ROAD WARRIORS

Shadow Creek has traveled great distances to play football

Shadow Creek has traveled great distances to play football
Shadow Creek's Sharks have been all over the place this year. Vype

Originally appeared on Vype.com.

Are we there yet?

Family road trips can test anyone’s patience, but imagine travelling with 50 of your siblings for a 20- hour round-trip in three days.

Bags of fruits, snacks and drinks lay on a conference table inside the Shadow Creek athletic office. Coolers are wedged in the back of the room.

The scene looks like a family vacation or a college road trip is about the go down.

Well it’s somewhere in between. The Shadow Creek Sharks are a team that has been forgotten. The new Alvin ISD football program was left out of a district in the last UIL realignment because it was just opening.

Their other athletic programs compete in District 23-5A, but football?

Coach Brad Butler left an assistant coaching job at Manvel to take over the new school. To say he’s had challenges would be an understatement, but he’s the right guy for the job. He’s built a great staff and his demeanor doesn’t seem to get flustered with the bumps and road-blocks he’s had to deal with.

When Shadow Creek was not placed in a district, Butler had to do virtually the impossible – pick up teams who would schedule the unknown Sharks.

Tricky part was that he not
only had new freshman and sophomores, but juniors who were allowed to come to his school if they wanted more opportunities. 
A handful of Manvel athletes took the opportunity to get more playing time at the new school.

What that meant was that this year they would be seniors and would need to play varsity games, not junior varsity. So Butler built his schedule a year ago to find any varsity program in the state to play him.

“Not being in a district, we knew we would not have the opportunity to make the playoffs,” Butler
said. “So as a coaching staff, we wanted to give the seniors the best opportunity and football experience we could, and respect the position they were in. So we put together a schedule of varsity games. At the same time planting the seeds for the future.”

The first year they mostly played junior varsity teams with a few varsity teams sprinkled in. Entering year two, some teams dropped them and they scoured virtually every varsity team in Texas that had a gap in their schedules.

“That’s why we ended up having to travel so much,” he said. “We wanted to get our seniors as many traditional Texas Friday Night football experiences as we could.”

He had to look far and wide.

…..

The Shadow Creek Sharks are road warriors. They will travel over 2,500 miles to play football this season in places like Marshall, Midland, Brownwood and Leander, Texas.

“It’s kind of like we are in the playoffs,” Butler said. “We don’t have a lot of prior knowledge on the teams we are playing and we are travelling distances to get there. In the long run, I think this is going to help us mature as a program. But make no mistake about it, it’s controlled chaos.”

With Hurricane Harvey, they lost a home game so Shadow Creek will only play at the Shark Tank twice this season.

“It’s a challenge to build school spirit because the student body hasn’t been able to see them play much,” he laughs. “It takes real dedication to drive out to Midland and Brownwood to see us play.”

...

On the field, the Sharks have some players, and it all starts with the seniors.

Receiver Malik Rodgers is an Air Force-commit, while linemen Kelechi Anyalebechi
and Donovan King hold down the defense.

“I came over from Manvel and wanted a new beginning – a
new family,” Anyalebechi said. “I wanted to build something new. I wanted a new opportunity.”

While it was a risk to move over to a new school, it seems to have paid off.

“Our junior year was really cool,” Rodgers said. “We played some varsity team and the experiences really opened our eyes. I wouldn’t have gotten that somewhere else. Our high school football experience is coming to an end and we wanted to build something here first, so the kids who come after us can get noticed. It’s all for the next generation, but we know that we got it started.”

The seniors were thrown into immediate leadership roles, and have grabbed the torch with both hands.

“Because of the travel, we really have to keep everyone focused,” King said. “Sure we have some fun and goof off, but we have to keep the sophomores from being sophomores and the freshmen from being freshmen. We are in this situation where we all have to grow up.”

While the seniors are clawing for some shine this year, the future looks promising at Shadow Creek. QB Jamarian George has shown the ability to lead the offense, while sophomore Alec Bryant and junior Cam’Ron Johnson are the future on defense. Bryant is the younger brother of Lance Bryant, now at Indiana.

