An
Allen (Texas) assistant coach and teacher has died from COVID complications just days before kickoff of the high school football season in the Lone Star State. James Shillam, a first-year defensive coach for the Eagles freshman team, died Sunday, his wife told Dallas media outlets. He was 56.
Allen hosts Plano East on Friday in the season opener.
"He adored every minute of Texas football," his wife Kyp Shillam
told WFAA while sitting in the stands at Allen Eagle Stadium. "For him, Allen was his dream. It was his promised land."
Shillam was hired in July, according to the Allen Independent School District, and according to his wife, became sick in early August. Kyp Shillam told WFAA that he was unvaccinated by "personal choice."
Texas has seen its death rate spike in the past eight weeks. On July 7, there was a seven-day average of 23 deaths, according to
New York Times numbers. Those averages have increased to 154, according to numbers by the Time on Aug. 24. The peak of the COVID death rate was in late January, according to the Times.
Shillam previously coached at
Newman Smith (Carrollton) and was among a handful of first-year varsity coach Chad Morris' hires within the Eagles' program.
"He was everything you want in a coach. He lived and breathed with faith and he walked with it. And he poured into kids," former Newman-Smith coach Paul Ressa told WFAA.
