There's only one explanation Eric Schilling had for not being nervous about taking the head coach position with Nazareth girls basketball.
"I think I was probably too dumb to realize," Schilling quipped. "Too young and dumb."
Grabbing the reins of the UIL's most successful sports program may not have daunted Schilling, but it can be a common feeling. There are countless other girls hoops teams with similar pedigrees and expectations from the South Plains to the Panhandle.
It's part of what separates the region as the original epicenter of Texas high school girls basketball.
"There's a lot of history," Canyon coach Tate Lombard said. "I think a lot of players, they grow up wanting to be basketball players at their schools, whether it's Nazareth or Panhandle
or Gruver, anywhere. It's just always been a real strong basketball area."
History of West Texas girls high school basketball
Statewide success for area girls basketball goes back to the halfcourt 3-on-3 era. For as long as there's been UIL championships, there's been a West Texas team on top.
Claude won the Class B title at the first state tournament in 1951. The Mustangs earned three consecutive championships, and it didn't take long for other regional programs to stake their claim. Five others won state before the decade ended.
Coaches from the area believe that shows the early investment in the sport. Jill Schneider said it helped that basketball is an easy pastime in rural Texas.
"A lot of the towns that had success were small places, one-horse towns," said Schneider, who grew up in Phillips, near Borger. "We didn't have a whole lot else going on. We didn't have big, diverse stuff. We kind of had to create our own fun."
Schneider has experienced the highs of girls basketball as a player and coach during a hall of fame career. She won a state championship as a senior and coached Monterey to a state title in 2025. Schneider said the crowds her final seasons at Monterey with Division I players Aaliyah Chavez and Ambrosia Cole were nothing new. That's all she experienced as a kid.
"Where I grew up, and in this part of the country, the fan base was very invested," Schneider said. "… Those gyms were packed. It wasn't just the school that was invested. It was the communities, the parents. Everybody was so invested, and I just think it grew from there."
What makes a West Texas girls basketball player?
Schilling was raised in another basketball-crazed nook. He graduated from Nazareth in 2003, when the program boasted 16 state championships. That's ballooned to a record 27, including nine under Schilling's direction.
How does a school with less than 100 students find such consistent success? Part of it is the history.
Little girls see the local high school raise a state trophy and want to replicate the feat. Little Dribblers can start as early as kindergarten, and parents are happy to sign their kids up. It's created a cycle of success that spans generations.
"I just think with those traditions of, my mom played, my grandmom played," said retired coach Chuck Darden, who spent 41 years leading Shallowater, guiding the program to two state titles and more than 1,000 wins. "I had that at Shallowater, and it's the same thing going on right now."
Another ingredient is the type of player this environment breeds. Whether the industry is farming, ranching or oil and gas, people are used to building toughness through physical labor.
"First of all, it's just how we're raised," Texas Tech women's basketball coach Krista Gerlich said. "There's a lot of blue-collar people. … People aren't afraid to get their hands dirty here. They work hard."
Gerlich, who moved across the region with her dad, coach Jim Kirkland, faced it firsthand night-in and night-out at Sudan and Spearman. The playing style can often neutralize an athletic disadvantage, too.
"Not every player from West Texas that was a great player is a great athlete," Schneider said. "They're great because their skills are great, and their fundamentals are good, their defensive and offensive fundamentals."
West Texas littered with coaching legends
Take those eager kids with a solid foundation, throw in a knowledgeable coach and the result is winning. That formula stretches back decades. It was often a communal effort, too. West Texas coaches shared ideas among themselves, with Schneider describing the early coaches' lessons as "our basketball bible."
Among them were Bob Schneider, Dean Weese and Bill Clemens, who coached Jill Schneider at Phillips. Bob Schneider, a member of the Women's Basketball and Texas Association of Basketball Coaches halls of fame, won five state titles at Canyon. Weese won three with Spearman as part of a career that landed him in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
"It all branched from, I feel like, that group of core coaches," Jill Schneider said. "They established such great programs that everybody wanted to know what they were doing. All of us that learned from those guys went back and started teaching (our) kids the same way, teaching fundamentals exactly the same way because it clearly cultivated success."
Darden, whose name adorns the Shallowater court, followed that script when he took over the program in 1981.
"I always tell everybody, everything I did good I stole from some other coach," Darden said. "You didn't have to go far to learn around here."
Jill Schneider said the area's success, which included a five-team West Texas sweep at the 1987 state tournament, spread the philosophy to other regions.
"You had my generation of coaches that came through, and then the next generation," Jill Schneider said. "That stuff just keeps getting passed down. There's a definite link, and it link, I feel like, across the state. When those Metroplex schools started getting those coaches in that emphasized fundamentals and they had great athletes at the same time, they started beating a lot of people."
Although the Panhandle and South Plains don't have the stranglehold they used to, their presence is still felt. The region has won at least one state championship in 20 consecutive seasons. It's not just Nazareth, either.
Fifteen programs, from the smallest classification to Class 5A, have hoisted the final trophy during that span.
It may be a while before that streak ends. Keeping West Texas girls basketball on the map remains a point of pride for players and coaches alike.
"Whenever you have kids like that, it really helps to maintain success and to keep it going forward," Lombard said. "We're very proud of this area. Whenever other teams in our area have success in different classifications, we're always supporting them. It is a pride to be able to coach in this area and to see the success that this area's had in basketball over the years."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: How West Texas became the epicenter for high school girls basketball
