SPORTSLINE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Riverside A Gage Larvadain

RESERVE, La. (WAFB) - Our second Sportsline Player of the Week for the 2020 high school football player is identified as an athlete and the performance he put on Thursday is definitely worthy of the honor.

How do you follow up a nearly 200-yard rushing performance on the road? It’s quite simple if you are Riverside athlete Gage Larvadain. Just go on the road again, this time to Catholic of Pointe Coupee, and rush for nearly 300 yards. Plus, throw in touchdown runs of 47, 51, and 68 yards.

“It’s definitely a confidence booster, especially when you can take the first play for however many yards for a touchdown,” said Larvadain. “It definitely relaxes the game.”

Then, you add some drama at the end. After missing most of the fourth quarter with an injury and his team trailing by three points, Larvadain got back into the game and scored for a fifth time, clinching a 61-57 win to get the Rebels to 2-0.

“Sophmore quarterback Luke Hymel and the other guys did a great job getting us downfield,” said head coach Kevin Dizer. “We took a timeout, we were on the four-yard line with I think nine seconds left and Gage came up to me in the huddle and said, ‘Give me the ball,’ and after the night he had I am certainly [going to] oblige to that.”

“Put a guy like Nick Washington in front to lead block for me and great stuff happens. That kind of goes back to that trust factor that I told you about. They have so much trust in me and I have so much trust in them,” Larvadain added.

Having to play multiple positions means having to be an extremely well-conditioned athlete. Larvadain not only gets his running in on the football field but also excels on the basketball court. However, there is one more sport that Dizer says he had to talk his senior athlete into doing.

“Pretty much made him run track as a freshman and just wasn’t quite fast enough to compete with the older guys we had at that time, so we put him in the mile. Well, this joker ends up qualifying for state in the mile as a freshman,” Dizer noted.

“To be able to play quarterback, play receiver, defensive back, if my team needs me to kick a field goal with the game on the line, they will have faith in me, so it’s just great when you can do so much stuff,” Larvadain explained.

WAFB is proud to present this week’s Sportsline Player of the Week award to senior athlete Gage Larvadain.

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