SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – After winning the program’s first District Championship in 17 years in 2024-25, the Shelbyville Central Golden Eagles enter the third season under Shane Young continuing to strive for new heights.

Coach Young feels like this year’s squad is by far the best team he’s had so far at Shelbyville Central. Last year, Shelbyville finished as the District 9-4A champs with a Region 5-4A quarterfinal berth at 14-14 overall, an eight-win improvement over a 6-22 season in 2023-24. 

 However, last season came to an abrupt end just four days after celebrating making history in a 62-30 home loss to Nolensville.

“I think we stayed celebrating too long, and with such a quick turnaround from Tuesday to Saturday, we never got past that and moved onto the new tournament with a fresh start,” admitted Young. “Being able to celebrate, but then re-focus and get back to business is what I’m hoping we learned from last year.”

The vast majority of major contributors from a season ago are back for the Golden Eagles, and Young feels like the depth of his team is one of its strengths.

“This team’s bench depth is better than last year,” he said, “I feel pretty confident putting guys in the game to sustain and keep up what we’re trying to do. I do think we are a better team than last year for sure.”

Part of this reason is due to Young’s philosophy of playing the young guys even as freshmen so they can begin that development process and start to gain confidence in themselves and the program.

“I’ve always believed in playing the younger guys for a few reasons. One, because it’s the future, and the other one is you never know who might get hurt, and you have to have the next man up. I developed that philosophy very early in my career because I always wanted to be prepared in case of a situation like a key rotation piece in Jack [Conditt] gets hurt and we can have faith in the other guys to step in,” he explained. “On top of that, the team has faith in those guys, and Jack has faith in those guys, for example. I think that’s a cool part about what we have developed as a team is that they believe in one another and they believe in a freshman. Last year, Braylon Johnson was a freshman that they brought in. This year, it’s Cyonn Rucker. When they bring a guy in, they’re saying that we believe in you and we believe that you can help us, so go do your thing.”

“Another thing about playing that many guys last year is that going into his sophomore year, guys like Braylon are more confident than if I had sat him and I need him now all of a sudden,” Young continued. “Now, he’s already played at this level and got a taste of what it’s like, so we can trust him. It’s about building that trust, especially in the non-district games the first month and a half of the season or so. Of course, we want to win as many games as possible, but they are not the end goal. The end goal is to advance in the postseason and try to get to state. So the question is who can help us by then? That’s what happened last year. Jordan Taylor – who averaged over 13 PPG – and Tommie Cannon got hurt. It forced Malek [Johnson] and Jack Conditt to step up in the guard roles, and we won the district without two of our better guards. I think last year prepared a lot of them, and coming into this year you hope that they can all mesh and play well together.”

That preparation over the past two seasons led to some breakout performances on the way to a district title, including a game-high 20 points from then-sophomore Jevon Lee – 14 of which came in the second half – as well as the go-ahead bucket late in the 60-56 win over Lincoln County. This season, he promises to be an integral part of the Golden Eagles’ success.

Another reason Young is confident in his team’s ability to peak in February and March once again? The senior leadership, both on and off the court paired with the youth. Point guard Malek Johnson, center Tae’Shawn Shelton, shooting guard Jordan Taylor, wing Ladarius Sparrow, and guard Jack Conditt. 

“This senior group leads by committee,” said Young. “Their biggest strength is each other. They all have their own leadership qualities – they hang out with each other, they eat together, they go out and get the young ones involved – so it’s good to see them be that for the whole team. Jordan [Taylor] is the fiery and energetic one. Tae [‘Shawn Shelton] is a quiet assassin, and he’s a guy that everybody kinda gravitates towards because he rocks with everybody. Jack [Conditt] on the outside is the nice and quiet one, but he’s got a flare to him and he’s a competitor. Ladd [Sparrow] is the glue guy, the energy guy, but they’re all connected. I trust in every one of them to get points across and to help the younger ones catch up fast, but Malek [Johnson] is by far the main go-to guy. He orchestrates a lot of the things that we need done. They all have their own qualities that mesh together.”

“By tournament time, I believe that we’ll be firing on all cylinders,” he continued, “We have a tough schedule this year, but for us it’s not about the wins and losses early on as much as it is the development and gameplanning to get ourselves ready for February and March. I feel like our goal as a unit is to make it to state. For them, it’s to make it, for me it’s to win it, but that’s the competitor in me. It’s just going to come down to if we do what I think we’re capable of.”

Young also recognizes that outsiders may continue to think that last year was some sort of one-off run for Shelbyville Central, but he says that both him and his team are focused on improving one day at a time to build for tournament time.

“People might doubt us, people might not respect what we did last year, and that’s fine,” he said, “We don’t want them to. We’ll keep doing what we’re doing because the process that we’re trying to form to get to where we want to go has already started. We did something for the first time in 17 years last season, but that’s not the end goal. That’s nice, but that’s the standard now. We want to continue to build on top of that and stay trending in the right direction.”

Finally, Young expects his team to play a high-intensity, high-tempo brand of basketball that may not appeal to every fan, but does appeal to the win-loss record come the end of the season that, hopefully for his Golden Eagles, ends a bit further down the line than the region quarterfinal round.

“Sometimes, it may not be the typical game that people want to see or some fans want to see, but it’s going to be the game that we want to play. For the most part, we want to get at you defensively and we want to push the tempo. We believe that we can compete with anybody in the state,” he concluded. “It’s going to be exciting, and they might see our guys do some things that they’ve never seen before. At the end of the day, they’ll see the growth in our players.” 

This season, the Golden Eagles have moved to District 6-AAAA within Region 3-AAAA. The district looks slightly different yet similar with familiar faces like Coffee County, Warren County, and Lincoln County joining Cookeville to comprise the five-team district.