ARGYLE -- Jake Gannon has spent the majority of his life in the private school environment. He’s also spent the majority of his life playing football and dealing with an assault of questions from his friends.

“Oh yeah, I get it all the time,” Gannon said. “‘You’re Liberty, you guys can’t be good.’ What they don’t know is that we’re Liberty and we hit just as hard as they do and we work three times as hard as other schools do. We don’t have the number of players [public schools] have so to want to win, we have to work twice as hard and hit twice as hard.”

Liberty will branch out for the first time this season and play a UIL program after beating TAPPS 6A Fort Worth Nolan in last week’s season opener.

Liberty Christian won a TAPPS Division II state championship in 1996 and has made it to the final game three other times, including the previous two years.

Though the Warriors will play three public schools in their nondistrict schedule of six games, the one they play this week isn’t in the same stratosphere as Bowie and Anna, who they will play in the coming weeks.

The Warriors host Celina (1-0), which has won six state championships at the 2A level since 1995, including four straight from 1998-2001, and lost on a last-minute field goal in last year’s 3A Division II state title game in its first season at the 3A level.

There’s been a movie made about the Bobcats, “Power, Passion and Glory: The Real Story of Texas Football Madness,” and Celina boasts the state’s all-time winningest high school football program.

All of that, and Liberty Christian was a few mistakes away from beating the juggernaut last year, losing 28-14 in a game that was tied after three quarters.

That game was Celina’s closest game of the season until its loss in the state final to Liberty Hill. The second closest call for the Bobcats in the regular season was a 28-7 win over Plano Prestonwood, another TAPPS school.

Throughout the years, private schools often haven’t had the respect they probably deserve from UIL programs, whether it be because of their smaller numbers or the competition they see on a weekly basis, but that’s beginning to change.

Another example from last season was Celina’s 30-13 win over Vernon in a state semifinal. Vernon was beaten 28-7 by a team in Liberty Christian’s district, Midland Christian, which Liberty Christian beat by 12 in the regular season and lost to by seven points in the state championship game.

“I went and watched Celina play Vernon, and it was interesting to look and see that we beat Midland Christian by 12 points and they beat us by seven,” Liberty Christian head coach Mark Bowles said. “Seeing Midland Christian beat [Vernon] by 21 kind of made you ponder a little bit.”

While Bowles said there used to be a bias against private school football, that feeling has changed to the tune of it being difficult for him to find teams who are willing to play the Warriors.

That results in problems for Bowles, who saw the most players (79) out for football at Liberty this year in his 25 years at the helm. The Warriors usually field 60-70 players. Nolan Catholic, which Liberty beat last week and is a class above the Warriors at the TAPPS level, has 125 kids in its program. Celina has 140-150 on an annual basis.

“It just creates a challenge for us to be able to match up with those kind of numbers,” Bowles said. “Last week, Nolan had enough players where they could play 11 players on offense and 11 on defense, and we just can’t do that.”

Celina head coach Butch Ford, who’s been friends with Bowles for 25 years and has been coaching for 35 years at Pilot Point, Sherman and Celina, said the two schools are evenly matched, despite the numbers difference.

“We talked a lot about setting these games up and [Bowles] was worried about not being able to compete,” Ford said with a chuckle. “I said, ‘You’ll have no problem.’ He’s good at giving you that half-empty story.”

The Bobcats not only have enough manpower to not have to play both ways, they run systems as sophisticated as the top 5A programs run, typically running offenses out of more than 15 sets.

Gannon recalled being admittedly overwhelmed last year when Liberty traveled to Celina.

“When we got there -- it’s tough,” Gannon said. “You know, you look out there and everyone’s wearing orange. Everyone’s going crazy. You’ve got smoke going everywhere.

“All you have to do though is break it down and say, ‘They’re just as old as I am. They’re 17, they’re 16, they’re 18.’ When you break it down like that, they’re just kids too. They hit just as hard as we do. It’s just who wants it more.”

Senior quarterback Andrew Loch admitted to being intimidated last year at Celina, but said it wore off once the game started, and barring a few mistakes his team could’ve knocked off the giant. This year, he’s pumped to get the Bobcats in his home stadium with Liberty’s fans.

“I’m looking forward to playing them here,” he said. “We’ll have just as much, if not more, fans than we had last week [against Nolan], and I know [Celina] will fill up the stands. It’ll be really exciting.”

That unbridled community support is one reason Celina’s built such a successful program.

“If you’re a young man growing up in Celina and you don’t want to play football, then there’s a little something wrong with you,” Bowles said. “Their community gets behind them and they have tremendous support for what they want to get done.

“Their kids believe in hard work and they’ve seen the results of that work. I’d like to think we’re getting that instilled here.”

In fact, Bowles has used Celina as a reference point in building his program. He’ll often find himself at Celina after his season ends when the Bobcats are neck-deep into a playoff run, picking Ford’s brain about philosophies and practice drills.

“I would hope that some day maybe I’ll know a little bit of football, but [Ford] knows so much,” Bowles said. “I have so much respect for him that he’s one of the guys I go to for advice. …If you’re going to try to get better, you try to copycat a winner.”

Ford knows first-hand what Liberty’s kids bring to a game, and he expects no different come Friday night at Warrior Field.

“I know what those kids are made of and how hard they play,” Ford said. “You can be guaranteed you’ll get a heck of a fight from them every time you play them.”

If all the ingredients can come together for a Liberty upset, Gannon will never forget the night his team ended Celina’s 42-game, regular-season non-district unbeaten streak dating back to 1998.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s had a part in taking down Celina’s mystique. As an eighth grader, his team became the first to beat the Celina group that had played together since fourth grade. Now, they’re all seniors.

“Oh my gosh. That’s something I’d tell my grandkids, man,” Gannon said of the possible streak stopper. “If that happens, that’s something everyone would be talking about. We’d have a movie made about us.”

ADAM BOEDEKER can be reached at 940-566-6872. His e-mail is