Dawson McInelly, Sugar-Salem’s multi-sport star, is football Player of the Year
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The East Idaho Sports team has selected a group of fall sports season award winners — players and teams of the year. The award winners will be announced, one per day, in a continuing series.
SUGAR CITY – It’s been a pretty good month for Sugar-Salem’s Dawson McInelly.
The senior recently signed a letter of intent to play baseball for Utah Tech after helping lead the Diggers to a state title last spring.
But he wasn’t through.
As football coach and former athletic director Tyler Richins noted, the school encourages students to play multiple sports. That’s not really a new concept for small school programs, but perhaps no school in the area has had as much success as Sugar-Salem with boys and girls playing and starring on several teams during the year and collecting multiple district and state titles.
Football and basketball state titles? Been there. Volleyball and basketball state titles? Check the banners on the wall. Football and baseball titles? Check.
By the time they graduate, a lot of Sugar-Salem athletes probably need both hands to show off all of their championship rings.
And that’s where McInelly comes in. It turns out the baseball star can play some football as well.
The Diggers’ star running back helped lead Sugar-Salem to another state football title, running for 151 yards and three touchdowns in the championship win over Homedale.
He finished the season with 1,224 rushing yards and 19 touchdowns, adding five touchdown catches. He was also among team leaders with 5.0 tackles per game and was a three-year starter at middle linebacker.
The Mountain Rivers Conference MVP will likely see his name on the All-State list when it’s released, but for now, he’ll have to settle for East Idaho Sports Football Player of the Year.
“He’s a great athlete,” Richins said. “He could about choose whatever he wanted to do so he chose baseball.”
But this fall, the focus was all about football.
“Dawson brings not only his talent and being a great teammate, but he also brings a lot of experience to the table,” Richins said. “When you’ve played varsity football as much as he has, there’s that experience factor. Being able to know and recognize things and have that comfort and familiarity on the field radiates through him into those other players so they feel more comfortable and confident on the field.”