Midway senior Chase Holland has been playing football since he was, in his words, a wee little thing.

“Instead of me hitting people blocking, they had me running in touchdowns,” Holland said.

But he doesn’t get many running back reps now for the Raiders.

“No no, the score would be too high if they did,” he laughed.

Starting center for the varsity team, Holland has a love for sports. He wants to go into the illustrious field of sports journalism. He brings his own twist to being the public announcer at Midway JV Football games and baseball games.

“At the baseball field they’ve got a little mic and I hit that button and all you hear is this luscious voice go all across the crowd. Last JV game, I hit them with the line, there’s two things I don’t like in this world, one of them is eating my vegetables and the other is a quiet home crowd. That got a good little reaction there.”

Holland is a big personality with an even bigger heart.

“He’s always got a smile on his face, usually a crowd of people around him, most of them have smiles on their faces,” Midway Athletics Director Brandon Lusk said.

He wants to spread that joy to the community around him.

“My roots are deep here, I just want to show the love I was shown back to those people,” Holland said.

“You know, it makes you want to do good, it’s like having a good role model, a good mentor, he does it and he’s just a teenager,” head coach Barrett Sloan said.

“Chase does the right thing, the right way at the right time. He’s always going to be there for you, he’s going to give it his best effort no matter what’s happening or what he’s doing,” offensive line coach Brad Hardison said.

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

Source: highschoolot.com