Gatorade POY Lewis Fully
Healed, Raring to Go
So there he stood, basically helpless.
After his knee injury, Lewis felt helpless when it
came to being much more than a cheerleader while
his Cleveland Storm teammates tried to win the 6A
state championship game without him on the field.
Prior to the eighth game of his junior season at
Cleveland High, Dorian Lewis was a sensation.
Rushing for 1,583 yards and 20 TDs, averaging over
11 yards per carry, and adding 10 catches for 178
yards and three TDs, all while his team purred along
undefeated. In that eighth game Lewis suffered a
devastating knee injury - ACL, MCL, meniscus, the
whole works - and while that ended his season it
didn’t stop Cleveland from reaching the state final
in unbeaten fashion.
However, on that day in November, without their
star running back on the field, the Storm came up
short in a crushing 33-14 loss to La Cueva. “It was
tough, real tough, standing there on the sideline
that day, knowing there wasn’t anything I could do
08 2019 Albuquerque High Schools Football Yearbook
Cl e v e l and
running back
Dorian Lewis
has overcome
a horrible knee
injury to again
be a dominant
running back.
for my team but to cheer them on,” says Lewis.
And another thing, a real nice thing, about
those eight games Lewis did get to play - they
were dominant enough for him to be named as
New Mexico’s Gatorade Player of the Year...as an
underclassman who played only two-thirds of the
season. You have to be some sort of great player to
pull that off.
His head coach, Heath Ridenour, certainly falls
in the camp that calls Lewis some sort of special
running back.
“Dorian’s best assets are his vision and his
toughness. Dorian sees the field as well as any
player I have ever coached,” says Coach Ridenour.
“I made a point early on while coaching him not to
over-coach the little things because I wanted to let
his natural skills take over. I didn’t want to slow him
down thinking about cuts.”
And what’s more, Dorian Lewis is also an
outstanding young man and teammate.