanding Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where the baseball diamonds outnumber the football and soccer fields – combined.

Flower Mound’s highly competitive hardball culture can be traced to the seven community parks it uses for public youth baseball, with the crown jewel being its massive Bakersfield Park complex. In addition to its eight meticulously manicured Bermuda-grass fields – each with overhead lighting and covered dugouts and bleachers – the facility features several batting tunnels, along with eight permanent areas specifically designed for “soft-toss” hitting drills.

“You’re talking about the Taj Mahal,” said Jeff Sherman, head baseball coach at Edward S. Marcus High School. “As far as how many fields and how nice they are, you don’t find those in most communities. And the ones that are nice usually are independently owned. This is owned by our city. It’s definitely a baseball town.”

As described by the Flower Mound Youth Sports Association, Bakersfield provides a “surreal environment” for youth sports and has now done so for more than 20 years. Its grandeur incentivizes young players to maximize their potential and remain part of the atmosphere as long as possible, resulting in a pool of seasoned baseball talent roughly the size of the nearby Grapevine Reservoir.

As the only two high schools in the city of nearly 80,000, Marcus and its counterpart, Flower Mound High School (FMHS), have been the beneficiaries of this rich youth pipeline, and have utilized it to foster one of the most intense high school baseball rivalries in the country: The Mound Showdown.

At one time, Farm to Market Road 1171 (FM 1171), a sagging beltline that splits the town almost exactly in half from east to west, was merely the partition between the schools’ attendance zones within the Lewisville Independent School District (LISD); students who grow up north of FM 1171 attend Marcus, while those to the south go to Flower Mound, just 31/2 miles away.

These days, the road seems more like it divides a bedroom shared by ferociously competitive brothers, with one side painted red, black and silver for Marcus and the other in Flower Mound’s navy blue and gray.

“I was told about it when I got here, and I made the mistake of thinking, ‘you know, there’s rivalries all over the place at all levels, everybody’s got their rival,’ said Flower Mound head coach Danny Wallace. “It’s not that way here. It’s pretty intense. I haven’t really experienced anything like it at the high school level.”

Flower Mound High School was added to LISD in 1999, providing relief to Marcus – opened in 1981 – amid the area’s overwhelming population growth. Derek Matlock was hired as the school’s first baseball coach, and with an infectious energy and love for the game, catalyzed the interest that was already growing at the youth level. Enhancing the focus on development, he immediately established a winning culture – one that, according to Sherman, who graduated from Marcus in 1999, set the tone throughout the entire community and laid the foundation for what The Mound Showdown would eventually become.

“The baseball has always been rich here, but he was the first ‘advocate,’ Sherman said. “His mindset was, ‘we are Flower Mound, and we are the best.’ And that’s kind of where it started. In two years, he was taking them to the state tournament. And then Marcus was stepping up and having good seasons. And now, we’re both in a category where our opponents know that if they’re playing Flower Mound or they’re playing Marcus, we’re going to be really good, really talented.”

Flower Mound reached the University Interscholastic League (UIL) Conference 5A playoffs in just its third season under Matlock, who followed that up with back-to-back 5A Region I titles – and subsequent trips to the UIL state tournament – the next two years. In 2004, Matlock’s final season at the helm, Flower Mound won 37 games, finished as 5A state runner-up and slotted in at No. 22 in the National High School Baseball Coaches Association’s final rankings. FMHS qualified for the playoffs in each of the next seven seasons in his absence, but never made it out of the regional tournament.

As Sherman mentioned, Matlock’s influence also helped propel Marcus to the playoffs in 2005 – its first appearance in six seasons – and later led the Marauders to their first-ever trip to the Region I finals in 2009. The head-to-head series, now a decade old, continued to intensify, and Marcus reaching new heights only acted as an accelerant.

The modern version of the rivalry, however, began to take shape in 2013, when Sherman and Wallace each took the reins of their respective programs – and wasted no time elevating them. Both coaches posted 30-plus wins in their debut seasons, and while Wallace’s first impression was objectively more impressive – 15-0 district record, 3-0 against Marcus – Sherman’s team caught fire late to reach the regional semifinals, foreshadowing the EPIC season series that was to come.

Marcus took another step forward in 2014, taking two of three regular-season meetings against Flower Mound, which ultimately functioned as the tiebreaker that awarded the Marauders the Region I District V championship. The teams were as evenly matched as they’d ever been and each loaded with star-power, giving them both legitimate hopes of not only making the state tournament but hoisting the 5A state championship trophy.

Little did they know, they’d eventually have to sort that out themselves.

