Lorenzo Lingard has a reputation to protect. The speedy running back is a dual-sport athlete, reigning 4A 110 hurdles champ, going for the repeat and a sweep of the hurdles at Florida’s Track & Field State Championships this weekend.  

Football is his first love, but hurdles come a close second. 

“It’s like one mistake and you can opt out and lose. Being focused and the ability and rush of it, it’s just amazing,” said Lingard.

His speed on either surface is obvious, and Lingard likens vaulting the hurdles to would be tacklers on the gridiron.

“Let’s say I go over a hurdle and I kind of clip one, not saying I will, but I clip one and I have to gain my balance back really quickly,” said Lingard. “That applies in football too, if I break a tackle I have to get my balance back quickly. With hurdling it kind of plays in the same way.”

Lorenzo is intense in his training, getting a rhythm down before every run. But the fact of the matter is, he’d be a natural at any sport. Just ask his track coach Lisa Eggert.

“It wouldn’t have mattered what sport he’d have been introduced to, baseball, basketball, whatever sport he would have wanted to play, he could have,” said Eggert. “I just lucked out that one of them was track on top of football.”

On the gridiron, Lorenzo is committed to the University of Miami as the number two running back in the class of 2018, with plans of running track in college as well.

“It’s just the whole theory of Miami, I like Miami, period.”

Focused on the future, the prized five star recruit plans on following the footsteps of other highly touted athletes and enrolling early next January. Which would make this his last track season. Don’t think the thought of going out on top hasn’t entered the running back’s mind.

“It would mean a lot to me, all the days I come out here and practice with the team, have Coach yelling at me, it’d be great to get the win, and see what a dream and hard work can do.”

Two more races to finish this track season, one more season suiting up for the Titans of Orange City University, and then it’s all about the U.

But the dreams don’t end there. For a kid like Lingard, the dreams should never end.

“I think for him you can talk about Miami, but what’s even after that, what do you want to do at Miami,” said Coach Eggert. “Not just get to Miami, but what are you going to do when you are at Miami, and you are a Hurricane. What’s going to define you over the next four years, or 6 years or 10 years, what’s that going to look like.”