Larry Suggs remembers the first time Savion Hart was dropped off for a West Side Boosters football practice.

Hart, just a young boy at the time, refused to get out of his mom’s car.

“So I had to stop practice, walk all the way up there, basically get him out of the car, and tell him, ‘You’re going to play football today,’ ” said Suggs, the father of Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs.

“I was crying,” Hart recalled from that day. “That’s all I know.”

But once he got down to the fields, he watched as his peers ran around and played the game. His interest was piqued enough to give it a shot.

“When I first tried it, I didn’t really like it at first,” Hart said. “Because I was getting hit so much.”

Then he scored his first touchdown.

“That’s kind of what flipped the switch,” Hart said. “I just wanted to play football.”

He hasn’t stopped since. And now, instead of getting hit, the St. Thomas Academy senior running back is the one delivering the blows.

“What surprised me more than anything is just how explosive and powerful he is,” first-year Cadets coach Travis Walch said. “In person, it’s really fun to watch.”

Sifting through Hart’s highlight clips is rather enjoyable, as well. It’s a combination of speed, vision, sharp cuts, constantly churning legs and violent stiff arms. That concoction of traits is what makes Hart the state’s best pure running back.

The Pioneer Press East Metro football player of the year has 2,416 yards rushing and 37 touchdowns this season, tacking on 18 catches while powering the Cadets to the Class 5A state title game. St. Thomas Academy meets Chanhassen at 4 p.m. Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium.

That will serve as a fitting conclusion to the Minnesota high school football season, as two of the state’s most electric players — Hart and Chanhassen’s Max Woods — square off for a state crown.

That’s the type of stage upon which Hart belongs, and has thrust himself onto. He doesn’t demand notoriety via his personality. Hart plays without ego, always simply handing the ball off to the officials after touchdowns, suggesting teammates get opportunities to score late in games that have already been decided and putting winning above all else.

“He’s always been really humble and very thankful for the opportunity. He’s a very talented athlete, but he knows none of this stuff is just given,” Suggs said. “So he just appreciates all the help and support from the community to be able to get him this far in life. He’s a great kid on and off the field.”

Walch described the running back as “fun” and “easy going,” going as far as to call Hart “a sweetheart.” Perhaps that’s more so descriptive of Hart from Monday to Wednesday. Because, as game day approaches, “he is as business-like and as locked in as it gets.”

Frankly, that was Hart’s approach all offseason, as well.

Hart noted he passed up countless opportunities to hang out with friends or participate in other activities to instead continue to work on his body. He’s even bigger, faster and stronger and, from a defense’s perspective, nearly impossible to bring down.

Hart is still the elusive back who can shake a defender even within the tightest of spaces, but his runs now generally end with the back putting a defensive player on his butt with a stiff arm and then dragging two more defenders an extra three yards or so.

Hart noted he watched a lot of film of famed NFL running backs Marshawn Lynch and Saquon Barkley this offseason. That’s the type of physicality he’s displaying on a run-by-run basis.

Not too far down Hart’s social media timeline on the website formerly known as Twitter is a highlight reel of Barkley’s dominating collegiate performance against Iowa from the back’s time at Penn State.

When you watch those clips of Barkley — No. 26 — and Hart — also No. 26 — it’s easy to see the similarities in running style, from the sharp cuts to the refusal to step out of bounds before attempting to nab an extra five yards.

Hart had a 48-yard touchdown run this fall against Robbinsdale Armstrong, a fellow state tournament team, in which he cut right, juked a defender to get to the outside, and then was cut off by about four defenders at the sidelines. Rather than step out of bounds, he cut back across all of them, broke an ankle tackle and stiff-armed the last defender down en route to the end zone.

“It was one of those runs where it’s like ‘Are you going to finish it?’ And yeah, I decided to go through everyone in my way to the best I could,” Hart said. “In the offseason, I definitely just worked, was in the weight room and created the body. It’s just going to be me that actually has to finish the play.”

That physicality is the difference between Hart as a junior, when he was already a tremendous player, and Hart now.

“You can see him this year just breaking tackles and not wanting to go down,” Suggs said. “(He is) extremely underrated. … He feels it. That’s why he’s running like that. He’s got a lot to prove. Those are the kinds of guys you want.”

Hart is running like a player who knows how much every carry, and every yard, matters for the success of St. Thomas Academy, and also his future.  St. Thomas and North Dakota offered Hart in the offseason. Hart has a firm belief he can play at the highest levels of college football. The opportunity to prove so “was almost all the motivation I needed.”

