If great reward grows from the seeds of agony, then the Chaps are due for a bumper crop.

Saturday’s draining loss to Euless Trinity in the state championship will linger for the Westlake players and coaches, whose appreciation for a remarkable season will always be tempered by the what-ifs that tend to emerge when heads hit the pillow.

Unfortunately for the Chap Nation, such a loss has become almost rote. The decade began with a loss to Midland Lee in the state championship game and ended in similar fashion. In between those two setbacks, Westlake fell in state title games to Lufkin in 2001 and Southlake Carroll in 2006. Overall, the Chaps have won once in seven championship-game showings.

The Chaps won’t ever suffer the label of perennial bridesmaid because of their title run in 1996, but consider them a divorcée who’s become a maid-of-honor extraordinaire: She understands all the hard work that goes into a 16-game march down the aisle, but the memories of donning that ring for the first time fade with each passing season.

Based on the course of a memorable 2009 campaign, however, another ring seems almost inevitable. Coach Darren Allman didn’t have to spend his first season at Westlake altering a winning attitude that has long permeated the football program, but he did replace the nuts and bolts of a successful scheme.

Westlake will enter this off-season with those parts well-oiled and ready to roll. It took the Chaps about seven weeks to find their right gear – at least on offense – in Allman’s debut, but they should slip easily into rhythm this spring and beyond.

In a solemn Westlake locker room after the game, Allman talked about how Saturday’s loss could serve as a building block of sorts for the program.

“Maybe five years from now, after we’ve won back-to-back championships, you can look back and remember this is where it all started,” he told the Chaps.

Of course, Allman knows it all started two decades ago with men like Ebbie Neptune and Ron Schroeder and Derek Long. Allman has emphasized Westlake’s legacy of winning, and he exhorted the Chaps to “protect the tradition” throughout his first season.

It appears that Allman and his staff are the ones to harvest that next championship for a program that proved Saturday it remains among the state’s elite.