Stranahan honors late teammate with third state title in four years. ‘He was the engine’
At a table next to Stranahan’s bench inside the RP Funding Center, the Mighty Dragons left a place for Jahkari Fye to watch yet another state championship celebration.
He had been an instrumental part of Stranahan’s last state title in 2020 as a feisty sophomore guard, even though he was just a reserve. “He was a little guy, but a big soul,” coach Edward Shuler said. “He was the engine.”
It has been almost 18 months since Fye, only 16, died after dealing with a rare medical condition. The Class 5A championship Saturday should have been his final game as a Dragon. Stranahan made sure he was still a part of it, with his No. 1 jersey draped over a chair and, in the final minutes, the emergence of a 9-foot cardboard cutout of Fye to watch the Dragons rout St. Petersburg, 64-40, for their third state title in four years.
“He’s always going to be a part of our program,” Shuler said.
Stranahan posed for photos with the cutout after the game. An assistant coach ran around the arena with the jersey held high. Fye’s mother even handed the Dragons their gold medals after they finished off the blowout win.
At 5-foot-7, Fye fit the mold of the player Stranahan (27-3) has used to build an unlikely dynasty in Fort Lauderdale. The Dragons are almost always undersized and rarely have big-time college prospects or high-level scorers. They usually win anyway with toughness, endurance and physicality.
When it won its first ever state championship in 2019, Stranahan came out of nowhere after former coach Terrence Williams restarted the his alma mater’s swim team and had all of his players join to build up their stamina. When they repeated in 2020, the Dragons did it without a single player taller than 6-3.
For its third championship in four years, Stranahan won with defense and tenacity, holding the Green Devils to 15 of 42 from the field and outscoring St. Petersburg, 13-6, in second-chance points.
Forward Hykeem Williams, the closest thing the Dragons have to a star as a four-star wide receiver in the 247Sports.com composite rankings for the Class of 2023, finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds, and 6-3 wing Houston Culpepper, the son of former All-Pro quarterback Daunte Culpepper, added 10 and seven with two blocks.
Stranahan almost didn’t even get this chance, though. On Thursday, the Dragons needed a last-second putback just to survive an upset bid from Pensacola Pine Forest in the 5A semifinals.
“I’m glad we did it,” Williams joked. “They probably thought we were horrible.”
Guard Tamarrien Thorpe, who scored 11 points, said some of his teammates were even crying after the win because they realized how close they were to blowing this.
“I know I was,” Shuler interjected.
It wound up being a “walk-up call,” Thrope said. The Dragons led for the final 28 minutes Saturday, held the Green Devils (25-6) to just 10 points in the first half and never led by less than 11 in the second.
With everything Stranahan has been through in the last two years, one bad performance wasn’t going to be enough to derail its title hopes.
Last season was incomprehensibly difficult for the Dragons. A few months before the season, Culpepper’s sister, Aysia Culpepper, died in a car accident. A few months later, Fye died. Once the season began, COVID-19 stoppages kept interrupting Stranahan and eventually their coach got arrested for defrauding the government’s COVID relief fund. Shuler took over and the Dragons didn’t even make it out of their district playoffs.
“There was just too much going on, too many emotions,” Shuler said. “This season gave me a chance to hit the reset button.”
In his first full season as coach, Shuler had Stranahan looking like its usual self again. The Dragons allowed only 46.1 points per game and won their third Florida High School Athletic Association championship by holding St. Petersburg to its lowest point total of the season. The Green Devils committed 28 turnovers, and Stranahan outscored them 42-26 in the paint. The Dragons shut out star guard Tristan Gross, who averages more than 20 points per game, for the entire first half and held him to just eight points in the second.
It wasn’t flashy, but it never has been for Stranahan, which went 62 years without winning a state title before finally breaking through in 2019. The Dragons are in elite company now — they join Dillard and Blanche Ely as the only Broward County Public Schools to ever win at least three FHSAA titles in four years — and they keep doing it their way.
“We know all the good schools down there in Broward. We could’ve easily went there out of middle school,” Williams said, “but we like to write our own story.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2022 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Stranahan honors late teammate with third state title in four years. ‘He was the engine’."
