At Southlake Carroll High School, the trophies and titles are easy to spot. Now a barbecue team has added one more.

“I was super surprised,” senior Thien-Nhanryan Vu said. “Like, this is really crazy.”

“I never expected to take it this far,” senior Caden Roberson said.

Five years ago, when Southlake Carroll started a competitive barbecue team, the students “didn’t know the first thing about smoking meat.” But coach Ken Goodman, who started the team, said they embraced it.

“You start at 4:30 in the morning, that means you get up at 3:30 in the morning,” Goodman said. “You don’t get done until 6 o’clock in the evening and then you got to drive four hours home sometimes, so they have to want to do this.”

“It’s a lot more work than I expected beforehand,” Vu said.

The team competes regularly, mostly in regional competitions around Texas, cooking brisket, ribs, chicken, beans and desserts.

In the beginning, the team had “a few successes and a lot of failures.”

“We did have a little bit of struggle, but we all started to really hone things in,” senior Preston Inouye said.

“Sometimes when you start out it’s not the best, but boy by the end, it’s really good,” Goodman said.

“It’s cool seeing you get better every time,” Vu said.

Since its inaugural year, the team has qualified for the state tournament every year. Last month, it won the state championship, a year after finishing runner-up.

“It was exhilarating,” Vu said.

“State is hard,” Goodman said. “I don’t care if you’re doing it for football, baseball, anything. To win state is hard because you’re going against a lot of really good teams.”

Getting there meant giving up weekends and working while many classmates were asleep.

None of the students on this year’s team plan to go to culinary school or pursue culinary careers, but they said barbecue will still help them.

“You’ve got to be able to ask other people to help you, you’ve got to work with them to help them,” Vu said. “It’s a lot of teamwork skills you develop.”

Read more from WFAA.