Those who saw LaVar Arrington play high school football still can’t wrap their heads around what they witnessed.
“Everybody talks about athletes that are freaks of nature like LeBron James and Aaron Donald, guys like that,” said former Penn Hills and Pitt standout Demond Gibson, who played against Arrington in high school and in college. “LaVar was first.”
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Arrington was a tailback and linebacker whose 6-foot-4, 220-pound physique made him look like a grown man running over kids. A four-year starter at North Hills High School near Pittsburgh, he won a Pennsylvania state championship as a freshman and Gatorade and Parade national player of the year awards as a senior. Many viewed him as the No. 1 player in the country in the 1997 recruiting class.
He finished his high school career with 4,357 rushing yards on 711 carries, with numerous highlights at other positions, from linebacker to kick returner to punter. He signed with Penn State, where he became a two-time All-American linebacker, the national defensive player of the year and the No. 2 pick in the 2000 NFL Draft. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in the Class of 2022.
“When I was recruiting him, he always wanted to be a linebacker,” said longtime Penn State assistant Tom Bradley. “He wasn’t a guy that wanted to play running back, which was crazy because he would’ve been a hell of a running back.”
Had YouTube and Instagram existed then, those who witnessed Arrington’s legendary high school career are certain his feats would’ve made him a viral video sensation. From the football field to the basketball court to the track, people who spoke to The Athletic about Arrington’s high school career frequently had to punctuate anecdotes with phrases like: “Trust me, this is the truth.”
The man himself was happy to take a trip down memory lane and set the record straight, too.
‘I was dunking in games in the sixth grade’
Before Arrington played a down at North Hills, the football coaching staff knew all about the not-so-little younger brother of Mike Arrington, a point guard and running back at North Hills. Some caught glimpses of LaVar in the neighborhood or at local gyms.
LaVar Arrington: We loved football because Pittsburgh is a football town, but basketball was my first love. I really, really worked at basketball. I had a private coach that I would go train with. I played with them during the summers. We traveled. At 12 years old, I went to Utah, and before you know it I’m 14 and I’m in Barcelona, Spain. I went to Germany, I went to France. Like, I had been all over the world playing basketball before I even started high school. People didn’t even realize I was that good at football because everybody knew me for basketball.
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Mike White (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette high school sports writer since 1985): When he was in eighth grade, he already had this reputation that I don’t ever remember an eighth-grader having. As an eighth-grader, he was on the ninth-grade basketball team and he broke the ninth-grade scoring record at North Hills. He was just so much bigger and stronger and more athletic than everybody.
Time to go back in time: LaVar Arrington @LaVarArrington was often a man among boys when he played football. Well, check him out as an 8th grader when he played on the 9th grade basketball team at North Hills in 1992. pic.twitter.com/J7PBzWmhfu
— Mike White (@mwhiteburgh) November 27, 2019
Chris Feola (North Hills teammate): I moved into the same neighborhood as LaVar when I was in like seventh grade. So before we got to high school, we kind of were friends in the neighborhood because he didn’t really know anyone and I didn’t know anyone. I got to know him before he got onto that freshman scene and opened everyone’s eyes. He was dunking a basketball when we used to play one-on-one.
Arrington: I was always taller than everyone else, but my athletic ability and my size came together — I know it sounds crazy — but it came together in sixth grade. I started dunking then. They were trying to see or petition to see if I could get in the Guinness Book of World Records for the youngest kid to ever dunk the ball. I was not only dunking in the sixth grade, I was dunking in games in the sixth grade.
Eric Kasperowicz (quarterback of North Hills’ 1993 state title team): The legend of LaVar Arrington, you heard about him, but you could never really see it, because he was in the junior high school and I was in high school, so we didn’t really cross paths much up until his freshman year, if at all. It’s not like you could see him online.
