By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
Kinda crazy, isn’t it, that the best wide receiver on Bossier’s team is one of the top rushers in the city.
The best Bearkat receiver also is closing in on 1,000 yards passing, which would make him a rarity in high school football: to run and throw for 1,000 yards. That hasn’t been done in more than 20 years in Shreveport-Bossier.
But that’s how things have worked out this year for Bossier and sophomore Montrevell Lewis.
“He is, by far, our best receiver,” said Bossier coach Gary Smith. “So we wanted to be able to play him at receiver.”
Until necessity got in the way.
Even though Lewis will admit that he still thinks of himself as a receiver, he’s not. He’s the Bearkats quarterback and has been one of the biggest surprises for Bossier and in the Shreveport-Bossier area.
Heading into tonight’s game against Northwood, Bossier is 3-3 this season, averaging 37 points per game, and a big reason why is Lewis, who didn’t even start the season at quarterback.
Suffice it to say, he’s made up for lost time.
Lewis is second in the city with 999 yards and already has 20 rushing touchdowns. There are entire teams that don’t rush for 20 touchdowns in a full season, much less in fewer than six games.
He has passed for 912 yards, completing 67.7 percent of his passes.
“It’s all right,” Lewis said of his time at quarterback. “But I still want to play receiver.”
At some point, somebody’s going to actually tell Lewis that this quarterback gig is working out pretty good so far.
But that sure wasn’t the plan from the start.
The Bearkats have had an unsettled quarterback situation for the last couple of years and Smith tried to piece together something to start this season by having a football-turned-basketball-turned-football player at that spot.
But in the opener against North Caddo, there were fumbles, fumbles and more fumbles, so it was time for Plan B. To be honest, Smith wasn’t quite sure how that plan was going to work out.
“Out of frustration, we just went to Montrevell and told him let’s just try to win this game,” Smith said “And so Montrevell went in and did a great job. Then the second week he did a great job. We wanted him to play receiver. But we know we are way better with Montrevell at quarterback.”
“It was surprising when that happened since I hadn’t played quarterback since last year,” Lewis said.
By the time it was halftime in the opener, Smith knew he had his man. All he had to do was look at the scoreboard and see that the Bearkats had scored six touchdowns on the way to a 63-25 win.
Bossier then scored at least 40 points in each of the next three games.
“After every week, I’ve seen improvement,” Lewis said. “Both in me and the whole team.”
It was wise to snap the ball to him every play because once he has the ball in his hands, there’s no telling what he might do.
Loyola found that out last week.
Even though the Flyers won, Lewis ran for 236 yards and threw for 108 more. The Bearkats scored four touchdowns, all by the feet or the arm of Lewis, who has an uncanny knack of doing the most basic thing an offensive player can do: Avoid tacklers.
“What are you going to do?” Loyola coach John Sella said. “He makes you miss and he never stops his legs. And it doesn’t seem like he ever gets tired. It makes it tough when you cover everything perfectly and he gets out in space and there’s nothing you can do.”
So maybe Lewis could find a way to play quarterback and catch his own passes, so that he could still scratch that receiver itch.
“You never know,” he said. “I might try that.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com