CHILLICOTHE — Keep an eye on Cartae Ligon.
He is going places.
Ligon, 16, a freshman, at Chillicothe High School, is the All-Gazette Breakout Football Player of the Year.
“I started playing flag football in second grade, then after that from third grade to now, I’ve been playing tackle football,” Ligon said.
By fifth or sixth grade, he knew he loved the games.
“It was just a lot of fun, and we won a lot of games. We won the Super Bowl like every year, and in middle school, we went undefeated,” Ligon said. “It’s fun to be playing with guys I have been playing with for a long time.”
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Ligon, the son of Tashia Mickey, started the season playing wide receiver, but due to injury, he became the starting running back for the Cavaliers in Week 3. He rushed for 1,104 yards and 10 touchdowns overall.
In the Frontier Athletic Conference, his lowest total was 136 yards rushing in a game. In league play, he had 820 yards and eight touchdowns. In addition, he also had 220 yards on 22 catches.
In nominating him for the All-Gazette football team, his former coach Scott Bartholomew said, “as a freshman, he was our best football player.”
When the injury happened to a senior player in the second game of the season, Ligon was tapped in because he had played running back while in middle school.
From there, he made the position his own.
And it wasn’t easy doing it for a team that didn’t win its first game until Week 8.
When asked about his mindset going into games when they weren’t winning, he said, “Just for us to get a win. I feel like we played pretty good every game, we just fell short a lot.”
The team’s first win was 40-7 over McClain. Ligon had 173 yards on 19 carries and two touchdowns.
“It felt good. It was a blowout win. Everyone was excited,” Ligon said.
Then the following week they nipped Miami Trace 28-25 where Ligon scored three rushing touchdowns and one receiving touchdown.
Ligon said has speed when he breaks into the open field, and most of his runs were up the middle as dictated by the offense. The offense ran through him for most of the season as the Cavaliers leaned heavily on the run over the pass. Ligon said he was ready for the workload.
“The coach talked about to me before I became the starter and asked me if I was ready for it, and I said yeah,” Ligon said.
The offensive line was very good, Ligon said. He said it was their blocking that helped him get his yardage, and when he was running on the outside, it was the wide receivers who stepped up to clear the path for him.
And he doesn’t do all his work on offense. On defense, he plays safety, and he was fourth on the team with 70 tackles – 23 of them solo tackles – with two interceptions.
“I like offense better, but I like hitting on defense,” Ligon said.
When on defense, he will see if he can get an interception, but if the play isn’t there, he is simply going to hit the offensive player.
Mickey said it’s exciting watching her son play because she knows he loves it.
“It was tough with all the losses, but one thing is he never gave up,” she said.
Ligon does play other sports — basketball and track. During middle school, he competed in the high jump, long jump, 100, 200, 400. In high school, he said he will probably do the high jump, long jump and relays.
With a new coach to be hired, Ligon doesn’t know yet what kind of offense the Cavaliers will have next year. For the offseason, he just plans on training a lot, lifting and eating well with the expectations that he will be next year’s starting running back from day one.
As a freshman, he has already learned to adjust.
“What I realized was a lot of things from middle school don’t work as well at high school, so I had to change things up,” Ligon said. “Like trying to break a lot of tackles or cutting back, so I had to stop doing that and stop taking extra hits.”
His goals for his sophomore season are simple – do what he did this year, but better, and with a winning record for the team overall. He would like to see them make it to the playoffs next season and win at least one game.
As for his future, well, it’s a little early yet, but his dream would be to play at his favorite college — The Ohio State University.
This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: All-Gazette Breakout Football Player of the Year 2024
