This is the moment every Jordan player and coach has been waiting for.

Two years after opening the school and starting its football program, the Warriors are finally ready for a full season of football, with competition in a district and a chance to prove themselves.

Jordan has been waiting with baited breath for the opportunity and has prepared for this moment. Spending all of last year playing any UIL program that they could and spending as much time as possible competing through the spring and summer, including making the State 7-on-7 tournament.

 “The buy-in has been tremendous,” said Jordan head coach Mike Rabe. “We’ve had a really good summer and our spring practices were solid, along with our spring game. We got to see a lot of things that we needed to. Now we’re just excited to get started and play somebody new.”

All of that has ben building to this fall. When Jordan joins one of the toughest districts in the state in District 19-6A.

Despite being young, the Warriors boast an impressive arsenal on offense, and have a chance to be explosive this year.

Junior quarterback Colin Willetts has a cannon of an arm and the Warriors offense isn’t short on weapons. Sophomore receiver Andrew Marsh headlines the list, as he has already shown a proficiency for making huge plays in the pass game and has a great combo of speed and size, but he isn’t alone as a weapon. Senior receiver Nathan Salz is a leader on the team and is one of the fastest players in the district, he will provide a huge deep threat that will keep defenses honest and allow other players to thrive as well. Zechariah Sample will be a huge threat in the slot while Connor Babin and Walker Roby both are good players that can make plays happen.

Chad Gasper and Ifeanyi Monye are both threats in the run game and are good compliments to each other, but the big question mark for the Jordan offense is the offensive line, as this is the first year the program will have seniors and overall the team is still very young, although Jovanni Melchor is a strong player on the line.

 “It’s a really fun group,” Rabe said. “There’s so many weapons out there to distribute the ball too and they all do a good job of playing together. There’s a really good team mentality, they practice for each other and they play hard for each other so it’s really exciting and I think they can do some really good things this year.”

Defensively, the team is led by Braden Franklin at the back end, as he is the quarterback of the defense at safety, while Zion Jones and Sample both will be big keys in the secondary. Eli Fullerton will anchor the defensive line while Josh Gulizia will be a key player at linebacker, but the entire unit will have to learn what it takes to compete with other teams in Katy ISD.

“Braden has done a tremendous job stepping up,” Rabe said. “With his presence in the back end, everyone knows that we are going to get lined up right and that all the calls are going to be right. Everyone trusts him to put us in good situations and he’s proven that he can do that. It’s always comforting when you have a guy in the secondary that can do that for you.”

While this will be a new experience for the players, it’s far from it for head coach Mike Rabe, who had the head job at Mayde Creek from the 2015-2019 seasons. He’s already had plenty of experience building up a program and competing within Katy ISD and he expects this team to do nothing less than put their best foot forward every week.
“This is a tough district, people in this district play extremely hard every single game,” Rabe said. “The guys are going to have to get used to that really quick. You have to everything you have on the line for all four quarters if you want to win a football game in this district. They’re going to have to learn how to do that quickly in those first two games, and that’s why we scheduled high quality non-district opponents. We know how important it will be.”