The Dallas Cowboys may be king, but even as America's Team prepared to tangle with the Carolina Panthers on Saturday, fans in at least three North Texas towns seemed equally animated by their high school teams.

ERIC KAYNE/DMN

Stuart Macafee, 12, showed off his school pride for Highland Park before the team played for the state title in Waco.

Celina, Euless Trinity and Highland Park high schools each sent squads to state championship games Saturday, and the game caravans fell in line early.

Jagdish Koirala, who works the counter at Cool Zone, a convenience store near Euless Trinity High, said fans with spiked hair and painted faces started shuffling through the aisles about 7 a.m.

"They were all dressed up for the game," he said of the crowd headed to San Antonio, where the Trojans defeated Converse Judson 13-10 at the Alamodome to win the Class 5A Division I championship. "I see the players in here all the time, too – all the big guys."

Some fans were dressed as Polynesian warriors, he said, a tribute to the team's pregame war dance, the haka, a wild-eyed, thigh-slapping ritual. Euless is home to an estimated 4,000 people from the island kingdom of Tonga.

Some of the Trojans' faithful were forced to listen to the game on the radio.

A tractor-trailer overturned on Interstate 35 about 5:30 a.m. near Troy in Bell County, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Leaking fuel shut down the southbound lanes until about noon, snarling traffic for miles.

In Highland Park, which lost the Class 4A Division II title to Lake Travis, 36-34, cars and homes adorned with yellow ribbons ringed the high school on Emerson Street.

About 40 miles north, in Celina, fans gathered at First Baptist Church to whoop it up for their team and caravan to Texas Stadium, where the Bobcats were facing China Spring in the Class 3A Division II title game.

Earlier in the day, fans bedecked in orange stood around the counter at the convenience store, Bobcat Kuntry, and quoted Vince Lombardi to explain the team's legacy: "Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."

The training starts early in this small town, which is about 10 miles north of Frisco.

Pee Wee football begins in first grade, and for many students, continues through high school.

Chad Roberts played for the Bobcats from 1988 to 1991. Today, he coaches fifth-graders.