Ropes left the UIL state championship with a pair of top-5 finishes.
The success of the Eagles was in the sprints, with a runner-up finish from sophomore Kolter Dockery and then the 4x100-meter team took in the 4x100-meter relay.
What makes that success even more impressive is what Coach Beau Riker, also the football coach and athletic director, runs on what is not a full track.
There are two lanes of what you see at a normal track setup -- black in color with one stripe. Between that and the grass football field is a path of dirt.
Despite not having the facilities, the Eagles have been successful.
"Our student athletes at Ropes ISD are tough," Riker said. "They don't know any other way. We as coaches tell them all the time that if you know how to compete, it doesn't matter what we practice on, where we practice, or where we play. It just matters about us as a team doing the hard things to get better every day. The parents around here came up with a slogan for our track & field athletes: "The tough ones run on dirt!" The keyword to that phrase is TOUGH. That's what we hang our hat on here in the athletic program at Ropes. If we ran on a track surface every day, it would not change who we are or how we are going to work. It is a process that the student athletes of Ropes ISD have embodied."
A normal practice this season would have worked out as a team, except for distance runners, with groups of five or six athletes that run on the cinder track.
Then, individual coaches work with athletes. The two lanes get used by the hurdlers and the relay teams, though with it being straight, it doesn't quite replicate what a meet's track would look like.
"The kids have learned how to work with each other and coordinate who is on the runway without running the other groups over," Riker said.
The 4x100 team of Mason Marmolejo, Reese Williams , Branson Simental and Dockery ran 42.28.
"We practice both boys and girls teams at the same time, as well as junior high boys and girls come over after school to get handoffs and hurdle work on the two-lane runway," Riker said. "There are kids everywhere, but we find a way to get them all reps."
Though the track and field season is over, half of those 4x100 runners stayed busy. The Ropes baseball team, which featured Simental and Marmolejo, advanced to the Class 2A Division II regional semifinals.