Clayton News Daily

In 2002, when Woodland football coach Scott Schmitt was an assistant at McIntosh, he watched a kicker named Robert Huefner win the Wendy's High School Heisman award. Huefner went to New York, was honored during ESPN's nationally televized ceremony of the college Heisman Memorial Trophy, eventually went to Harvard and got free food from Wendy's for a year.

This year, he hopes to watch another one of his players win the award.

Wolfpack senior linebacker Dillon Livecche was recently named the male nominee from Georgia. Later this month, he'll find out whether he'll be chosen as one of 12 National Finalists — one male and one female — from six geographical regions.

From that group, two National Winners are chosen — one male and one female — to be honored in New York as a Wendy's High School Heisman National Award Winner, an award created in 1994 to honor high school student-athletes.

And the way Schmitt sees it, Livecche compares favorably to Huefner.

"He's got everything that boy did," Schmitt said, "if not more."

Livecche's academic and athletic resume is impressive: A 4.0 grade-point average; strong SAT and ACT test scores; captain on the football team; second-leading tackler on the defense; does after-school tutoring; and participates in the "Wolfpack Walk," a reading program with Woodland football players and students at Woodland Elementary School.

Livecche said he thought he had a good chance of advancing in the nomination process, but was unsure of how far he'd make it.

To win would be a meaningful recognition of all the hard work he's put in during his high school career, Livecche said.

"It would mean a lot. It would be monumental," Livecche said. "I do work hard, and that would be a way to show how I've been working hard my whole life."