Robert Leveillee burns up the sideline on his way to one of his seven touchdowns against Telstar High School on September 2. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal
It was just Robert’s week.
Mountain Valley senior Robert Leveillee was a one-man wrecking machine in the season opener, scoring seven touchdowns four different ways in the Falcons’ 74-20 win over Telstar last week.
Unfortunately for Leveillee, he won’t be able to try and replicate that performance in Week 2, after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier this week. Fortunately for the Falcons, they have other options at running back (and returner and linebacker) when they take on Sacopee Valley.
“I think he just — every time he touches the ball, he wants to score,” Mountain Valley coach Pat Mooney said of Leveillee. “He’s got that natural instinct as a back and as a leader on the team. And I think the team itself, we don’t really have any selfish players at all. They all work for each other and with each other.
“We try to hit the message home all the time. Last week was Robert’s week. Next week could be Kaden’s week. Week after, it could be Jyrmral’s week. We just, we take what teams give us and go from there.”
Leveillee was pragmatic about missing this week’s game.
“It sucks, but it is what it is,” he said. “I look at the bright side, really, because my body’s been aching and stuff. So I get to take a couple days off, get the rest and stuff from practice. So I’m hoping that when I return to practice, I’ll be 100 percent ready to go, whenever my body is going to be 100 percent ready, hopefully.
“But I know that my team will do good, for sure. We got a good team going on, and I know it doesn’t take one player, at all, with our team.”
Robert Leveillee of Mountain Valley High School walks back to the huddle during a game against Telstar High School on September 2. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal
Leveillee, who had some standout games last year in limited action, said he felt a little bit selfish a season ago.
“But this year, we have a new offense and stuff, and we have some good backs,” he added. “We all share the ball equally, right, because that’s just how our offense works. It’s all mostly misdirection stuff, so if I were to get the ball most of the time, then it wouldn’t work as much as it would if we all shared the ball.”
Mooney, who had to miss practice most of the week while dealing with his own COVID quarantine, called not having Leveillee for this Friday’s game a “huge loss.”
“But it’s also an opportunity for other guys to step up and show us what they can do,” he added. “We really try to emphasize the team mindset that if one guy goes down, the next guy in line steps right in to do the job.”
Leveillee concurred that the Falcons’ backfield, though missing him, won’t be depleted against Sacopee Valley.
“We still got our good running backs. We got Kaden Paaso, we got Jyrrmal Yates, and Lucas Libby,” he said. “Lucas Libby’s a good defender, too, and Kaden. Jyrrmal’s really fast.”
Leveillee said he was going to spend this week studying the Falcons’ expanding playbook to better understand Mooney’s style after he made a late-summer return as head coach. Leveillee also is looking ahead to Mountain Valley’s Week 3 opponent, defending 8-man Small School South champion Maranacook.
Robert Leveillee runs up the sideline on his way to one of his seven touchdowns against Telstar on Sept. 2. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal
If he can recover to 100% following his bout with COVID, the Falcons will be getting back a versatile player who believes he’s in the best shape of his life.
Leveillee said he jumped right into lifting at the beginning of the summer, but hurt his shoulder and had to do some physical therapy. Once he recovered, he got back to lifting and conditioning, following the program that former head coach Devin Roberts created before leaving the position later in the summer.
Leveillee said that his conditioning helped his performance against Telstar, when he racked up 342 combined rushing and return yards, plus returned an interception for a touchdown.
The pick-six featured some instinct, as Leveillee admitted to forgetting to call for blockers after grabbing the interception. He said he learned the hard way in preseason practice the downside of not following blocks.
“What I look for first is my blocks because that’s really going to help you get the yards that you really need. Because without the blocks, you’re not gonna do anything,” Leveillee said. “Like in practice, I think it might have been a week and a half ago or something like that, we were doing punt return and I was trying to return the ball, and I went to the opposite side of the field and there was like no blockers over there and I didn’t get any yards off of it. So I learned from practice and stuff, and I ended up just picking it up in the game — just trying to read my blocks, and then look for open field, really. Sometimes I don’t even really think about touchdowns, I just run. And just, like, if I see open field, I just go for it.”
Mooney said the running lanes were wide open for Leveillee last week.
“As a returner, he did the smart things: He took it right back up the middle of the field. Our punt and kick return units made sure that he had the lanes he needed,” he said. “As far as running the ball, our line played very physical. We opened up some pretty good holes. They definitely did what they needed to do for him. They played very well.”
Sacopee Valley won’t have to worry about Leveillee, but Mooney thinks teams will key on him when he returns later this season. Which Mooney is hoping will open up other aspects of the offense and lead to more victories like the one against Telstar in the season opener.
“Like I said, we talk all the time, and he understands he is one cog in a 25-cog machine right now. And he’s just willing to do whatever it takes to to get us to the next level,” Mooney said.
Leveillee is hoping that next level means a state title.
“Personally, I don’t have any goals for myself,” he said. “My number-one goal was to win the state championship.”
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