Chapel Hill football's Keldrick Davis, Tyrell Gause, Jonah Riordan and Demetrius Brisbon at a fall sports media day at the CHRISTUS Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute on Aug. 1. (Michel Alfaro/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Chapel Hill’s senior class had won 36 games and advanced to the state semifinals in 2021 and 2022 and played in the Class 4A Division I championship game in 2023.

To that, the Bulldogs are saying “so what!” Entering the 2024 season ranked No. 2 in Class 4A Division I, the slogan for the Bulldogs is “now what?”

“That’s the gist of it right there,” Chapel Hill head football coach Jeff Riordan said. “We can’t carry what we did last year into this season. We can’t carry what we’ve done the last three years into this season. It’s a new season, a new group, a new group of seniors, a new group of leaders. They’re got to bring it every day. Now what are we going to do? We’ve got a chip on our shoulder. The kids have been working really hard. The great thing is we’ve got that experience. We understand how to get there, what it takes to get there. Now, we’ve just got to find out how to get there and win it. We’ve improved every year in these three runs. There’s only one way this year to improve that is to go actually win it.”

Riordan was joined by senior offensive lineman Keldrick Davis, senior cornerback/running back Tyrell Gause, senior wide receiver Jonah Riordan and senior quarterback Demetrius Brisbon at a fall sports media day at the CHRISTUS Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute on Aug. 1 to talk about the upcoming season.

“We have to watch film, study hard and practice hard,” Davis said. “We want to have a good season and make it back to the AT&T Stadium.”

“The key is just working harder and having the right mentality to keep pushing and be better athletes and better people,” Gause said.

“I feel like we need to come hard to practice every day with a positive attitude,” Jonah Riordan said. “We’ve got to practice hard if we want to be great. We can’t get complacent. Yeah, we’re a good team, but we’ve got to be better if we want to win state.”

“We’ve been too close every year,” Brisbon said. “We have to have that dog mentality of making there and going back and winning. That’s what we really want to do.”

Chapel Hill will compete in District 9-4A Division I with Lindale, Kilgore, Henderson, Pine Tree, Mabank and Palestine.

The Bulldogs will begin the season Friday at Jasper.