Coppell Chronicle Vol. 6, No. 12
Cowboys Win State Lacrosse Championship • Tesla Robotaxis Hub Proposed in North Irving • Plans for Concrete Batch Plant Get Dusted • Take Items for a Spin via Library of Things
Happy Mother’s Day to all the matriarchs out there, especially the lacrosse moms!
Cowboys Win State Lacrosse Championship
UNIVERSITY PARK — The Coppell lacrosse program has completed quite a remarkable turnaround: One year after wrapping up a winless season, the Cowboys captured a state championship.
Coppell won the Class C bracket of the Texas High School Lacrosse League’s playoffs on Sunday morning by recording a 7-6 victory over Regents School of Austin, the top seed in the field. (Coppell was seeded 11th of 16 teams.)
Senior midfielder Duncan Ross was named the tournament’s overall MVP because he had two goals in the championship game and five more in the Cowboys’ 9-4 win over Parish Episcopal School on Saturday. Ross chalked up the stark difference between this season and last season to grit and hard work.
“Our hard work proved to pay off,” said Ross, who will play collegiately for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
Junior attacker Sawyer Smith, who scored three goals on Sunday and two on Saturday, was named the Offensive MVP for Class C, and senior defender Knox Wharton earned Defensive MVP honors. I might be biased, but junior goaltender Aiden Martin also deserves mention, as he made just enough saves to make a difference.
(Bias disclosure: I was Martin’s Cub Scouts Den Leader for five years. Did that half-decade of mentorship help shape him into the goalie he is today? Perhaps. Who can say?)
You may be wondering why Coppell, a team affiliated with one of Texas’ largest high schools, competed in the Class C tournament, while Sunday’s Class AA title game featured two schools of comparable size, Jesuit and The Woodlands, and the Class B final was between Keller and Prosper. Unlike the UIL, which classifies schools according to the sizes of their student bodies, the Texas High School Lacrosse League bases classifications on the number of players in each program. Coppell didn’t have enough players this season to field a junior varsity team, while Jesuit and Episcopal School of Dallas each had two squads qualify for the playoffs.
This is the second season that the Coppell Lacrosse Association’s team for high school boys has been led by Brandon Mullins, a Coppell High School graduate who played lacrosse professionally after starting for Syracuse University. He said this year’s lacrosse team benefited from the addition of a few football players, which helped from a leadership and athleticism perspective.
“This group just jelled a lot more,” Mullins said. “They became friends, you know what I mean, which helped us on the field. So I think, just from a chemistry perspective, we were far and beyond where we were.”
In other sports news …
Lacrosse: The Coppell Lacrosse Association didn’t have enough players to field a team for high school girls this season, so nine Coppell residents played for Flower Mound, representing more than a third of that squad. Flower Mound faced St. Stephen’s Episcopal School from Austin on Saturday in the Texas Girls High School Lacrosse League’s Division 2 semifinals, and I got there in time to see Coppell resident Claire Wenzel break a 7-7 tie in the third quarter. But St. Stephen’s ultimately prevailed by a score of 12-11.
Tennis: Last week’s UIL Class 6A State Tennis Tournament in San Antonio was the fourth featuring Coppell High School senior Lexie Patton, who qualified this year in girls doubles, paired with fellow senior Gabby Rice. They lost in the semifinals to Jastine Escamos and Angela Shu of Fort Bend Clements, who would go on to beat another Clements duo in the finals. In girls singles, Coppell freshman Varsha Sivaprasad lost in the quarterfinals to the eventual state champion, Ahona Chowdhury of The Woodlands.
Golf: The Coppell High School girls golf team, which won the UIL Class 6A state championship in 2025, finished 10th at last week’s state tournament in San Antonio. Austin Westlake won the 2026 team title, besting Southlake Carroll by 10 strokes. Individually, Coppell senior Riya Bapna was among four golfers who tied for fifth place with a two-day score of 151, nine strokes behind the champion, Carolyn Liu of Katy Jordan.
Rowing: Coppell High School graduate Naida Paschal is a rower for the University of Kansas, and she’s a member of the school’s 3V8+ crew that earned Big 12 Boat of the Week honors last week by winning the Minnesota Invite. Paschal and her fellow Jayhawks crossed first with a time of 6:57.84, topping Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa to secure the victory.
Tesla Robotaxis Hub Proposed in North Irving
Tesla would like to dispatch thousands of autonomous vehicles from a property in the Coppell ISD portion of Irving, but the city’s firefighters and police officers want more time to understand the technology.
The property in question is 4203 W. Royal Lane, which is just south of Interstate 635, between Freeport Parkway and Belt Line Road. Tesla’s proposal was on the Irving City Council’s May 7 agenda because the company’s plan would require changing the parcel’s designation on Irving’s future land use map from “Business/Office” to “Manufacturing/Warehouse.”