“I looked at it like, ‘Do I really want to play D-I? Do I believe I could play D-I at a bigger level.’ And I said, ‘Well, if I work hard enough and do what I do, I believe I could play at that level,’ ” Hart said. “This season, I really was just working on trying to win games, but also definitely wanting to get seen by colleges I believe I could be at.”

Walch noted Hart is unique among St. Thomas Academy students in that his family is not affluent. Football is his ticket to higher education.

“He lives that on a daily basis,” Walch said. “His motivation is making sure that football is going to allow him to go to college.”

That those possibilities are now realities because of the player he’s become surprises even Hart at times.

“Because at first, you’re like, ‘Oh, I could just go out there and play football,’ and you think that’s just it,” he said. “But then you see the bigger picture and the real world, and it’s like you could really go to college for this and go make something of yourself.

“For me, making something of myself is just being successful in something that you love and you know you can have a real life with sufficiency, having money and just being able to support yourself and being successful in that.”

As he continues to have success on and off the field, more doors continue to open.

Hart is currently uncommitted to where he wants to play college football next season. But more and more programs — including high-majors — are taking note of his astounding production as next month’s National Signing Day nears.

“I really believe that domino is still going to fall where a big (program offers) and then everyone follows,” Walch said. “But it just hasn’t happened yet.”

Such is life for Minnesota star running backs. Maple Grove’s Evan Hull didn’t receive any big-time offers until weeks before signing day. He eventually landed at Northwestern, and was a fifth-round NFL draft pick in April.

Holy Angels’ Emmett Johnson received his first Power Five offer from Nebraska just four days before Signing Day in 2021. He led the Cornhuskers in rushing in four of the past five weeks.

Hart figures to follow a similar trajectory. He is a special talent.

“I’ve coached a lot of really good running backs at the Division-II level and the Division-III level,” said Walch, a longtime college coach. “I’ve never, and I continue to say this, I’ve not worked with a kid at any position that is this dominant for their level.”

Walch expects Hart, who already weighs in at 195 pounds, to land between 205 and 215 pounds.

“That’s a big, physical college running back,” Walch said.

He also noted he can’t wait for Hart to get to a program where he’s no longer the best player and watch the ways that drives further ascension.

“I think that’s going to bring out the best in him,” Walch said. “I think, with the great ones, that does happen — they’re chasing someone all the time.”

Suggs sees that type of trait in Hart, much like it was evident in the likes of his son Jalen, as well as current Oklahoma City center Chet Holmgren, both of whom Suggs coached.

“He has the same thing that Jalen and Chet have, that drive, that internal drive. You can see it in practice, you can see it in the weight room when he’s lifting. He takes that same work ethic right onto the field,” Suggs said. “When I’ve seen that as a young kid when he was smaller, I knew he was going to be special.”

It’s also why it’s a good bet Hart will deliver one final special performance Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium. Playing across from Woods — a good friend of Hart’s and a fellow dominant star player — with everything on the line, are the situations in which Hart thrives.

“That drive and that willingness to win, and that hunger,” Suggs said, “that’s what separates him from a lot of the other kids.”

Finalists

Maverick Harper, senior running back, Centennial: The posterchild for Centennial’s physical brand of play that has the Cougars in the Class 6A title game, Harper has 1,320 yards and 18 touchdowns on the ground.

Evan Hatton, senior linebacker, Mounds View: Sack monster and playmaker lived in opponent’s backfields.

Alec Mahoney, senior running back, Mahtomedi: Ran for 1,271 yards and 17 scores on a 7.7-yard average for state quarterfinalist Zephyrs.

Emerson Mandell, senior lineman, Irondale: 6-foot-5, 300-pound monster had colleges calling for years before settling on Wisconsin.

Antonio Menard, senior defensive lineman, Lakeville North: Air Force commit tallied 13 tackles for loss to anchor one of the state’s top defensive units.

Max Mogelson, senior defensive lineman, Two Rivers: UNLV commit was district defensive player of the year. Set physical tone on both sides of ball for the resurgent Warriors.

Mark Rendl, senior linebacker, Forest Lake: Finished with 83 tackles to pace a big, physical Rangers defense that allowed the program to take another step forward.

Tanner Schdmit, senior receiver, Stillwater: Scored 12 touchdowns to pace Stillwater’s lethal passing game that lifted Ponies to a second straight state appearance.

Simon Seidl, senior defensive back/receiver, Hill-Murray: Gophers commit was a playmaker on both ends of the field for state quarterfinalist Pioneers.

Tanner Zolnosky, senior quarterback, East Ridge: The best passer in the metro threw for 2,344 yards and 19 touchdowns while leading the Raptors to state.

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