Why the ‘new guy’ in Manatee County football, Parrish High, is off to 1st winning season
It was 2019 and the newest public high school, Parrish Community, embarked on its debut football season.
Head coach Christopher Culton needed players, whether they had experience or not.
“I was worried we weren’t going to have enough people to field a team,” Culton said about that season. “So I had kids from the band ... I had kids that had never (and) I said, ‘Just come on out and try it. Try it for two weeks and see if you like it.’”
One of those to join was James Keen, who had never played football. Keen was a baseball player. In the summer heading into his freshman year, Keen and his parents discussed how football could help him with baseball.
But by the second game, which doubled as his first start, Keen was hooked.
“I had fun that game and then it kind of stuck throughout the season (starting games),” Keen said. “And then, just as time came through, I just got better and it just kind of turned into what I enjoyed more.”
Fast forward to 2022 and Keen is a senior linebacker that has developed into making play calls on the field. It’s part of the program building Culton was tasked with when he was hired in January 2019.
And in 2022, the work started showing results with the Bulls starting 4-1 for the first time in their short history.
“It’s been cool to see the growth,” Keen said. “Because the first year, we only won that one game in JV ... in the second year, we went winless. And then last year, we started to win a few games. And this year, we started out 4-1, and it’s pretty cool just to see we went from the team that had no wins in the second year and now in the fourth year, in two years, we went 4-1 in the first five games.”
After winning their first four games, the Bulls fell last Friday to district foe Southeast and look to avoid a two-game losing streak when they travel to Braden River for another district game this week.
“When we played Southeast, (they) were 0-4,” Culton said. “You want to see what tradition looks like, you want to see what pride looks like, you want to see what (a) state championship team is, you want to see a team dig their heels in, that was it. That is what tradition looks like. ... And there’s a part of them that says, ‘We’re not going to let this new team come in.’ And there’s that little extra drive, that extra kick.
“I said, ‘Guys, you’ve got to understand we are going to get their best shot. They are going to try and knock us out. And we weren’t ready for that and we got stung. Same thing with Braden River, know this: we are going into a hornet’s nest. We are going into a hostile situation where nobody wants to lose to the new guy.’”
Through those five games, Parrish has seen its offense deliver through quarterback Jackson Volz and running back Javon Moss, while the defense has produced with middle linebacker Gage Cameron and defensive tackle Jordan Radkey.
But none are seniors. That’s where Keen, who ranks second on the team in tackles behind Cameron, steps in.
And it was that early action of his career that helped steer him from the baseball diamond to the football field on a permanent basis.
It was also a play in that game that left an impression on Culton.
“It was a 4th-and-1 and they were in a straight old-school ISO downhill type of thing,” Culton said. “We called a blitz and he absolutely got trucked, but he made contact behind the line of scrimmage and there was a ... pop. He got run over, but he hit him in the backfield and as he’s going down, he’s holding on and the rest of the team rallies around and get the fourth down stop. ... It was him sacrificing everything and there was nothing left he could have given.”
Culton said when Keen came off the field, he told him “he could do this.”
“Being new to the sport, I didn’t know anything,” Keen said. “It was fourth down and I thought it was fourth down and long, so I thought I was blitzing the pass rush. So I run through ‘A’ gap and I don’t get touched, well here comes the running back. And I didn’t notice him, because it was fourth and long and that’s why I’m blitzing. Because I had never blitzed on a run play. I get through there and the quarterback doesn’t have the ball, and then I realized the running back had it. We kind of collided and both stopped dead in our tracks ... the defense rallied behind me and we tackled him.”
Though Keen is still involved with the Future Farmers of America (FFA) program, his athletic career was shifted toward logging as many hours as possible with football. Not knowing down and distance, the rules and anything else, Keen suddenly went from never watching or playing the sport to consuming it all.
And it’s led to where he is now, with 47 tackles and four tackles for a loss through five games.
This story was originally published October 14, 2022 at 10:53 AM.
