Syracuse, N.Y. -- Elijah Benson earned a role as the feature running back for Auburn in the abbreviated season last spring.
In five games -- all Maroons wins -- Benson rushed for 669 yards and eight touchdowns.
As it turned out, that performance was just a coming attraction.
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The 6-foot-1, 225-pound Benson has burst into his junior year with 393 rushing yards and four touchdowns for an Auburn squad that is 2-1. That effort has earned Benson recognition as the SOS Spotlight Athlete of the Week.
“It’s just been the off-season, all the work the boys have put in in the weight room, day-to-day, and on the field,” Benson said of the quick start of him and the team. “They’ve just been putting in work non-stop since the end of the last Covid season, in the spring. We haven’t stopped since.
“I honestly wanted to double my numbers at least (from the spring). I felt like I could have done way better than I did. I looked back and looked at stuff I could fix in my game offensively and defensively.”
Benson first came up to the varsity season as an ninth-grader in 2019, just in time to get three carries in Auburn’s loss to Carthage in the Class A sectional final. Last year’s perfect spring hinted at the Maroons chances to finish the job once the postseason was back in play.
“I felt like we were just getting started. At 5-0 I felt like we could have went way deeper in the playoffs and beyond that,” he said.
The early returns indicate the Maroons can stay in the mix with such elite foes this fall, although first battling their way through the section’s brutal Class A competition will be a weighty, weekly challenge.
“I feel it’s like what they did in the short amount of time that they had to prepare for the upcoming season,” Benson said of what will eventually sort out the contenders. “If they were in that weight room or at practice or put in that work when nobody was looking, I feel like that’s what’s going to separate the teams because they are pretty close.”
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