Carrying the load

He's been listed as Palvinson Phizema on the Siloam Springs football roster for most of his high school career, but it's just easier to call the kid wearing No. 22 by his nickname -- Jeff.

There's no trace of Jeff or Jeffrey in his given name. It's something he picked up several years ago when he first moved to Florida from Haiti.

"When I first came to Florida, a lot of people were like, you look like a Jeff," Phizema said. "I was like no, I'm not. They kept calling me Jeff. That name stayed until now. Everybody calls me Jeff. My family calls me Jeff now."

The Siloam Springs football team has been calling on Jeff Phizema a lot these days, especially at the running back position, where the Panthers have been decimated by injuries.

Phizema has carried the ball 40 times combined in the last two weeks for 218 yards and a touchdown, including a 21-carry, 138-yard performance in last week's 28-19 loss to Mountain Home.

"He was the only running back we had in camp," said head coach Brandon Craig. "We had one running back and that's it."

The Panthers lost junior running back Zach Gunneman (49 carries, 357 yards) to a knee injury at Benton in Week 5. Then in Week 7 at Lake Hamilton, senior Camden Collins (56 carries, 433 yards) went out with an ankle injury and didn't play against Mountain Home.

That left the bulk of the work on the ground to the 5-foot-8, 147-pound Phizema, who had 26 carries for 353 yards in his first six games -- including an eye-popping five-carry, 220-yard performance at Pea Ridge in the Panthers' second game of the year. Three of those five carries went for touchdowns that night.

Phizema responded with 19 carries for 80 yards at Lake Hamilton followed by his big week last Friday against the Bombers.

"It's been a challenge," Craig said. "He's had a good couple of weeks and he's ran really hard."

The flip side though for Siloam Springs is that with Phizema needed on offense, he hasn't been able to help the Panthers at cornerback on defense.

"It hurt us because we had to take him off defense because he needed rest," Craig said. "He hadn't been able to play corner. It's just a give and take. You take him away from one thing and you hurt the other thing. We obviously need him to play some defense as well."

The Panthers (3-5, 1-4 6A-West) are hopeful to get some of the injured players back down the stretch, beginning this Friday as they travel to Little Rock to take on Little Rock Parkview (5-1, 2-1) at War Memorial Stadium.

Getting some bodies back will not help Phizema but some of the other two-way players as well.

"It's impossible in this conference to play a kid both ways full time," Craig said. "It never works out because they're going to be deficient in one area because they get tired and the level of competition is so high. So we have to be really smart about resting guys that we are trying to play both ways."

Phizema said he'll do whatever he needs to do to help the team.

"I always want to step up," he said. "If I was asked to play every position, I would play every position if they put me in and need me at that position. I would do whatever it takes to get what they want out of it. That's the kind of person I've been all year. The person that needs to play running back, I'll be there. Corner, I'll be there. Special teams I'll be there. All those things I will play there if the team needs that."

On the season, Phizema has 66 carries for 574 yards (8.6 yards per carry) and four touchdowns.

With 4.5 speed in the 40-yard dash, Phizema is one of the fastest players on the Panthers' roster, but Craig said pound-for-pound, he's also the strongest.

"One thing everybody probably talks about is how fast Jeff is," Craig said. "People probably don't know how strong Jeff is. He's by far the strongest pound-for-pound lifter in our weight room. He's a ball of muscle and he has the ability to be the best player on the field at any given time."

Phizema is also fairly new to football. He didn't play while he lived in Florida and started once he moved to Siloam Springs in 2014.

"I didn't want to play the sport," he said. "It was a hard sport. I was always getting into trouble. ... The sport (football) changed me. The sport made me a better person than I was back in Florida."