Brandon Short (high school rival at McKeesport and Penn State teammate): The first time I ever met LaVar, I was 14 or 15. It was a three-on-three basketball tournament … We’re playing and we see this guy over there just going up, dunking on people. Like, just whamming on people. We’re like, “Wow. This guy is explosive. They’re probably in the older age bracket.” We look over at the bracket and we’re like, “Wait a minute, they’re in our bracket.” So we go over and talk to them. I go up to LaVar and I’m like, “Hey, I’m Brandon, what’s up man?” His brother, Mike, I think was also on that same three-on-three basketball team. Mike said LaVar was 13. I was like, “What? My gosh. Thirteen?!”
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We beat everyone, but it’s a double-elimination tournament. They get to us and we’re up by nine and LaVar is over on the sideline yelling and upset. We’re gloating and LaVar comes back in and he’s angry. I’m guarding him. He takes the ball, makes a move, jukes me, goes up, dunks and breaks the rim. It’s embarrassing, like, what the hell? … We played them again in the championship game and it was a tighter game, but I go up baseline and break a rim.
Arrington: Well, Brandon was a massive however-year-old he was. But they were better than us. They beat us. The cool thing about it was Franco Harris was the one who did the tournament. We kept dunking and we were breaking all his rims. He was like, “Man, you guys gotta stop dunking! You’re gonna break all my rims!” I think they banned dunking after that tournament. It was Brandon and other dudes from McKeesport that I ended up seeing on the football field not too long after that.
‘Hey, look at my ring’
North Hills started Arrington’s freshman football season 13th in USA Today’s national rankings. Arrington, at 6-4, 190 pounds, promptly moved up to varsity, where he carried the ball 124 times for 623 yards and scored 21 touchdowns, according to the Post-Gazette. He played both ways for a team that went 15-0 and won the state championship.
In a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in November 1993, Bob Smizik wrote, “LaVar Arrington, 15, is a name to remember. How far he’ll go with his football talent is too difficult to predict at this time. But in an area that has produced some of the greatest football players the game has ever known, it is safe to say there never has been a more talented freshman. … He has the body of a man and he plays like one.”
White: It was big for North Hills to scrimmage Aliquippa because both teams had such a great reputation. So I go to see the scrimmage and I wanted to see him play. And this is the honest-to-god truth: It was the first play of the scrimmage when North Hills had the ball and they handed it off to him. The total play lasted only about 15 yards, but they gave him the ball, he went into the line, a little bit through the line and made this ridiculous cut to the outside and gained 15 yards. I said to myself, “I don’t need to see any more.”
Kasperowicz: It’s my senior year and we had a really, really good team and knew we were gonna be pretty darn good. Then there’s this freshman who comes out and ninth-grade football was still separate, but Coach (Jack) McCurry made what I guess was a pretty easy decision to move LaVar up. … LaVar without a doubt took us over the top.
Arrington: At the point in time that I met Eric Kasperowicz, he was probably the most influential figure on my football career. Just the way he prepared, the way he approached the game, his attention to detail. The amount of trust the coaches placed in him. I said, “That has to be me.” That was my measuring stick. … I had my moments, but that was a hell of a team. I definitely needed them more than they would’ve ever needed me. Who gets to walk into being a freshman on a senior-laden team and gain a starting position that’s left basically by your older brother?
Kasperowicz: They couldn’t single cover him wherever he went. When he had the ball in his hands, they had to flock to him. … He was just kind of that “Wow” that just really gives defenses fits. … He was our running back, he was an outside linebacker and his presence on defense and what he was able to do, you know, coming off the edge. We saw the early signs of the LaVar Leap. Just the plays he would make stealing pitches from the quarterback to the running back — just crazy, crazy plays.
