High school football player of the week: Slayden Dickinson, Canadian

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — The week four MyHighPlains.com high school football player of the week is junior running back Slayden Dickinson, from Canadian High School. The Wildcats defeated Muleshoe in a barn burner 74-67.

Dickinson put the team on his back carrying the ball for a monstrous 38 times for a whopping 381 rushing yards and seven touchdowns.

After running wild and touching pay dirt seven times Dickinson credits his performance to the big guys upfront.

“Man, I would say my linemen just worked their tails off to get up to those backers and block out and make a hole for me,” said Dickinson.

Following the four hour scoring fest, Slayden described how Canadian was able to band together and come out on top.

“This is probably one of the longest games I’ve ever been a part of, four hours in list. And I’d say from the first and second quarter, it was real, real good shootout. We it was like always back and forth, and they’d score, we’d score, and no one could stop each other,” said Dickinson. “But once we hit that third quarter, in our minds, it got to where we needed to stop them and we needed to score, and we needed to keep on scoring. We got into third quarter, had a good kickoff, stopped them right after that, and then went down, scored twice, and went up and kept it there.”

Slayden shared his key to success after his dominate performance that also included a 100 plus yard run, one catch and two tackles.

“I just had to rely on my teammates, you got to be confident in your team and not just yourself, and just be confident in the man next to you, is what our coaches say, because if you’re not confident in them, then you’re not going to be able to make it anywhere,” said Dickinson.

Head Coach Andy Cavalier shared his thoughts on Slayden’s recent dominance.

“First of all, Slayden received the benefit of some guys doing a lot of work up in front of him. You know, I think our offensive line just did a great job Friday night. But Slayden extended runs, broke tackles ran extremely tough, you know, just all around, great running back performance, from him,” said Cavalier.

The game was back and forth for the Wildcats as Muleshoe provided 67 points in the shootout, coach Cavalier said this was partly due to both of their defenses also playing offense.

“You know, in a football game, there’s always lots of ebbs and flows and ups and downs and being able to stay focused on the task at hand through all that is something we talked a lot about in this game. In particular, it was lots of scoring for the offenses and lots of being scored on for the defenses. So for both of our teams, those are the pretty much the same guys on either side,” said Cavalier.

Coach Cavalier detailed that he is proud of his team and how they fought to become victorious against a tough Muleshoe team.

“We just continued to talk about, they just keep fighting, keep fighting. You know, we’re just looking for that, that break, to tilt things our way. And when it came down to it, in the end, my we had 88-yard drive in the final minutes and scored with, you know, under a minute to play. I’m just extremely proud of our guys to keep battling through that and be able to finish in such a clutch fashion that way,” said Cavalier.

This week a tough Sunray team is on the schedule for the Wildcats, Canadian will prepare for the challenge by becoming a Sunray expert.

“Sunray is going to be a huge challenge for us. Those guys are, are really talented, all over the field, up front and with their skill kids and play really hard do do a great job. I think from our guys, we just need to focus on us. You know, try to do the very best we can the jobs that we have become an expert at what we know about Sunray. It’s been a great week practicing and preparing against each other to try to give ourselves the best chance against them. And I think if we do that, then we’ll give ourselves a chance, and we’ll get to go out there and compete and see what happens,” said Cavalier.

For the latest Amarillo news and regional updates, check with MyHighPlains.com and tune in to KAMR Local 4 News at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 p.m. and Fox 14 News at 9:00 p.m. CST.