Heritage QB, NC State commit Lex Thomas enters senior season on a mission
Posted June 29, 2022
Wake Forest, N.C. — Off-seasons in football are a time for growth and reflection; to pick apart last year's mistakes and work to improve upon strengths.
For Heritage quarterback Lex Thomas, there are a lot of positives to look back on from 2021.
The rising senior took over as the full-time starter for the Huskies and threw for 2,492 yards and 30 touchdowns, showing off the skill set that had the community buzzing and establishing himself as one of the state's top signal-callers.
Thomas also committed to NC State last year, joining older brothers Thayer and Drake on their paths from Heritage to Carter-Finley. Thayer and Drake have become top players for the Wolfpack at wide receiver and linebacker respectively, endearing themselves to fans in Raleigh and making Wolfpack nation even more excited for their younger brother's arrival.
During Drake's senior year at Heritage, he became notorious in the football community as a recruiter, working on other players in his class to try to maximize the Wolfpack's 2019 recruiting class-- to impressive results.
Lex has taken on a similar role as an ambassador in the 2023 class.
"As a quarterback you want to be the leader, so you're just trying to get the best guys around you," he said. "[Getting] the best guys in North Carolina to stay home, really."
But playing for the Wolfpack isn't the only long-running Thomas family project. There's also the goal of bringing a state championship to Heritage. It's something that the teams that Thayer and Drake played on approached but couldn't quite achieve.
The lack of precedent for Heritage winning a state title does not make it any less the expectation for the group.
To meet those expectations, things will have to run flawlessly for the Huskies. Having a senior talent like Thomas at quarterback raises any team's ceiling, but it brings pressure to execute in all facets of the game to maximize the opportunity that comes with having a D-1 talent at the game's most important position.
"We've got a lot of things that we have to work on," head coach Wallace Clark said at a 7-on-7 event this summer. "We did some stuff in the spring that we have to clean up."
Thomas is not exempt from the need for improvement, and he's worked on things this off-season to put himself in the best position to help his team win.
"Mainly being able to rise to the occasion in big games," Thomas said of what his off-season focus has been. "We lost to the defending state champions against Cardinal Gibbons in the second round. We let that game slip away. We were up two scores... we're going to be ready for them next year."
That answer, instead of pointing to any specific skill work, illuminates how focused Thomas is getting Heritage to the top. It's a focus and drive that makes a coach like Clark enjoy working with him so much.
"It's been great," Clark said of the relationship. "It's been great ever since he came in his freshman year all the way up until this point... I'm excited about having this guy come back and take charge of our offense and do some great things for us this year."
With the returns of Thomas, running back Coleson Fields and receivers Chance Peterson and Tavares Carter, Heritage is sure to have a productive offense that could very well match or exceed last year's mark of 38 points per game.
To take the next steps toward conference and state titles, though, Heritage will need to improve on defense. In non-conference play last year, Heritage allowed just 8.8 points per game. Against conference opponents, that jumped all the way up to 30.6 points per game.
Defensive issues reared their head again in Heritage's second round playoff loss to Cardinal Gibbons, where the Crusaders put up 56 points.
Offenses in the NAC aren't getting any easier to slow down this year, but Clark is optimistic about what Heritage will have defensively, with the caveat that there's some inexperience there.
"We've got some [young] guys that were playing JV, so now they have to grow up a little bit," he said. "During the spring practices, I was pretty impressed with some of the things they accomplished."
With longtime nemesis Wake Forest in the conference, as well as other loaded offensive teams at Rolesville, Millbrook, Knightdale and Wakefield, the NAC figures to be the best football conference in the East, and the Huskies will have their work cut out for them.
But it would be poetic for this, the last year the Huskies will have a Thomas brother on the roster, to be the season in which the program finally breaks through.