Things have not been easy on the north side of Abilene as Jeremy Kirk has worked to build an athletic program from scratch with the Texas Leadership Charter Academy of Abilene.

Since planting roots in Abilene, TLCA slowly expanded with the addition of one grade level on an annual basis. That led to the Eagles football team often being outmanned and undersized in its formative years.

After finally having a senior class for the first time in 2022-23, Kirk is now able to focus more on the product on the field as opposed to wondering how many kids he’s going to have on his squad, and that is going to allow for the development of several locker room leaders.