Frisco – Their perfect season teetered in the balance as time was running out, and the ball was headed toward Braden Shoop.
As the rest of his Summit High School teammates shouted that the pass was in the air and spun to watch its trajectory, the 18-year-old sprinted stride for stride with the opposing team’s wide receiver streaking down the sideline.
“We knew they were going deep. It was their last shot,” said Shoop, a senior who spent most of his teenage years sailing around the world with his family instead of playing sports.
The two players simultaneously lunged backwards for the fading pass and, just in front of his own goal line, Shoop somehow came down with the ball cradled between his left hand – and his stump.
“That sealed the deal,” Shoop said with pride.
Born with a fingerless stump at the end of his right wrist, the 6-foot-1 towhead with the easy smile and no-nonsense demeanor is considered a “shut-down” cornerback who leads the team in interceptions and even has scored two touchdowns as the team’s No. 3 wide receiver.
Shoop’s tumbling catch was an improbable play to save an improbable victory in an improbable season, one that has seen the Tigers develop from a laughingstock independent team to being Central Metro League champions and one win away from playing for the state 3A title. Summit (12-0) plays Saturday at Pueblo County (10-2) at 1 p.m. in the semifinals.
While much of the attention and credit for Summit’s success have gone to the unflappable sophomore quarterback Talon Roggasch and standout two-way players Scott Campbell and Drew Crangle, it is the workaday contributions from key role players such as Shoop that have been crucial on a team without any blue-chip stars.
“We’re a team of blue-collar workers,” said head coach Dylan Hollingsworth, a 33-year-old dynamo who took over the team last year and instilled a sense of camaraderie, pride and the no-excuses self-reliance reflected in Shoop.
“He’s just a great athlete and has a tremendous, tremendous work ethic,” Hollingsworth said. “He’s a perfectionist almost to a fault. You know he’s not going to make excuses for why he can’t achieve something.”
Shoop’s father, Kirk, a volunteer assistant with the team, said Braden would rather be known for what he can do than what he can’t do. And he can do everything – that’s the lesson he and his wife, Deborah, taught Braden from the time he was a tyke, when they opted not to fit him with a prosthetic hand.
“I know we’re awfully proud of him, especially when we look back over his life at all the things he’s overcome,” Kirk Shoop said.
Still, Braden played only soccer as a child – “I figured I’d be good at kicking,” he said – and he lived in relative isolation for five years on the family’s 64-foot sailboat after his father’s youthful retirement as a successful dot-commer.
He said he misses those days of cruising to exotic ports around the world, but he acknowledged the difficulties of attending home-school aboard the boat named Kela – the Hawaiian word for “to excel or to exceed beyond all expectations.”
“I really appreciate being in school and being part of the team,” he said.
Shoop quickly deflects any sort of praise toward his teammates, noting that the four fourth-year players deserve credit for their perseverance for enduring a 1-9 record in their freshman year.
At that point, Summit’s varsity and junior varsity teams combined consisted of 23 players, Hollingsworth said, and one of his first jobs was to recruit some new blood from the school’s other sports, including its vaunted ski team.
Today, the program boasts 64 players, including 6-foot-5 receiver Ryan Eberhart, a touted basketball player.
“The more fun they have, and the more success they have, the more kids we’ll get,” Hollingsworth said. “These days, there’s so much specialization, and kids have to concentrate on one sport all year. I encourage our players to play as many sports as they want.”
In the past, the stands at Tiger Field – elevation 9,100 feet – typically held fewer than 200 people, mostly parents. This year, as the Tigers started showing their form by midseason, overflow crowds of more than 1,500 were common.
“It’s crazy,” Crangle said. “We’re going out to lunch, wearing our football jackets, and people are going: ‘You guys going to win it all?”‘
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com.
