Redwater Dragons Football 2026: What’s Behind the 3-0 Start?
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
Friday night at Dragon Stadium has a sound to it. Cleats on the track, the chain gang setting up at midfield, somebody's little brother running sprints along the fence while the band tunes up. Most seasons, that sound carries a familiar undertone: the tension of a close game still to come. This year the sound is different, and so is the record attached to it.
The Texarkana Gazette reports that the Redwater Dragons are 3-0. For a program that finished last season at 2-8, that alone is worth a second look. But the record isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is what changed between those two seasons, and it comes down to one number the coaching staff has been chasing since the offseason started.
Head coach Bryce Haugh didn't win last season's overtime coin flips or catch a favorable district draw this year. What he did was identify the specific thing that was costing Redwater games, and then spend an entire offseason drilling it out of the roster.
"Turnovers were an issue last year," Haugh told the Texarkana Gazette. "We have preached to our kids all offseason and fall camp to protect the ball on offense and produce turnovers on defense, and we will have the chance to beat anyone."
That's not a coach saying something nice for the paper. It's a coach naming the exact mechanism, and the results back him up. Through three games, Redwater has given the ball away once and taken it away six times, a plus-five turnover margin that Haugh pointed to directly as the reason his team is unbeaten.
Anyone who has watched a close high school football game knows how much a single fumble or interception can swing. A team that turns the ball over once every three games instead of once every three drives isn't just playing cleaner, it's handing itself extra possessions that opponents don't get in return. That's the actual engine under the record, not raw talent showing up overnight.
The season opener was the kind of game that tests whether a new approach is real or just talk. The Texarkana Gazette reported that Redwater hosted Paul Pewitt on August 28 in a back-and-forth fight that came down to the final minute. Quarterback Braelan Morgan capped a three-play, 97-yard drive with a 75-yard touchdown pass to JaVoundrick Vaughn with 52 seconds left, putting the Dragons ahead 36-28. Pewitt drove right back down the field and had a shot to tie or win it, reaching the Redwater 13 with 10 seconds on the clock, before Vaughn ended the game with an interception in the end zone.
That's a game Redwater could easily have lost last season. Instead, the same instinct that Haugh has been coaching all offseason, take care of the ball, punish the other team when they don't, showed up in the moment that mattered most.
The following two weeks were less dramatic. Redwater followed the Pewitt win with blowout victories over Harmony and Harleton, the kind of lopsided scores that let a coaching staff rest starters in the fourth quarter instead of sweating out another finish. By the time the team turned its attention to Sabine in week four, the turnover math had piled up enough that Haugh could point to a specific number instead of a general feeling.
Sabine was the first real test after the 3-0 start, and it's the kind of matchup that shows whether three weeks of clean football was a trend or a fluke. From here, the schedule doesn't get any easier:
Only the top four finishers in the district advance to the playoffs, which means every one of those remaining games carries weight beyond bragging rights. A plus-five turnover margin built against three opponents is a real number. Holding onto anything close to it deep into a schedule against programs with their own winning traditions is the actual test of whether this Redwater team is built differently than last year's.
In a town of fewer than a thousand people, the high school team isn't background noise. It's one of the few things nearly everyone in Redwater has in common on a Friday night, whether they've got a kid on the roster or not. The Redwater ISD's National Honor Society chapter logs volunteer hours cleaning Dragon Stadium before home games, the kind of unglamorous upkeep that only happens when a community actually cares about the place where its team plays. That's not a detail that shows up in a box score, but it's part of why a 3-0 start here means something different than it would somewhere bigger.
The Texarkana Gazette put it plainly: there's excitement surrounding the program right now, from the players and coaches out to the community backing them. That kind of momentum is fragile in high school football. One bad turnover swing against New Boston or Queen City and the story changes fast. But for three weeks running, Redwater did the thing its own coach said would decide everything, and the record showed it.
Haugh isn't letting anyone get comfortable. As he told the Texarkana Gazette, "Our kids cannot be satisfied. We still have work to do and to get better each day." That's the right instinct for a team that knows exactly what got them here and exactly how quickly it could slip.
The next time you're at Dragon Stadium on a Friday, you'll be watching more than a game. You'll be watching whether a number this program has chased since January can hold up through the toughest stretch of the season.
We've called Redwater and the towns around it home for a long time, and Friday nights like this are a big part of why. If you're ever curious about what's happening in the local housing market here or in any of the communities we work across the Texarkana region, the team at Doris Morris Real Estate is always glad to talk it through. Let's Talk Strategy.
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