Jacksonville, FL- When you rush for 7,619 rushing yards and 88 rushing touchdowns in a High School Football career, you’re bound to have a lot of trophies. And Leonard Fournette, the 2017 first round draft pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars, was certainly the recipient of many different trophies in his football career growing up. As George Schroeder wrote in a USA TODAY Sports story in 2015, “At 12, his talent was too much. Parents from opposing teams signed a petition to have him banned”. The story is told by Fournette’s uncle Corey Scott of how Leonard “basically just destroyed ‘park ball by running over all the kids”. Can you imagine parents from the local youth park Sweet Water signing a petition to ban a JV player in Pop Warner? Yet the legend doesn’t end there as Fournette is revered for running over Arizona Cardinals defensive back Tyrann Mathieu when Fournette was just a seventh grader and Mathieu was a senior in high school. With feats like these under his belt, you can just imagine Fournette’s impressive amount of trophies in his display case.
Well Fournette decided to team up with the folks at MET-Rx to melt down his many trophies and turn them into weights for weightlifting. After turning the trophies into weights, Fournette might’ve simply donated them to local schools in his home state of Louisiana. Instead, he chose Raines High School right here in Jacksonville Florida to be the recipients of the trophy weights.
Leonard would go on to start at LSU rushing for 3,830 yards and 40 touchdowns in his college career. He would be named First-team All-SEC (2015) and Second-team All-SEC (2016). Fournette looks to start another trophy collection, this time in his professional career. His first most notable trophy he seeks is the coveted NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award. Which would only add to the legend behind Leonard Fournette’s already weighted football lore.
