ESPN RISE

It is no secret that Florida produces top-ranked high school football teams loaded with top recruits and capable of competing on a national level. But until recently, you had to go back to the 1960s to find the last Florida team that could boast No. 1 standing.

The crowning of famed all-sport school St. Thomas Aquinas, of Ft. Lauderdale, as the 2008 ESPN RISE FAB 50 No. 1 football team gives Florida three consecutive poll titlists. The Raiders follow 2007 kingpin Northwestern of Miami and 2006 titlist Lakeland as mythical national champions from Florida.

Coral Gables High was the Florida bellwether during the 1960s as a transplanted Pennsylvanian named Nick Kotys coached the team to four state titles in a six-year period. His teams, in fact, shared in three mythical championships.

Kotys coached in Pennsylvania from 1940 to 1951 before moving to warmer climates and taking over the Coral Gables program from 1952 to 1971. With a career record of 258-57-16, Kotys left his imprint on high school football in both states.

The 1964 team coached by Kotys finished 12-0 and was tabbed the nation's No. 1 team by Art Johlfs and his Minneapolis-based National Sports News Service, which is continued today by the ESPN RISE FAB 50 rankings.

A year later, Miami Senior (12-0) and coach Robert Carlton took over the top spot in Florida and received the NSNS No. 1 label for 1965.

But Coral Gables wasn't a one-season wonder. Kotys directed his team to a 13-0 mark in 1967 and shared the national No. 1 spot with Reagan High (14-0) of Austin, Texas, a product of Lone Star State coaching legend Travis Raven.

Two years later, in 1969, Coral Gables (10-0) again shared the No. 1 tag, this time with Blair High (13-0) of Pasadena, Calif., and coach Pete Yoder.

But that was the last season a Florida team could claim a mythical national championship until 2006, when Lakeland started the current three-year stranglehold on the season-ending top spot.

Before the 1960s, three other Sunshine State teams were crowned No. 1 by the National Sports News Service.

Miami High won back-to-back titles with 9-0 records in 1942 and 1943. The 1942 team was coached by Lyles Alley, who later joined the college coaching ranks. In 1943, he was succeeded as coach by Tom Moore.

The first Florida team to claim a No. 1 national poll spot was Duval High (8-0) of Jacksonville in 1921.

Now, nearly nine decades later, Florida teams have returned to the top of the national rankings for the third straight season.

St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the nation's top all-sports schools, has been a state contender for most of the last three decades under the guidance of coach George Smith.

The 60-year-old Smith won his fifth state crown, and second straight, this season after titles in 1992, 1997 and 1999. The Raiders also have finished as state runner-up seven times, including four times to Lakeland, which fell to Aquinas, 56-7, in the Class 5A finals this season after going 6-0 in state title games.

Smith's 32-year career record of 333-65 includes a 62-19 mark in postseason play. His win total is second only to current Jacksonville Bolles head man Corky Rogers (370-68-2), the winningest coach in state history.

The Raiders opened the season with a 35-24 win over Elder of Cincinnati in the Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Series event in Cincinnati. Elder went on to finish as Ohio Division 1 runner-up to Cleveland St. Ignatius. Overall, Aquinas outscored 15 victims by 695-117 and is being called by some South Florida observers as the best Broward County team in history.

That sounds even more like a good pick for No. 1 team in the land.

The Stuff

National coach of the week
After guiding Canyon High of Canyon Country (think Magic Mountain) to the first California Division I State Bowl Championship with a 27-13 victory over Concord De La Salle, coach Harry Welch had a stadium named after him and took a new job in Orange County.

Welch didn't leave for a football power like Santa Ana Mater Dei -- no, little private school St. Margaret's, within a long, long pass from where the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano every year.

New school, same results.

Welch became the first coach in the state to win bowl titles in two different divisions when his St. Margaret's Tartans beat Hamilton Union of Northern California, 59-7, at the Home Depot Center in the new Small Schools division, pitting the best of the tiny enrollment schools from the south against similar programs in the north.

It was 52-0 at halftime.

Controversy has followed Welch through all 208 of his career wins, but no one can question his success: That victory pushed the school's new Orange County win streak record to 43 (Mission Viejo held the former mark at 41), still short of the 46 straight he won during one stretch while at Canyon.

There can be no argument about his success in Southern Section championship games, as he's a perfect 9-0.

His detractors say Welch doesn't schedule up like so many small-enrollment programs, but since he's been at St. Margaret's only two years, collecting 29 of those 43 straight wins, he hasn't much opportunity to tinker with the schedule.

In the meantime, he just keeps winning those state bowl titles, no matter the division.

Katy's Back-to-Back Titles
After the first two weeks of the season, the odds of Katy's winning a second straight Class 5A Division II state title in Texas looked just about impossible.

The Tigers were 0-2 and had just been shellacked by The Woodlands, 47-0. Hurricane Ike then hit, which meant even more adversity for the players and coaches.

But once the playoffs began, there was Katy. The team didn't have to worry about city rival Cinco Ranch (which handed the Tigers a third regular season loss) because Cinco Ranch was in a different playoff division. It was a wide-open division, and the Tigers took advantage by improving every week from November through December.

Last Saturday at Reliant Stadium, Katy (13-3) completed its hard-to-believe turnaround with a 17-3 triumph over Wylie to win its second straight state crown and sixth overall.

Even though Wylie was averaging 38 points per game, the Tigers came out snarling and smacked down that offense. They intercepted Wylie quarterback Jared Monk three times and came through for seven sacks.

Running back Will Jeffery led the Katy offense with 22 carries for 142 yards.

"I think this is the best they have played this year, but they have been getting better and better every week," Katy head coach Gary Joseph told the Houston Chronicle. "They are all special. But this title is a little extra special, since there were a lot of people who thought it was impossible."

Mark Tennis and Steve Brand also contributed to this column.