One of the concerns entering this season for the nationally ranked Duncanville High School offense was finding a replacement for talented former Panthers tailback Caden Durham, a two-time Texas high school football state champion and now a freshman at Louisiana State University.
On Saturday, Durham, SBLive’s 2023 All-Texas running back first team, was outstanding in LSU’s 36-33 road win over South Carolina in a thrilling back-and-forth game.
Soon after, Duncanville won a tight high school football showdown, defeating St. Francis Academy (Md.) 28-24 in a national ranking showdown.
The Panthers got big yards from senior tailback JaQuaron Armstrong, who gained 88 yards on 21 carries, 70 of which came in the second half.
Shortly after the game ended, Armstrong received a congratulatory call from Durham, who had scored two touchdowns and gained nearly 100 yards in LSU’s come-from-behind win at South Carolina early Saturday.
“(He told me) to keep going. … He just told me to hold my head up high and play the way I play,” Armstrong said.
“Kaden set a high standard, so I’m just trying to reach it. … I need to follow in his footsteps and I want to do that.”
Armstrong’s biggest run came when he went for a 28-yard gain to the St. Francis 37 during Duncanville’s victory-clinching drive.
“I knew I had to get the team into the red zone and I had the team on my back,” Armstrong said. “I knew if I went in there and fired the team up, we’d have an advantage in the box. We were down going into halftime, but we picked our heads up, fired the team up and just kept going. We just did what we were supposed to do.”
Armstrong added that he has only received one college offer from Colorado State-Pueblo, but he believes that with a performance like Saturday’s, especially one that puts Duncanville in position to win its third straight 6A Division I championship, Armstrong will receive offers from even more schools.
“I hope to continue to work hard and achieve more,” he said.
“(St. Francis Academy) was a good team. We both tried hard, we both played hard, and we just came out with the win.”
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Texas high school football Week 3:
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SBLIVE SPORTS begins broadcasting high school games on SI
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— Buck Ringgold | buck@scorebooklive.com | @sblivetx
