The Jaguars don’t have the athletic tradition that many of the state’s football powerhouses have. Carrboro High is a relatively new school, and it fielded a varsity football team for the first time just six years ago.

The results that first season weren’t pretty. Carrboro got clobbered again and again, including one 89-0 drubbing.

But every time the Jaguars got knocked down, they got back up. And now ... well, my, how things change.

This year, Coach Jason Tudryn’s squad won its opening game – and then its second, and third and fourth. The Jaguars beat all comers, and they continued doing that until only one other team was left to play.

Carrboro faced South Iredell for the 2AA state championship last Saturday. The game was a classic, a seesaw battle in which neither team ever led by more than four points.

In the end, South Iredell scored with just 19 seconds left to pull out a 30-27 win.

Carrboro’s players and fans were, of course, powerfully disappointed. But with time they will realize what a remarkable season they put together, and we could not be more proud.

Roses to the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble dancers who were selected to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., this week.

Eight members of NCYTE (they pronounce it “insight”) were chosen to participate in “JUBA! Masters of American Tap,” the first full-length tap concert in any of the Kennedy Center’s three largest theaters.

The NCYTE dancers involved are Luke Hickey, Sarah Linden, Laura Matrazzo, Kyle McConaughey, Adriana Ogle, Breanna Polascik, Max Vigotov and Jared Kirkpatrick.

The show, scheduled for Dec. 7, will feature some of the best professional dancers in the American tap world, including NCYTE alumna Michlle Dorrance, who choreographed the dances the local dancers will perform.

The NCYTE eight, who range in age from 13 to 18, rehearsed with Dorrance here in town at the Ballet School.

NCYTE, founded by artistic director Gene Medler, will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. The company has toured throughout the world and worked and performed with many of the premiere tap dancers and choreographers in the world.

Roses to Marilyn Metzler, who recently retired from Chapel Hill High School and went out with a bang; she was named the nation’s top high school German teacher by the American Association of Teachers of German.

The association presented Metzler with its Outstanding German Educator Award in a ceremony in Philadelphia on Nov. 17.

She was one of just two recipients of the award, and the only one at the high school level; the other was Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, professor of German at the University of Texas at Denton.

One of many letters of support sent to the association came from a former student who is now at Stanford University and recently received an award there for scholastic achievement.

“Frau Metzler is not just the best language teacher I have ever had,” the former student wrote. “She is the best teacher that I have ever had.”

High praise! Glückwünsche, Frau Metzler.