Tom Bradley (longtime Penn State assistant and Arrington’s lead recruiter): 53 Rochester Road. Go ahead and look it up. I was at North Hills High School so many times I think people probably thought I was a substitute teacher or on the faculty or something. Jack McCurry, their coach, is the one who told me about LaVar and that he’s a freshman. So I’m standing there at the stadium and I say to this little kid, “Hey, is that LaVar Arrington?” LaVar was No. 9 in high school, which not a lot of people know. They thought he was No. 11. The little kid goes, “Yeah. You know, he’s gonna play in the NFL.” Another little kid looks at me and goes, “You know, he could probably play in the NBA too.” It took like two plays. It was like, “OK, this guy is good. Oh, nope, this guy is great. OK, let’s go.”
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I remember coming back and telling Joe (Paterno) I just think this kid, he’s only a freshman, but I’d recruit him right now. I think Joe looked at me like, “What?”
Short: We saw the tape and LaVar was a big guy so we knew he could be good, but he was young. Early in the game, LaVar fumbled or something. You could see him put his head down or kick the grass. Our defensive coordinator was like, “He’s a freshman, don’t even worry about him. We need to focus on stopping the pass game with Kasperowicz.” We go up 14-0 on one of the best teams in the country and they came back and ended up beating us 42-26. LaVar comes out and rushes for I don’t know what it was, but it felt like 200 yards. It was so demoralizing. It was the first time I felt like I couldn’t control a game. LaVar ran a few guys over. He was high-stepping. It was unbelievable. He was remarkable.
Demond Gibson (played against Arrington for Penn Hills and Pitt): He was a freshman and they were at our place and our teams were both pretty high in the rankings. They give LaVar a pitch — their very first play of the game on offense — and he goes like 50 yards on us. He’s like 20 yards from the end zone and he puts his one hand up in the air and he’s already got the No. 1 in the air. From there, the legacy just grew. The dude had unbelievable speed and quickness … He’s been a good friend of mine since then, but to this day, that’s one vision of LaVar that I always remember and quite frankly it kind of pissed me off in high school (laughs). Every time we played them after that I remembered him throwing up that No. 1.
Arrington: They couldn’t do nothing about it. I think I put two more up on them. I did a lot of things that year that a lot of guys didn’t like. I was superiorly confident in my teammates and I was superiorly confident in myself. But the interesting thing about it, like, even when I played against Brandon or when I played against Woodland Hills in my first game, when I show my kids my highlight film, I tell them that you can see me turn into a football player as the season goes on. The first few games you see me, if I didn’t get the ball I’d be walking during the play. The only time I’d get excited was when I’d make a play. Then, as the year went on, I start finishing plays. I start running downfield to make more blocks. I start doing more when I didn’t have the ball. I was more engaged. It was a maturing and a coming of age at a young age.
Short: After his freshman season, we’re at another three-on-three basketball tournament and we’re walking by and LaVar is going to prom. We beat them in the basketball tournament the year before and we’re showing them the trophy like, yeah, we got another one. LaVar is there with this beautiful girl on his arm. Now, remember, he’s a freshman and she has to be a senior because they’re going to prom.
Arrington: They were like, “Look at our trophy.” And I was like, “Hey, look at my ring!” and I showed them my state championship ring.
Short: I was like, “No, he didn’t!” Him pushing that football state championship ring at me was like the biggest shot (laughs).
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Arrington: They were like, “That’s all right, we’re gonna get one of those too.” They ended up winning it the next year.
‘That was the most unbelievable play I think I’ve ever seen’
By Arrington’s sophomore year, newspaper columnists wondered if he had already outgrown running back. By the start of his junior year, he was 6-4, 220 pounds. Toss plays were out of the question for opposing offenses because Arrington’s speed helped him blow up play after play. As a running back, he routinely bounced off defenders and zig-zagged his way past entire defenses. Arrington also was a kick returner. And much to the surprise of those who showed up to recruit him, he was the punter too.
Bradley: LaVar was great at many things, but one of them was not punting. It may go 20 yards, it may go 40 yards. But they were playing Shaler his sophomore year — this is a true story — and I’m at the game and the ball goes over his head and in the end zone. It’s deep in the end zone. He took the ball out. He went right. He went left. The crowd started cheering. He scored a touchdown and it was 100-some yards. I bet if you actually calculated it he probably ran about 200 yards. It was crazy. That was the most unbelievable play I think I’ve ever seen.
