Cinco Ranch has had a good run of years here recently. The Cougars reached the Regional Quarterfinals for the fifth straight season in 2021.
Now, can they punch through and get to the program’s first Regional Tournament since 2018? The good thing for coach Danielle Wells is that she returns several of her key pieces with experience from a year ago.
Courtney O’Brien led the team with 384 kills, followed by Makenna Loo (142 kills), Emily Killam (103 kills) and Gabby Martinez (103 kills). O’Brien also led the team in digs with 397, followed by Kayla Atkinson’s 371.
Freshman setter Kassidy O’Brien – the younger sister of Courtney – led the team in assists with 419 and will look to be the Cougars’ No. 1 setter in 2022.
FULSHEAR SENIOR JAX MEDICA IS ONE OF THE MORE UNDERRATED AND OVERLOOKED RECEIVERS IN THE GREATER HOUSTON AREA.
His awe-inspiring catch radius, strength and soft hands make for an impressive playmaking talent. And he didn’t even play offense until the seventh grade.
“That’s when they tried me at receiver,” Medica said as he reflected. “I’d always played safety.”
It’s then that Medica set in motion the work ethic and discipline that define him to this day.
Medica’s father would toss bricks at him from 10 feet away. Medica would catch them. It’s a drill Jerry Rice used to do to work on “squeezing” of the hands.
Medica also threw footballs off the roof of his house.
“It’d bounce back to you, and you wouldn’t know where it’d go, so you’d have to track it,” Medica said.
He also made sure to catch 150 balls every day. Every...Day.
However, it’s not individual success that inspires Medica. Though he had a remarkable junior year last season, with 44 catches, 664 yards and four touchdowns while playing the final three games of the season with a sprained MCL and ACL, he is most proud of helping the Chargers to the playoffs for the first time in five years as a varsity program.
“It’s being able to win as many games as we can as a team and doing everything I can possibly do to help us win,” Medica said. “If that’s me playing defense or offense… whatever the team needs me to do. At the end of the day, that’s what matters first for me.”
Medica has good size at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds. He is terrific around the ball, with admirable athleticism and ball instincts. He is tough, selfish and overwhelming when the ball is in the air.
Getting Mossed? Hapless defensive backs know about Getting Jaxed.
But Medica hears the doubters. He hears the noise that he may not be fast enough. Maybe still not quite big enough. And what, or where, is Fulshear?
It all pushes him.
“People saying I can’t do this or I can’t do that, it’s motivation,” Medica said. “‘Like (Fulshear) Coach (Nick) Codutti says, I just try and control what I can control. I can’t control what someone may think about me or what they don’t like about my film. At the end of the day, I’m just going to keep producing. At some point, you can’t just keep denying stats and film.”
Medica is a throwback receiver — physical, gritty, tough, no-nonsense — as fond of blocking as he is scoring a touchdown.
How many kids today would play on a sprained ACL and MCL to help their team make a playoff run? That’s how he wants to be remembered.
“I want people to see a receiver that plays angry,” Medica said. “I pride myself on being physical. But I really love being under those lights. Adrenaline starts going and you just trust your training.
“At the end of the day, I’ve caught that ball 800 times or whatever. I’m not worried about dropping it. I can see myself catching it before it actually happens. The crowd is loud, the moment slows down, I see it spinning toward me.”
And then Jax Medica makes the play that he has worked so hard for.
UPON THE ARRIVAL OF JASON GLENN AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS AND FINE ARTS, THE INTEGRATION OF BRABHAM AND LYNN LUCAS MIDDLE SCHOOLS INTO THE WILLIS HIGH SCHOOL CULTURE BEGAN IMMEDIATELY.
“We want our middle school students and coaches to feel like they are already at Willis High School,” he said. “It’s a vertical integration that the most successful districts in Texas implement.”
It will reflect in the uniforms this season as the “Big W and the State of Texas” will be prominent and the middle school name will be written underneath.
“It’s our brand,” he said. “We wanted people to know that, this is Willis,” he said. “That’s how you build a community. We want to have a true family feel and these are the things it’s going to take. It’s not about one school or the other, it’s about Willis. We will all be eating at the same, big table.”
High school coaching athletic schedules also had to be tweaked to allow for the most important part of the integration.
"This will allow our high school coaches to go observe at the middle schools,” Glenn said. “The students need to see the faces of their future high school coaches and the coaches need to be able to coach up the middle school coaches. It goes back to alignment.”
New football head coach Trent Miller is also excited about the program.
“We are looking forward to mentoring the high school coaches,” Miller said. “Just bringing them more into the fold, visiting them on campus to help with the athletes and building relationships with them is a huge win for everyone.”
The vertical integration also reaches the elementary schools with its “Rising ‘Kats” program, where students from Kindergarten to 6th grade will run with the Wildkats at home games.
This is how you build a community. In the words of Jason Glenn, “Let’s do this.”
TYLER SMITH HAS BEEN A LIFER IN KLEIN ISD.
Smith played football and ran track for the Tigers, graduated in 2014 and is now living his dream.
“Having played and graduated from here, I know how serious Klein Collins takes its extracurricular activities,” Smith said. “The atmosphere is very inclusive, and sports are a place where kids can be part of something bigger and build great high school relationships.”
The Klein Collins cross country program going into 2022 is somewhat young, but has a trio of seniors to show the way.
Senior Hope Moon will lead the pack for the girls and senior John Watson will lead the boys. Kristen Gibson and Natalie Ral will also pace the girls team while Leonardo Santos and sophomore Anthony Puguero will round out the boys.
“I’m excited about getting to work with the kids,” Smith, who is also an assistant softball coach, said. “I want them to come in, have a positive attitude and find ways to improve themselves. I love that approach.
“I want them to have a good time, set their goals high and work hard to meet those goals. It’s that simple.”
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