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BY IVAN SANDERS
STAR SPORTS EDITOR
ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
ROAN MOUNTAIN – Eli Presswood made a name for himself in the trenches of the Cloudland High School football team on Friday nights for the last four years and all that hard work paid off for the senior offensive and defensive lineman as he inked a National Letter of Intent to play football for the Scots of Maryville College.

The signing took place in the gym of Cloudland High School among family, friends, teammates, and coaches.

His awards on the football field speak volumes for the player he was for the Highlanders as he was a 2018 All-State Region 1-A Honorable Mention, and All-Conference, 2019 All-State Region 1-A, and All-Conference, and 2020 Pre-Season All-State, and Region 1-A Academic Team, 2020 All-State Region 1-A Offensive and Defensive Lineman of the Year, 2020 All-State Lineman, and 2020 All-State East-West All-Star.

And his classroom accolades would take several lines as Presswood not only excelled on the field but in the classroom. He attends First Baptist Church of Roan Mountain where he is an AV Committee Member and a member of the Youth Group.

It has been a long while since a Cloudland lineman has played football at the collegiate level and Presswood is excited to have the chance to extend his playing career at Maryville as a Scot.

“It means a lot honestly because I have dreamed about this since I was a freshman,” said Presswood after inking his letter. “Coach Fox is a great man. He recruited me pretty much the entire year and when he moved to Maryville, one of the first things he did was invite me for a visit and it just felt like home.

“It feels great to have everyone here to support me especially after this past year with COVID and everything. This was probably the funniest season out of my four years – it was amazing.”

Presswood said that unlike at Cloudland where he saw the line on both sides of the football that he more than likely will end up on the offensive side of the football.

Presswood’s coach at Cloudland, head coach Scott Potter, said that Presswood was a coach on the field.

“He is high caliber – he is high caliber in the classroom with his intellect and he is a quality person,” said Potter. “He is always the first to volunteer to do anything off-field and help his community.

“He has one of the highest work ethics of anyone that I have seen in almost 20 years of coaching from youth club on up. It’s nice to see a kid like that get a chance at a small school like this.”

Potter said that with the power offense they ran that if a yard was needed, it would be behind Presswood, and often if he saw something on the line that would work better he would let the coaching staff know.

He was that type of leader according to Potter.