When Noxapater football coach Casey Orr sat down and looked at the stats from last season, he didn’t like what he saw when it came to Raheem Hathorn.
Hathorn ended the season with 644 yards rushing on 92 carries but in Orr’s mind that just wasn’t good enough.
“When we went to the flexbone, it limited the number of carries he got,” Orr said. “I would have been better off it he had carried it about 20 times a game. I didn’t like it that he didn’t have more touches than he did. In the flexbone, you depend on your backs to block a lot and Raheem was such a good blocker that we ran behind him a lot and it just suited us better. But we are going to fix that this year. I expect him to run it 20 times a game for us this season. He will be the feature back.”
Hathorn joins Shia Moore of Nanih Waiya and Kristian Hopkins of Louisville as part of the Winston County Journal’s 2019 Eleven To Watch.
Hathorn will enter his senior year at Noxapater as a three-year starter on defense at safety. Hathorn led the Tigers with 96 tackles and had four games with double-digit tackles with 12 against Union and J.Z. George while recording 11 against East Marion in the first round of the 1A playoffs and then 10 against rival Nanih Waiya. As a sophomore, Hathorn had 323 yards rushing on 77 carries and had 67 tackles on defense. As a freshman, Hathorn had 442 yards rushing with a career high of 137 yards on 19 carries against Leake County.
Orr said while Hathorn has to play both sides of the football, the 6-foot-3 rising senior is more suited for the defensive side of the football.
“He has played strong safety for us the last three years,” Orr said. “This year, we will roll him down to outside linebacker. But I’ve been with him as he sat in front of these college coaches and he tells them if he has a choice, he would prefer to play defense.”
Hathorn already has offers from Copiah-Lincoln, Coahoma and Holmes. Orr said he also thinks that Hathorn will get offers from Hinds, Gulf Coast, Southwest and Pearl River.
“Co-Lin has offered him as a linebacker and really like him on that side of the football,” Orr said. “I think once he gets into college and can get on a weight program and a meal plan, he can easily get up to 210 or 215 pounds. They like his height and length and think his frame can take some more weight. And he’s a guy that once he plays for two years, there’s no telling where he could end up.”
Orr said it’s the passion and physicality that the college coaches like about Hathorn.
“I think the biggest thing about Raheem is his passion and love for the game of football,” Orr said. “This kid loves football. In this day and age, you get kids who play football but don’t get a lot kids who loves the game. This kid loves football and loves the physicality. He is physical on both sides of the ball. He is going to hit you and is searching for contact. There have been times when we were watching film and he could have gone scored but instead cut back so he could find somebody to run over.”
There is one memory that Orr said he will recall for years to come when thinking about his talented senior.
“So Raheem breaks his hand his sophomore year and had to get a cast put on it on Monday,” Orr said. “So he goes the week with it on and then decides on Friday that he didn’t like the way it felt when he was carrying the football so he cuts it off so he can play on Friday night. I guess when he got home, his mother asked him about the cast and he told her that I cut it off. She called me on Saturday morning to ask me about it. He finally cleared my name in that one but that just shows you how much he loves the game.”
Orr said Hathorn was a leader on the defensive side of the football for the Tigers last season but will need to take a much bigger role this year.
“He doesn’t say a lot but he is a leader for us,” Orr said. “He’s not going to run his mound but when he does get vocal, that’s when everybody pays attention. And he’s a really good kid. He’s the type of kid that is going to do what you ask him to do. He’s gotten a lot better in the classroom the last couple of years. He’s like a lot of kids that don’t get worried about academics until they realize it’s important. But he’s kid that you don’t have to worry about being on time. He is going to do what he is supposed to do.”
