DUNLAP -- If you just look at Jaron Thomas's offensive stats, he'd be worthy of making any all-area or all-state team.
If you just look at his defensive stats, too, you'd think the same thing.
Thomas did it all in his senior year at Concord, earning him the 2024 South Bend Tribune Football Player of the Year selection.
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"Honestly, it means a lot, especially around this area -- there's so much talent around this area," said Thomas of the selection. "To be the Football Player of the Year is very special. ... I knew I was capable of having the year I had. It was just about how hard I worked and what I really wanted to make out of my senior year."
It was a fantastic season for the Purdue-bound Thomas. Signing with the Boilermakers as a running back, Thomas lived up to his Division-I status on that side of the ball by totaling 1,442 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns.
That only tells half the story with Thomas, though, as he also led the Minutemen with 146 tackles on defense. He added 3.5 sacks for good measure.
Thomas was selected as the "Mr. Football" for the running back position by the Indiana Football Coaches Association for his efforts. He could've easily been in the conversation for it at linebacker as well.
"I had just woken up, and my coach (Craig Koehler) was calling me about it to tell me he had just gotten out of the meeting and I was named that," said Thomas of the "Mr. Football" honor. "It was a crazy feeling because that's a dream. I would never expect anything like that. I look up to people who did stuff like that, so to be able to go out there and win a big, prestigious award like that is crazy."
Concord went 10-1 this season, going unbeaten in the regular season for the fourth time in program history. It won the Northern Lakes Conference title in the process before losing a heartbreaker to Warsaw in a Class 5A sectional title game.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't get it done in the playoffs, but I really couldn't ask for much more," Thomas said.
Slowly but surely over this past summer, Thomas's college recruiting picked up. He had a strong junior season, plus showed off his speed during track season as part of Concord's 4X100-meter relay team that reached the state meet.
The recruiting reached a crescendo when Purdue offered. Within days, Thomas had verbally committed.
"I was just putting my head down and working," Thomas said. "I knew it'd be a long process. I knew it wouldn't be easy, so I just had to take it upon myself to work while others weren't watching, whether it be conditioning, going to catch the football, doing some footwork drills. I just stayed working all the time, and it kept going up and up and up. If you work hard enough, it won't go unnoticed."
Things did not go well for Purdue football this season, with a 1-11 record leading to the firing of head coach Ryan Walters. Despite this happening less than a week before signing day, Thomas still signed with the Boilermakers, even though they didn't have a head coach at the time. That vacancy has now been filled by Barry Odom.
"There were a lot of questions floating around in the area, so I wasn't sure what was going on," Thomas said. "But now that things have settled and calmed down, it's a lot easier to have confidence."
While most Power 4 recruits tend to go to college early and skip their final semester of high school, Thomas is not doing that. He will instead finish out his time as a Minuteman, primarily because he wants to chase some state hardware on the track.
"As much as I wanted to leave and get in some more work, I feel like I haven't finished what I started," Thomas said. "I didn't want to just leave with my track stuff because I'm a good track runner. I feel like I have a school record to break in the 100-meter dash, so I want to go for that, and then I'll be satisfied."