Arrington: We were getting our asses kicked. That’s what I remember. I probably would’ve just kicked it out of the back of the end zone if we were in a real game, but we weren’t. Shaler was beating the hell out of us. I just remember the ball went over my head and I was like, “All right, if I can get to this quick enough and I can beat that first defender I might be able to cut this back and see what I can do with it.” I’m thinking this while I’m running to get the ball. I grabbed it and made the first dude miss, and then I saw that there was an over-pursuit and if I could make the cutback hard enough that it would lead to what we needed to do. That’s what I did. It worked out.
Arrington was credited with a 79-yard touchdown run, but the play covered a whole lot more. It was featured in “Plays of the Week” on “SportsCenter.”
Gibson: He was just physically impressive with that No. 9 on him. He was intimidating for sure. We had a state champion sprinter, Derrick Johnson, he was our running back and he ended up going to Maryland. Derrick broke through the hole, and I mean nobody ever caught Derrick in the open field. He was about 6-4 and he could fly. He had maybe a 30-yard start. There was no one in the frame and then all of a sudden out of nowhere …
Arrington: I hawked him! He came through the line of scrimmage and broke free and I can guarantee you everybody thought he was gone — including me. But I was gonna give it a go. I’ll tell you that. I was gonna give it a go. I caught him. He wasn’t close to the end zone, either. I caught him pretty good. He is every bit as fast as they said, I just had a really good angle and I was fast. I understood the dimensions of the field, but I definitely did track him down. And keep in mind I was going both ways too, that’s the other thing.
Gibson: As a fan of LaVar, we’d come home from our game and we used to watch the old “Fedko Zone” (Pittsburgh high school highlights program) and we’d all watch just to see how many touchdowns LaVar was going to have. It’d be like five touchdowns, six touchdowns and two of them might be defensive. The dude played everything, so you couldn’t punt to him because for sure he was going to run it back. You couldn’t kick the ball off to him. When we’d do special teams, we just took the penalty. You couldn’t give him open field. That was our rule: Never kick to LaVar. He’s the first person that taught us that running to the football was important. It literally took an entire team to neutralize the guy.
The 1998 LaVar Leap is etched in the minds of Penn State and college football fans. But years before Arrington jumped over the Illinois offensive line and landed on fullback Elmer Hickman, he made a pair of eerily similar plays at North Hills.
White: I call him one of those open-mouth athletes, meaning if you saw him play in high school, there was a good chance, especially his junior and senior years, that he would do something that you would open your mouth and go, “What?!” He’s famous for that LaVar Leap play vs. Illinois, but he did it twice in high school, the same thing. I was there both times.
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Arrington: Yes, against Seneca Valley and North Allegheny.
White: When he did it the first time, that night I took my oldest son with me and he was 8 years old. He was watching, and I’ll never forget this either, LaVar makes that play where he timed the snap, jumps over the center’s head, the quarterback turned around, took the snap and LaVar grabbed him and pulled him down all in one thing. I looked at my son and he said to me, “Dad, he looked like Superman flying!”
‘Yeah, I committed’
Arrington received letters from the likes of Miami and Nebraska from the time he was 15. Recruits committing to colleges ahead of their senior season was still a bit abnormal in 1996. Early commitments happened, but it wasn’t as common as it is now. So, imagine the surprise for Penn State fans when the top player in the country committed during a visit on a Sunday in April and nobody knew until the newspaper arrived at their doorstep Tuesday morning.
Arrington: I was interested in some Florida schools, but I wanted to be a linebacker. I wanted to play at Linebacker U and that was something that, you know, Coach Bradley sold me on being the first me, not the next Derrick Brooks, not the next, you know, any other big-time linebacker that played in college. He said, “Be the first you.”
