Sheldon C.E. King’s Cory Laxen is the only first-year head coach at the UIL State Championship Games this week, but he’s no stranger to AT&T Stadium.
He was part of some of the most memorable championship games in Houston history as Galena Park North Shore's offensive line coach for over a decade. There was the overtime win over Austin Westlake in 2015, the Hail Mary win against Duncanville in 2018, the repeat in 2019, and, finally, the 2021 win with a freshman quarterback named Kaleb Bailey.
After that fourth state championship, Laxen was on top of the Texas high school football world. Then, he left to start over.
“I felt like I had felt every emotion that you could possibly feel as a coach (at North Shore),” Laxen said.
In the spring of 2022, Laxen took an assistant position at Sheldon C.E. King. It was only seven miles north of North Shore. Laxen didn’t even have to move. But to TXHSFB pundits, there was a chasm between the program he left and the program he sought. At the time, North Shore had reached five state championship games. Sheldon C.E. King had never made the state semifinals.
“Any time you leave a place like North Shore, you’re rolling the dice,” Laxen said. “When you’re leaving success like that, you just don’t know what you’re going to get into.”
But Laxen’s entire coaching career started with a gamble. After playing football at Rice, Laxen was working a job he didn’t care for, seeking purpose in his post-football life. He would lift weights in the Galena Park High School weight room. It was like an incubator, returning to the place that molded him while he tried to figure out his next move.
One day, Galena Park head coach Ray Zepeda saw his former all-district offensive lineman and asked if he’d be interested in coaching. Zepeda got Laxen into an alternative certification program, and six months later, he was coaching at Galena Park Middle School.
They began as Coach Zepeda and offensive lineman Cory Laxen. On Saturday night at 7:00 p.m., their journeys will cross paths again as UIL Athletic Director Ray Zepeda and state finalist head coach Cory Laxen, putting a bow on the 2025 UIL State Championships.