“I thank the older guys for what they have done for us,” Bryant said. “They have built the foundation, and we just want to continue it and not let them down.

 

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Jeremy Peña is quietly having a historic season. Composite Getty Image.

All-Star balloting opened up this week for what used to be known as the Midsummer Classic in Major League Baseball. I guess some still refer to it as such but the All-Star Game has been largely a bore for many years, though the honor of being selected on merit remains a big one. As always, fans can vote at all positions except pitcher. The fan balloting has resulted in mostly good selections for years now, though pretty much all teams still do silly marketing stuff trying to drum up support for their players. The Astros’ part in that silliness is their campaign to make it the “All-’Stros” game on the American League squad in Atlanta next month. It’s one thing to be supportive of your team, it’s another to be flat out ridiculous if voting right now for Yainer Diaz, Christian Walker, Yordan Alvarez, Mauricio Dubon, or Cam Smith. The Astros tried to game the system in submitting Jose Altuve as a second baseman where the competition is weaker than it is in the outfield, but given Altuve has played only about 25 percent of the games at second base this season he should not be an All-Star second baseman selectee for what would be the tenth time in his career.

Isaac Paredes’s recent freefall notwithstanding, he has a legitimate case as a backup third baseman, especially with Alex Bregman likely missing more than a month of games due to his quad injury. Jake Meyers is having a fine season but is obviously not an All-Star-worthy outfielder unless he is sensational for the rest of June. That leaves Jeremy Peña, who is simply the best shortstop in the big leagues so far this season. To be clear, no team in baseball (including the Astros) would rather have Peña going forward than the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., but we’re talking about the here and now. There are another 100 games to be played, but Peña not only is about a lock to deserve his first All-Star nod, but he is in contention to put in the books the greatest season ever by an Astro shortstop.

Over his first three seasons, Peña was a consistently mediocre offensive player. His highest batting average was .266, best on-base percentage .324, top slugging percentage .426. He is blowing away all those numbers thus far in 2025. While unlikely to come close to reaching his preseason goal of 50 stolen bases, Peña is swiping bags at the best success rate of his career. Add in Peña’s stellar defense and that he has played in every Astros’ game so far this season, and Peña has been irrefutably one of the 10 best and most valuable players in the American League. You could certainly argue as high as top three.

If Peña's productivity holds up for the rest of the season there are only three other seasons posted by Astro shortstops that are in the same league as what would be Peña’s 2025. Carlos Correa has two of them. Lack of durability may be the biggest reason Correa is not tracking to be a Hall of Famer. In only two seasons as an Astro did Correa play in more than 136 games. He was fabulous in each of them. 2021 was his peak campaign, playing in 148 games while compiling an .850 OPS, winning a Gold Glove, and finishing fifth in AL MVP voting. Correa’s Baseball-Reference wins above replacement number for 2021 was 7.3. Peña is at 3.6 with nearly 20 games still left before the midway point of the schedule.

For the other great Astro shortstop season you have to go back to 1983. Dickie Thon turned 25 years old in June of ‘83. He put up a .798 OPS, which gains in stature given Thon played his home games in the Astrodome when the Dome was at its most pitching-friendly. Thon won the Silver Slugger Award as the best offensive shortstop in the National League, and played superior defense. His Baseball-Reference WAR number was 7.4. He finished seventh for NL MVP playing for an 85-77 Astros’ squad that finished third in the NL West. Dickie Thon looked like an emerging superstar. Then, in the fifth game of the 1984 season, a fastball from Mets’ pitcher Mike Torrez hit Thon in the left eye, fracturing his orbital bone. Thon missed the rest of the ‘84 season. While Thon played in nine more big league seasons, his vision never fully recovered and he was never the same player. It’s one of the biggest “What if...” questions in Astros’ history.

Arms race

Players and the Commissioner’s Office pick the All-Star pitching staffs. Unless he suddenly starts getting lit up regularly, Hunter Brown can pack a bag for Georgia. Framber Valdez wouldn’t make it now but has surged into contention. Josh Hader’s first half is going vastly better than last year’s, so he is in line for a reliever spot.

For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!

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