Work ethic and time management can go a long way — not just in sports, but also in every other facet of life. Combine that drive with raw athletic talent and the result is Southside’s Lawrence Brown.

Throughout his football career at Southside, Brown grew into one of the most prolific running backs in school history. He amassed 2,375 all-purpose yards and 22 touchdowns this past season, helping lead the Seahawks to a regional-championship showdown with Plymouth.

Brown’s football career will resume soon as he takes his talents to West Virginia Wesleyan. Football was only one of the four sports he played during his time in high school.

In fact, it wasn’t the first he played and it’s not even his favorite.

“(Baseball) was the first sport I was ever introduced to and it was like my dream sport,” Brown said. “My parents put me in T-ball when I was little and I played every year until I aged out.”

Brown continued playing baseball with Southside. His speed, which made him a dangerous running back, came in handy on the diamond, too. He excelled in the outfield and swiped a team-best 21 bases.

It wasn’t until Brown was in seventh grade that he was introduced to football. The Aurora team barely scraped together enough players for its own team and his father took the reins as its coach.

“That was probably my most entertaining experience in football because we didn’t know what we were doing,” Brown said. “My dad just kind of took us from the bottom and built us up. By the end of the year, we only had 22 kids and won our last game like 48-0 or something like that. It was beautiful.”

Brown had a great season with the junior varsity team as a freshman. He didn’t get as many opportunities as he would have liked as a sophomore. Then, about halfway through his junior season, Brown realized football could be his calling.

What he did then was spent the summer last year going to various camps to take his workouts and practice to the next level and try to get noticed. All the work paid dividends in his most memorable season and the best season Southside has seen in around a decade.

Outside football and baseball, Brown also played basketball and ran track for the Seahawks. Like baseball, basketball was something that Aurora always had the participation for, so it was always an option from a young age.

Track, on the other hand, was something his father turned him onto. As a standout track star himself, Brown’s father urged him to run instead of playing baseball. Since he loved baseball and wasn’t willing to give it up, he did both.

He excelled, too. At the 2015 1-A state championships, Brown was a key member of Southside’s 4-by-200-meter relay team, which won the title. Even more remarkably, that was his first year running. He made a return to the state championships in this his second year running track.

The wins, records, accolades and championships aren’t Brown’s greatest accomplishments. The legacy he leaves at Southside is a model for what coaches hope every athlete is.

“He’s the ideal athlete. He’s very respectful and he does everything coaches ask,” said basketball coach and athletics director Sean White. “He’s not scared to try new things or to work hard to attain his goals. … He’s the kind of athlete every coach dreams of having.”

Football coach Jeff Carrow added, “He’s done it since he was a freshmen. He’s always been the guy that would stay after. … If you can get a whole team full of guys to go the extra mile like that, that’s a blessing.”

His senior year saw him play a role in the Seahawks making the playoffs in baseball and basketball. With football and track, however, he was much more than just a role player. He was significant in championship pushes made by both of those squads.