Ronald Dewayne “Ronnie” LaRue Jr. is a determined young man.

He’s determined to be the best at everything he does, including the game of football, even if it means he could suffer a bit.

“I’ve torn my ACL, separated my shoulder, and broken my nose three times,” he admits, “But I only broke it twice in football. The first time I took an elbow to the face in a basketball game.”

But he never saw a doctor for those injuries. In fact, he played soon after tearing his ACL in his very first football game his freshman year. “I stayed off it for six games, then went ahead and played the rest of my freshman and all of my sophomore season and reinjured it before getting surgery,” he recalls. He had six months of recovery after the surgery, and then went out and played football his junior year. “I broke my nose in 7th grade playing basketball, then freshman year in football, and again in my junior year. I hit someone really hard, and my helmet crashed down on my nose,” he says.

He was playing for the Red Oak team then, and his frustration was greater than the pain in his nose. He says he wanted so badly to be noticed by college scouts, but remembers, “It just wasn’t happening for me there.” Even with his good grades and an ACT score of 25 – well above the average, 18 – no colleges were calling. “There are 2,000 kids in the school, and three JV football teams, three freshman football teams. I liked the coach a lot, but I wasn’t getting the play time I needed to get interest from college scouts,” he explained. He also was a little bored.

“I wasn’t learning all I thought I could at Red Oak, and wasn’t getting any college offers, so I knew I had to make a change,” he said. He transferred into Bishop Dunne in the second semester of his junior year, noting, “It was a huge difference, coming here from a big public school. The homework was ten times what I had at my old school, so I had to adjust very quickly to a lot more work. But I knew I was also learning more, and I enjoyed Spanish II with Ms. Garcini and U.S. History with Mr. Clifford.” He added, “They are so funny, I just love their classes.”

He also loved the authentic diversity of Bishop Dunne, where classmates see character and not color. “My best friends on the team are all different colors,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what your skin looks like, it’s what’s inside that counts.”

What’s inside of Ronnie is a strong determination to be not just the best player he can be, but the best man he can be. His goal to attain a college scholarship for football so his parents could be proud of him has been a life-long dream, a dream he’s been working toward every day and praying for every Sunday at First Baptist Church in Ovilla. “I’ve attended there as long as I can remember,” he says, only missing when he’s been out of town on college visits or too exhausted from a week of football practice and games to get out of bed.

But it’s that determination that keeps him going. Neither of his parents went to college. His father, Ron, is a truck driver. “He’s gone out of town almost every week, but made it home for all of my football games,” says his admiring son. His mother is a dispatcher. Ronnie’s parents met on a blind date and have been married for two decades this week, on February 12. “Two years exactly after the day we met, we got married,” his mother, Tammy said. “So we’ve been a couple for 22 years.” Ronnie’s big sister, Destiny, is attending Northwestern State on a soccer scholarship.

It’s that dream of a scholarship that kept Ronnie playing through injuries to become an outstanding football player, even though he’s not as big as some who get recruited. “I’m not as tall or as big or as fast as some, but I am more determined than most,” he asserts.

Ronnie watched as his best friends, Nick Watkins and Payton Hendrix, a fellow classmate formerly from Red Oak, received scholarship offer after offer from colleges across the nation. “I was genuinely happy for them, but worried about my future,” he admitted.

And then came the Bishop Lynch game.

“I knew it was a huge rivalry, and there were college scouts in the crowd from Baylor and Ole Miss. I played my heart out,” he says. The low-scoring game was a testament to the defense, with Bishop Dunne winning for the first time in 25 years, 17 – 13. It was a final defensive goal-line stand that won the game in the last seconds, and Ronnie felt it was a turning point.

Ronnie had one offer at that point in the season, but explains, “I got a second offer from a college that day, and felt like I was on my way to my future, because now I had a choice.”

His father accompanied him to his official visit to Northwestern State in Louisiana, a special weekend for both son and dad. Ronnie flew by himself to Northern Colorado, and realized that was where he was ready to commit to.

“I’d love to be close to home, so my parents can see my games, but I also feel I can really make a difference at Northern Colorado, and make a name for myself," he says. The college is 45 minutes north of Denver, so there will be snow, but Ronnie can take the cold – after all, he’s taken the heat for years.

He finished his senior year with 120 tackles including 87 solos and 33 assists, three interceptions, 7 pass breakups; three forced fumbles; 10 tackles for loss; two fumble recoveries, 1.5 sacks of the quarterbacks.

Coach Zach Coleman, 2008 BD graduate and a football team standout who received a scholarship to play Montana State - in the same conference Ronnie is headed to - says, “Ronnie has the potential to be a great player in that conference, the Big Sky Conference.”

His Pee Wee coach, Rick Dunnaway, was in the auditorium on National Signing Day, and got a sincere “thank you” from his former player, bringing tears to his eyes. He sent an email later that read: “I want to say this so you can let the folks at Bishop Dunne know…If it were not for Bishop Dunne, Ronnie would have never had the opportunity to do what he did today. BDCS is a blessing to him and his family, and I thank you for it.”

Ronnie says, “I plan to play at Northern Colorado as I always do, play my heart out, because I love the game of football." 

A determined young man, working to be the best man he can be: a Falcon flying far, heading north, to do great things.

"Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly, work as though you were working for The Lord…” Colossians 3:23