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. 

Laxen has prepared his Panthers for what to expect at AT&T Stadium. Jerry World brings a world of distractions, from the jumbotron that spans the length of the field to the suite boxes on field level. He knows there will be some wide eyes when Sheldon C.E. King first runs on the field. But he’s also told them to live in that moment, to soak it in. Because that’s what he’ll do. 

Laxen has been here before. But Sheldon C.E. King head coach Cory Laxen has a different level of appreciation for this game than North Shore offensive line coach Cory Laxen did. If time truly is a flat circle, then the recent college graduate pumping iron in his high school weight room was in the same spot as the decade-long offensive line coach at a TXHSFB dynasty - searching for a new purpose. He found it in building a program up to its first-ever state championship, instead of coaching it to its eighth. 

While he left North Shore, he brought everything he had learned there to his first year as a head coach at Sheldon C.E. King. The biggest lesson: no detail is too small.  

“A kid being late to class may not be a big deal originally, but don’t get mad when he’s late to your meeting room,” Laxen said. “Because these kids are creatures of habit.”

And when the person drilling these fundamentals into them has coached in four state championships, the players are more likely to listen. Over 200 kids attended this past summer’s strength and conditioning program. The previous year, when Sheldon C.E. King went 5-5 and missed the playoffs, the number had barely topped 100. That’s when Laxen and his players knew they could be special. 

“With Coach Lax, I’ve yet to see a guy with one foot in and one foot out,” senior running back Dionne Sims said. “Everybody is all in.”

Sims’ senior season is a microcosm of the entire team. A two-time first team all-district running back entering the year, Sims, a Rice signee, was often overlooked on the recruiting trail because of his size. The Panthers, in a daunting District 23-6A, were projected to miss the playoffs in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine. Now, Sheldon C.E. King is in the state championship behind Sims, who’s rushed for 1,883 yards and 26 touchdowns. 

“We wanted to prove the doubters wrong,” Sims said after the state semifinal win over defending state champion Austin Vandegrift. “All those people at home right now typing behind computers; they’re sitting at home, we’re going to Jerry World.”

Arlington will hold more doubters. DeSoto is led by the hottest running back in the state, SaRod Baker, who’s run for over 1,500 yards and 19 touchdowns in the last five games. Plus, the program has the recent championship pedigree that Sheldon C.E. King lacks, going back-to-back in 2022 and 2023. 

But this year has been full of “firsts” for Sheldon C.E. King: the first regional championship, the first state semifinal win, and the first state championship berth. If this entire season has been about conquering uncharted territory, then this game is nothing new. Sheldon C.E. King has been here before, just like the coach leading them has been here before. But never like this. 

“I don’t think this is a team,” Sims said. “I believe we’re a family.”