Normally the Tom Suiter Extra Effort Award goes to seniors. Every now and then we meet an exception. Enter Southeast Raleigh’s Keysaun Eleazer.

“He was very tall, so that was the first thing I noticed about him,” Monique Gill, his freshman year English teacher, laughed.

“Keysaun is a disruptive defensive player, he’s really always in the backfield, making a mess of things,” Jason Remy, his freshman year science teacher and PA announcer for the Southeast football and basketball team, added.

“He’s very focused in his approach to everything he does,” Southeast Raleigh head football coach Edwin Campbell said.

Eleazer already has offers to play college football all across the country, Power 4 teams included. He wants to go to college, eventually playing in the pros, but he sees a life beyond football.

“The main thing, having football build my opportunities in life.,” Eleazer said.

And that’s what makes him special. How he carries himself away from the game.

“He came in and the first day he was like, ‘good morning, how are you?’ and we don’t typically get that first thing in the morning,” Gill said.

Eleazer is in the biomedical science academy at Southeast Raleigh, working towards a career in sports medicine.

“He’s always had that kind of personality that really is kind of magnetic and other people want to listen to him, whether it’s his fellow students, whether it’s teachers,” Gill said.

“I get calls about him all the time from coaches all across the country interested in him, they never ask about the football side. I enjoy talking to them about his character and who he is as a student and as a young man,” Campbell said.

Incredibly close to his family, Eleazer sees the bigger picture.

“Challenged myself every day, doing things I might not want to do, but know it’s important to do to get me where I want to go,” Eleazer said with a determined expression on his face.

“He’s a leader and he’s going to go far,” Gill said.

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

Source: highschoolot.com