Placed on opposite sides of the Region I bracket, Flower Mound and Marcus marched through their competition toward a date with destiny. And after taking care of business in their regional semifinals, that date finally came.

The first-ever postseason meeting between the Jaguars and Marauders would be a best-of-three series with a spot in the state tournament on the line. Understandably, the vibe in the city was at fever pitch. The games were to be played at Boyd High School in McKinney, Texas, some 35 miles northeast of Flower Mound, but if anyone thought that might impact attendance, they were sorely mistaken. By all accounts, the auto caravan along the Sam Rayburn Tollway prior to Game 1 was reminiscent of the entire town of Hickory, Indiana, following their beloved Huskers in the movie “Hoosiers.”

“The stands were packed and there were lines of people going back forever into the parking lot to get into the game and there were no seats available,” said one Flower Mound player during an interview with Perfect Game. “There were people lined down each foul line watching.”

The first game, however, did not live up to its competitive billing, as Flower Mound ace pitcher Kyle Johnston threw a no-hitter and received plenty of run support in an 11-0 Jags victory. Marcus, which was dealing with some key injuries, kept it much closer in Game 2. The Marauders scored in the fifth inning to cut Flower Mound’s lead to 2-1, but ultimately fell, 4-1, sending FMHS back to the state tournament for the first time in a decade.

There, Wallace accomplished something Matlock never could, leading Flower Mound to dominant victories over Pearland High School, 8-1, and San Antonio Reagan High School, 10-0, to clinch the program’s first state championship.

Despite losing a large crop of seniors from the state title team, Wallace’s club then took four of the next six regular-season meetings against Marcus stretching into the 2017 season, boosting the head coach’s record to 10-4 in the series.

But later that year, the teams’ postseason paths would intersect once again, opening the door for the Marauders to not only exact their revenge, but to gather lasting momentum in the series and for their program overall.

Members of the UIL’s Conference 6A tournament this time around, Marcus and Flower Mound reacquainted themselves in the regional semifinals that year with both teams undefeated in the playoffs to that point. With their backs against the wall after a 7-3 Flower Mound victory in Game 1, Marcus bounced back with an 11-3 win in the second game to force a winner-take-all rubber match.

In a game that will live on in Mound Showdown lore for a variety of reasons, Sherman elected to start senior pitcher Reed Osborn, the ace of Marcus’ 2016 pitching staff, who had missed nearly all of the 2017 season with an injury.

Just two weeks into his clean bill of health, Osborn responded by allowing just two hits in 6 2/3 scoreless innings, needing only the final out from a relief pitcher to put the finishing touches on a shutout. Marcus scratched across three runs of its own to secure the 3-0 victory and a ticket to the regional final game.

Osborn’s heroic outing also signaled a new era of dominance for Marcus in The Mound Showdown, as the Marauders claimed eight of the next 10 matchups through the end of the 2023 regular season. Flower Mound got back in the win column this year, however, notching a two-game regular-season sweep on March 13 and March 15 to pull the rivalry series back to dead-even at 14 wins apiece.

Aside from the memorable moments it’s accounted for, both Wallace and Sherman elaborated on how the energy around The Mound Showdown, as well as the pressure to perform in those games, has given their teams an edge in high-stakes games.

“We do not fear postseason fan attendance,” Sherman said. “(The Mound Showdown) preps us for that. And that’s another reason why I think (both teams) are so good is because from the time our kids are four years old to the time they’re 14, they’re watching this game. So, when they finally get to play in this game and try to live up to that, there’s a lot of anxiety they have to work through.”

And over the past five seasons, the results certainly back up Sherman’s point. In addition to reaching the regional final in 2017, Marcus has won at least three playoff games in three of the past five Conference 6A Region I tournaments.

Wallace, on the other hand, has the most – and most recent – experience to draw on for the coaches’ shared “big-game” theory. In addition to their regional final appearance in 2019, the Jaguars are fresh off a sensational 2023 campaign that culminated with their second state title, and first in 6A. In 12 tournament games last year, Flower Mound went 11-1, and outscored its opponents 87 to 33.

“I had a very young team last year and I wasn’t sure how good we were,” said Wallace. “I knew we had talent and that we were going to be good, but I just wasn’t sure if we were ready yet. And we went to (Marcus) the first night (of the Mound Showdown) and won, and I knew it from that right there that we had the ability to do great things as the season went on. That gave me, as a coach, a little shot in the arm of ‘okay, we are good enough to (win a state championship).’ Because if you can win at their place in that rivalry, you’re capable of doing big things.”