High Riser: Fulshear Receiver Medica A Diamond In The Rough

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.