Louisville Saint Xavier High School plays in Kentucky’s largest classification in football (6A) and is coming off a State-final appearance where they lost to Louisville Trinity. Saint X has hired one of the best coaches in Kentucky high school history, away from the 5A classification’s flagship institution (Bowling Green High School), to coach its football team. Everyone associated with that hire claimed it had absolutely nothing to do with beating mighty Louisville Trinity. I can tell you this, Kevin Wallace didn’t pack the car in Bowling Green to unload it in Louisville so Saint X could keep losing that contest. One of the first things Saint Xavier is going to have to do, as well as Trinity has been doing it, is comb the Louisville youth football leagues for talent. Getting the LeAndre Maxwell-types will be key to building a program which can compete with Trinity and the Trinity-type of athletes with which the Shamrocks keep stocking its roster. Well, Wallace figured, instead of getting LeAndre-types, why not just get the LeAndre Dre Maxwell? Good point…
As noted in the Bleacher Report article on scouting defensive ends, quick feet are important for every position…but for a defensive end, especially so. Ends need to have burst off the ball, the hips to turn a corner, and, afterwards, the closing speed to close on the football. Flexibility is important as the end has to dip the inside shoulder to get below the offensive tackle’s hands on his upfield pass rush to beat the offensive tackle when playing a 6 or greater technique. Where the defender isn’t just fast enough to beat blockers around the corner, the end has to have violent enough hands to swat away an o-lineman’s punch, thereby using his hands to free himself from blockers in defending the run. These are all characteristics we have seen in Dre Maxwell’s play which is one reason why he keeps getting selected to either Kentucky FBU teams, where he made a ton of plays this past FBU National Tournament, and the Team Kentucky Future Stars team, for whom he will again play this summer against Tennessee.
Dre Maxwell is 6-0 in height and his weight is over 190 pounds and closing on 200. He works out with Chris Vaughn at Aspirations Fitness Institute so we are sure he will get to the appropriate competitive positional thickness for 6A high school competition. He has the frame which indicates the 8th grader will continue to add both length and bulk as we go along. Maxwell has been clocked in the low 5’s in the 40 yard dash, recently running a 5.19 second 40 yard dash time at a Future Stars’ combine. He’s fast enough to have run the 100 meter on his middle school track team. He’s got tons of quick-twitch, get-off burst from his end slot with the bend and flexibility to dip under the OT’s hands when playing an outside technique. In the run-defense game, Maxwell also has the hand violence to free himself from the outside o-lineman’s punch and clamp. We recommend you watch this guy going forward and remember from where you first heard it, but LeAndre Maxwell is quite a way along the path to becoming the next big thing out of Louisville, Kentucky. With as many big-timers as that city produces, that prediction is quite a mouthful.
This is Fletcher Long, reporting for KPGFootball reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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