Calvary Baptist’s Landry Lyddy named Gatorade Louisiana Football Player of the Year

CHICAGO — In its 37th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Landry Lyddy of Calvary Baptist Academy is the 2021-22 Gatorade Louisiana Football Player of the Year. Lyddy is the first Gatorade Louisiana Football Player of the Year to be chosen from Calvary Baptist Academy.

The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field, distinguishes Lyddy as Louisiana’s best high school football player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Football Player of the Year award to be announced in December, Lyddy joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners, including Emmitt Smith (1986-87, Escambia High School, Fla.), Matthew Stafford (2005-06, Highland Park High School, Texas) and Christian McCaffrey (2012-13 & 2013-14, Valor Christian High School, Colo.).

The 6-foot-1, 195-pound senior quarterback passed for 4,247 yards and 53 touchdowns this past season, leading the Cavaliers (11-2) to the Division IV state semifinals. Lyddy topped 300 yards passing eight times and threw for at least four TDs nine times. In two years as a starter, the 2020 First Team All-State selection threw for 7,813 yards and 96 touchdowns.

Lyddy has volunteered locally as a math tutor and as a youth football coach. He has also donated his time as part of multiple community service initiatives through his church youth group. “With Landry taking the reins for the Cavs, that team has taken off to a new stratosphere,” said Chris Wilson, head coach of Plain Dealing High School. “He’s cool, calm and collected and he rarely makes mistakes. He stays within the game plan and works to get all his skill guys involved early.”

Lyddy has maintained a 3.91 GPA in the classroom. He has verbally committed to play football on scholarship at Louisiana Tech University next fall.

The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by the Gatorade Player of the Year Selection Committee, which leverages experts including coaches, scouts, media and others as sources to help evaluate and determine the state winners in each sport.

Lyddy joins recent Gatorade Louisiana Football Players of the Year Walker Howard (2020-21, St. Thomas More High School), Christian Westcott (2019-20, Lakeshore High School), Derek Stingley Jr. (2018-19, Dunham School), and Slade Bolden (2017-18, West Monroe High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.

Gatorade has a long-standing history of serving athlete communities and understands how sports instill valuable lifelong skills on and off the field. Through Gatorade’s “Play it Forward” platform, Lyddy has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national organization of their choosing that helps young athletes realize the benefits of playing sports. Lyddy is also eligible to submit a short video explaining why the organization they chose is deserving of one of twelve $10,000 spotlight grants, which will be announced throughout the year. To date, Gatorade Player of the Year winners’ grants have totaled more than $3.5 million across more than 1,300 organizations.

Since the program’s inception in 1985, Gatorade Player of the Year award recipients have won hundreds of professional and college championships, and many have also turned into pillars in their communities, becoming coaches, business owners and educators.

To learn more about the Gatorade Player of the Year program, check out past winners or to nominate student-athletes, visit playeroftheyear.gatorade.com or follow us on social media on Facebook at facebook.com/GatoradePOY, Instagram at instagram.com/Gatorade and Twitter at twitter.com/Gatorade.