SHELBY — Shelby football enters its new era this year with Jacob Tumele at the helm. Phil Fortier retired last year after five seasons spent building the Tigers back up to a district championship level program.
Tumele is far from the only new face. Two mainstays - two-way stars Jaylin Henderson and Brody Fessenden - are back for their senior seasons, but many of the other biggest names on the 2026 roster enter the season without a lot of varsity experience.
“To me, it really is going to come down to Brody Fessenden and Jaylin Henderson, because everyone sees those kids and how good they are on the football field,” Tumele said. “That’ll be the biggest thing, will be how well they can lead the team and how well people follow them, because at the end of the day, they have to be the mouthpiece for the coach.”
The duo were already team leaders, but their importance is compounded this year by the Tigers’ lack of experience up front. Tumele said none of the offensive linemen enter the season having played varsity. However, the group is proving to be coachable and willing to learn.
Some of those players are Santos Melchor, Andy Bone, Jesus Vasquez, Chace Oakes and Max Estrada. Oakes in particular stands out physically with his height and impressive build.
“He’s a good kid,” Tumele said of Oakes. “He gives unbelievable effort, just something that you can’t coach. You (almost) have to coach it out of kids, so for him to have that is really exciting. I’m grateful to have him, that’s for sure.”
With such a new offensive line, the Tigers expect to incorporate some more misdirection and deception into the offense to give the young players an advantage against opposing defenses.
“Now, you’re going to ask high school kids to think quickly on their feet in moments to be lined up correctly, and possibly give us a free five yards,” Tumele said. “We won’t have one offensive lineman that has any varsity experience, so we have to make up for that in some way.”
The defense is being run by Derek Phillips, who Tumele said worked with Fortier the past couple of years and previously coached under Bill Crane at Kent City. As is typical for the Tigers, just about everyone who plays a big role on offense will do so on defense too. Depth is always a concern with as small a roster as Shelby has.
“We don’t have a ton of bodies,” Tumele said. “I believe we’re going to be physical. I believe we have that effort.”
Tumele is focused on culture-building with the young Tigers’ roster as much as he is about X’s and O’s. With adversity being inevitable in football, a resilient mindset will help Shelby respond when needed.
“We really try to be very intentional on developing our kids as people,” Tumele said. “We want to develop them as people, so we’re able to respond when games get tight or when adversity hits. We can respond the right way. My big focus is on developing our culture, which is basically how we do things. How we communicate, how we do the work. That’ll be the biggest thing for us.”
The West Michigan Conference Rivers should be competitive, Tumele said, with Ravenna drawing a lot of attention. North Muskegon hasn’t lost a WMC Rivers game since the divisional split, so the Norsemen are always a notable matchup. The Tigers’ schedule is identical to last year. Manistee joins the Rivers with rival Hart moving to the Lakes, so Hart is now a non-conference game.
“The biggest question mark or hurdle for us that we’ll have to overcome, will be some of the storms that are brewing,” Tumele said. “Just being coachable when those storms are coming and responding when things get hard.”
