The Carroll Dragon Competition BBQ Team was recently featured in Magnolia Network’s “BBQ High”, which aired on August 18. The show covers the experiences of high school barbecue teams in the North Texas area, with one of the competitions held at Carroll Senior High School.
“When I first heard about the show, I wasn’t that stoked. I was more focused on doing well at competitions than getting fame,” junior Caden Roberson said.
Roberson, one of the team’s dessert chefs, has always had a love for barbecue, even before he had joined the club.
“My family has always made really good barbecue,” Roberson said. “It was important to me to keep the tradition going.”
Competitions require students to cook under pressure, if participants mess up that could have been their last shot. Rib-man and junior Chris Darnell said it’s easy to make mistakes.
“We’ve all seriously messed up a number of times, especially when you’re first starting out and it’s your first competition,” Darnell said. “One of my biggest mistakes was undercooking desserts back when I worked on that category as a freshman. But we move on, and you learn from your mistakes.”
Usually, the hours required for the club are long and rigorous on competition days: waking up early in the morning and cooking for 12 hours takes a toll on many people, but members of the club have made it work.
“I think it’s important for you to maintain a good balance between school, clubs and your personal life; then, you’ll manage fine,” Darnell said.
The filming of “BBQ High” has brought new attention to the hardworking barbecue team. While members may not use a traditional sport to help contribute to the school, they utilize their skills and put in hard work to protect the tradition.
“Barbecue Club is a great club; it brings a lot of pride to the members and helps us create great life skills. The show really helped make people take us more seriously,” Roberson said.
Coach Ken Goodman, founder of Carroll Dragon Competition BBQ Team affirmed this. “We haven’t just done barbecue, we’ve cooked for football senior night, the school board and the teachers. So number one students learn how to cook, but number two they’ve also learned how to work together, they really have to do that to get things done.”
While the show put an emphasis on the skills of students and focused on a small number of students, they preserved the idea of everyone competing for the same thing; there are no villains or heroes in this story, just kids doing what they love to do, but the show did intervene with how the kids could cook.
“The whole process just honestly takes a lot of coordination and a lot of patience because they wanted to put the kids in the right light,” Goodman said. “It’s about them arranging you in a certain way and wanting to get cameras set up in different areas, and that you kind of have to work around that and step behind the guy that’s got the camera.”
The team, however, worked through these challenges using what they had. When presented with a lack of funding from the school, they’ve relied on sponsors and what they’ve earned through competing. Goodman encourages supporting local producers instead of relying on larger corporations, he stresses that the farmers are a key reason to their success.
“Behind every American is a farmer,” Goodman said. “I know that’s a pretty common saying, but it’s true.”
The show has not only brought mass attraction to Carroll Senior High; but also mass attention to the barbecue team. Junior Preston Inouye says his first meeting for the team, there were around six attendees, this year there were almost 30.
“Last year we had two teams, a varsity team and a junior varsity team,” Goodman said. “This year we have four.”
With a larger team, members of the club affirm that this year will be better than last. Southlake’s team had won almost every regional last season, but at state they failed to place.
“There were like six people missing,” Preston said. “We had to seriously multitask and do other people’s work while focusing on our own. That’s not going to happen again this year.”
Texas High School BBQ’s 2025 state championship will be held in Granite Shoals, Texas later this school year.
“We’re going to be doing a lot better this year,” Roberson said. “Last year was pretty embarrassing. This year we’re locked in and we’re expecting to bring the state belt buckle home with us.”
