Rolesville head coach Ranier Rackley and senior quarterback Braden Atkinson go back a long time.

“I have the privilege and the honor to coach Braden for the longest man,” Rackley said.

“He’s a great coach to me, but I call him an uncle to me. Off the field, love him, we always call and text and talk, he’s a really good figure in my life,” Atkinson said.

Rackely has watched Atkinson grow into the leader the Rams football team needs.

“When they up, when they down when life stuff happens, he still is an upbeat kid and that also translates to the game field.

So what does being a leader look like to Atkinson?

“Being that guy that someone can look to, if they’re down, you can pick them up,” Atkinson said.

Even when he’s struggled.

“It just brings me to tears some times talking about it ’cause I know what he went through,” Rackley said.

His freshman year, Atkinson tore his ACL. The recovery was a hard process, but one he jumped into with extra effort.

“I had a lot of long nights during that recover, I feel like it shaped me because I’ve always just persevered and just pushed through the injury, and just getting back and playing at 100 percent,” Atkinson said.

So it’s the work he does on the field for the Rams, but Rackley says it’s what he does off the field that makes his quarterback special.

“4.2+ GPA kid, he’s 5 percent in his class, that stuff is beyond football, he’s been doing that before he started playing football,” Rackley said.

And that’s why Braden Atkinson is this week’s winner of the Tom Suiter Extra Effort Award.

If you have a player you’d like to nominate for the Tom Suiter Extra Effort Award, you can fill out a form HERE.

Source: highschoolot.com