White: I’m covering the Butler track and field invitational on a Friday and LaVar is there. He’s a junior. He tells me he’s going to Penn State that weekend. He said Ron Graham, a big-time linebacker at Penn Hills, was also going. I said, “Well, is anything gonna happen?” LaVar said, “It might.” I said, “Well, why don’t we talk Monday?” I went up to school Monday and the football coach was the principal. I said, “Coach, I need to get LaVar down here and talk to him to see if anything happened this weekend.” LaVar came down to the office with a Penn State T-shirt on and he said, “Yeah, I committed.”
There was no internet back then. We did an interview, I got the story ready and he said, “Ron Graham committed too.” … It was a gigantic story, but there was no press conference. It was very quiet. I don’t think LaVar even told many kids at school that day. Nobody else really knew until the next morning when the Post-Gazette came out.
Bradley: He was the No. 1 player in the nation then, so his senior year, you can imagine that even after verbally committing that spring, everybody was swinging. He said this to me, and I’ll never forget it, I was sitting there and I said, “Man, you got everybody coming in here now, huh?” LaVar looks at me and he says, “Coach, I gave you my word. You never have to worry. I gave you my word that I’m coming to Penn State. Don’t worry about it.” I never did. … When we’d be allowed one phone call a week, I’d call because well, you know, you have to call. LaVar goes, “You’re not my girlfriend. Don’t call!” He was great with me the whole time.
Arrington: My senior year, so many people were coming my way, but I wasn’t going to budge on my decision. I had made the commitment and I wasn’t going to waver on it. Tom Bradley was good to me from the time he started to recruit me until the time I signed my letter of intent. That’s just how my family rolls. I’m a military kid. We’re driven by honor and loyalty and integrity. That was what it was. I never gave anybody else a real opportunity. I believe Walt (Harris) had just went to Pitt and he was trying hard to get me to take a look at Pitt, but that just wasn’t of interest to me.
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With his college decision quietly made, Arrington finished his high school career by rushing for 1,279 yards and 18 touchdowns and racking up 143 tackles and six forced fumbles as a senior for North Hills. National Recruiting Advisor was among the services to rank Arrington No. 1 in the 1997 class. With players like Arrington and Graham aboard, SuperPrep ranked Penn State’s class No. 2 in the country.
Twenty-five years ago this summer, Arrington arrived as a freshman at Penn State to embark on a College Football Hall of Fame career as a linebacker. Before he enrolled, journalists and even Nittany Lions coaches wondered what position Arrington would play. Was he a tailback, a fullback, a linebacker, a safety — or all of the above?
Bradley: So I recruit him, he signs and he comes up. At that time, I’m coaching the secondary and I’m thinking, “Hey, we gotta try this guy at strong safety. We’ll make him a big strong safety.” So Joe kind of bought into it for a little bit. After about the second practice when we get to play-action fakes, LaVar would be up at the line of scrimmage. Joe goes, “I think we have to move him to linebacker.” I just wanted the fruits of my labor (laughs). It was like a two-day experiment.
Arrington: I thought it was because Joe hated me! They tried me out at tailback and at safety. I said, “Look, man, I committed to play linebacker here.” I didn’t know until recently when I had dinner with (Bradley). He was like, “LaVar, think about it. I was your coach. I recruited you. I wanted you.” If I would have understood it that way then, I would have probably made it work at safety. I was like. “This is strike one, like, why are you guys putting me at safety?” I thought Joe just put me there. … I told them I’m gonna run into the line of scrimmage until y’all move me (laughs). That’s 100 percent what I did!
Short: Ron Graham from Penn Hills, who we signed as a linebacker, won a state title in that same time too. We’d all talk about who had the best championship team during our linebacker huddle and linebacker stretch at Penn State. … Now LaVar can flash his Butkus Award at me too.
(Top photo: Rick Stewart / Getty Images)
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