Film by Nicholas Strini

The northwest Texas towns of Turkey and Crowell are separated by about 60 miles as the crow flies; they’re places you’re likely to stumble upon only if taking a few wrong turns between Wichita Falls and Lubbock or Amarillo. But in December of 2013, the two tiny towns became leading actors in the final acts of the University Interscholastic League’s six-man football season, breaking through to meet in the semi-finals of a 32-team playoff bracket. Developed in the 1930s to give smaller high schools an opportunity at top-level competition, six-man thrives in the rural districts of a few football-crazy states—and nowhere more prevalently than in Texas. Filmmaker Nicholas Strini followed the strands of the Lone Star State’s deep gridiron tradition to these small-scale local versions, where the populations may be dwindling, but passions remain as grand as the horizon.