SHERIDAN — Every defense Sheridan High School plays this season will be keeping tabs on junior running back Isaiah Stephens.
“I feel great about this year,” Stephens said. “Put on a lot of muscle. Got more speed, so I’m just ready for this year, see how it goes.”
“Zay” earned all-state honors as a sophomore last season after rushing for 1,568 yards and 21 touchdowns for the Yellowjackets. As Stephens prepares for his junior season, he said his goal is to keep getting better so he can help Sheridan win.
Veteran head coach Kevin Kelley, who is entering his second season with the Yellowjackets, said Stephens is probably the best running back he has ever coached.
“I think what’s great about a guy that can catch out of the backfield, run the ball like he can, maybe not even get touched when there’s five guys in a phone booth with him … what makes him unique is, he’s so good that if they don’t pay quite enough attention to him, he’s going to do great things,” Kelley said. “But if you pay too much attention to him, he’s going to lead you away from somebody else that can do something.”
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Kelley said in Sheridan’s best games last year, the Yellowjackets were able to lean on Stephens when the defense wasn’t focused enough on him, and they used him as a decoy when defenses overcommitted.
Second-year starting quarterback Dax McMellon will be charged with getting the ball to those other playmakers when Stephens is a decoy. Kelley said he expects big things from McMellon and experienced wide receivers J.P. Black and Wylie Depriest.
“Both of them are just going to be rock solid,” Kelley said. “They’re extremely smart. They know how to take advantage of a guy like Isaiah. If we put him out in a route underneath them, they know, I may be the deep guy open on this play, so I’ve gotta make sure I get open. I gotta make sure I focus on the football, turn my head soon enough.”
These returning starters and others were big parts of Kelley’s debut season last year. The 3-8 campaign didn’t always go how the Yellowjackets would have wanted, but they provided glimpses into what Sheridan could become.
They opened the season with a 44-20 home victory over rival White Hall, Sheridan’s first win in the Highway 270 Classic since 2019. The Yellowjackets went on to win 6A-East Conference contests against West Memphis and Sylvan Hills, scoring 62 or more points in each game.
Those wins sent Sheridan to the playoffs for the first time in four years. Stephens rushed for 148 yards and four touchdowns while McMellon threw for 325 yards and three scores, but host Mountain Home slipped past the Yellowjackets in the opening round, 57-50.
Stephens said after getting a taste of playoff football last year, making it back to the postseason and going on a run is all the Yellowjackets talk about.
“We know that we can do it,” Stephens said. “It’s not like we can’t do it. It’s going to keep us ready, let us have it in the back of our minds that we can do anything that we put it to, just as long as we put the work in for it.”
Making the playoffs was the first step. The next is to win a playoff game for the first time since 2011.
The Mountain Home game last year was on the road. Kelley said though it was a good experience for the players, his goal this year is to host a playoff game in Sheridan for the first time since 2019, then win it and try to go on a run from there.
Kelley said last year’s team made the postseason purely on hard work. While he still expects the Yellowjackets to work hard, he said this team should be good enough to make more noise in November.
“They got a chance to see what hard work did,” Kelley said. “We worked hard last year but weren’t very good, and we made the playoffs. What if we actually improve our skills, improve listening to coaching, improve our knowledge of the game of football. How good could we be?”