Five Tigers earn all-state

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Five Tigers earn all-state

Wed, 02/03/2021 - 18:35
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Three on defense, two on offense named to Padilla Poll all-state teams

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Five Sealy Tiger football players were honored on the Padilla Poll Coaches 2020 All-State Team for Class 4A-D2, three on defense and two on offense: Clayton Prazak (1st team defense), Kade Killough (1st team offense), Lane Holley (2nd team defense), Tyler Hennessey (2nd team defense) and Draper Parker (2nd team offense).

Sealy finished as outright district champions and earned two playoff wins for the second time in three years and head football coach Shane Mobley said the honors from both sides of the ball spoke volumes to the quality of this brand of Tiger football.

“For us to have guys on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball, it’s just a testimony to them and how they bought into the program, but more importantly how much they believed in each other this season and how much they played as a team,” Mobley said. “You ask them and they’ll tell you it was the guys around them.”

Most of all, the head coach was grateful this senior class got a full season despite the question marks surrounding the season due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“As much as the kids accomplished this year just going into the year not knowing if we were going to be able to finish, for this group of seniors it was huge,” Mobley said. “For these young men to be honored – and we nominated others as well and there are other all-state lists that aren’t putting one together this year. For the ones that are doing the polls, to nominate the kids to try to get them the recognition they deserve is huge.”

Defensively, Sealy had a representative at each level from the defensive line to the linebackers to the defensive backs and Mobley, who runs the Tigers’ defense, said that also speaks highly of this group.

“They were all huge contributors and huge players. If you go back to the Padilla magazine that’s printed at the beginning of the season, he had Clayton picked as the district’s defensive MVP,” Mobley said. “This is based on coaches from across the state who vote and there were a lot of schools in our region had a lot of kids who represented very well.”

Each of the players were certainly big contributors to the team’s success but as Mobley said, they knew it wasn’t just them out on the field.

“Hennessey, along the way, we knew when the switch came on and how he developed,” Mobley said. “For Holley, we’ve had some really major linebackers play for us since we’ve been here and he stepped in and he was just himself. And of course, Clayton played with a bum shoulder for most of the season but continued to play through the pain and did an outstanding job.”

Similarly, Killough battled through his fair share of injuries and ended his high school career on an all-state recognition.

“He had a knee injury when he was an eighth grader coming into his freshman year, his shoulders had problems but his blocking percentage, pancakes all of that was almost doubled, maybe tripled in some of the things you breakdown in your offensive linemen compared to last year,” Mobley said. “I loved the way he took over, tried to lead with (young guys like Lucas) Zapalac.”

Benefitting from the offensive line’s success was quarterback D’vonne Hmielewski who was able to connect with Parker at wide receiver for more than 1,000 yards and 14 touchdowns in his third varsity season.

“Draper, coming off his sophomore and junior years, for D’vonne to be able to find Draper was huge for the offense’s success,” Mobley said. “He knows the quarterback was the one getting the ball to him … to make the difference that allowed him to do what he needed to do.”

At the end of the day, the fourth-year head coach built a special bond with this year’s graduating class that certainly left its impact on the legendary program that saw its 20th outright district championship in the last 93 years.

“You always preach about doing it better than the year before and that’s where you talk about your program and the culture and traditions,” Mobley said. “We’ve played some really good football teams the last four years and we’ve made our mark. It might not always go the way we want it to but at the same time there are a lot of lessons these kids learn. This group picked it up tremendously from what we wanted.”