Raquinton Allen is a top performer on the Westgate offensive line this season. 

You might not know it by his performances, but Westgate junior Raquinton Allen never wanted to be on the offensive line.

The six-foot-two all-around lineman would prefer to play on defense, but is putting the team’s best interests ahead of his own this season.

“I’d prefer to play d(efensive)-line,” he said. “You can be more explosive and aggressive on defense. You don’t have to think when you’re playing, you can just play. This is my first year playing here. I played all over before: tight end, d-line. It’s alright. It’s not where I want to be, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to get where you want to go.”

Even Allen isn’t entirely sure of where he wants to go. The junior said that he wants to get an offer to continue his career at a D1 university, but also expressed interest in continuing his Twitch streaming career.

“My mind is all over the place,” he said about his future. “I don’t know if I want to play football or Twitch stream, but I’m going to keep my options open so that whatever I want to do, I can do it.”

Before he can get to that point, however, he has to get past No. 2 seed Neville on Friday.

Despite Neville entering the playoffs as the No. 2 seed, Allen said that the Tigers from Monroe haven’t experienced anything like Westgate this year.

“I feel like they’ve never played a team like us this year,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to know how to react when they’re playing us. We give 100% every play, so I don’t think they can withstand that all game.”

Allen is one of those players who puts in the 100% performances for the Tigers. Despite playing in a position he might not enjoy, Allen said he won’t make the mistake of quitting on this team this year.

“I’ve been doing pretty good,” Allen said of his season so far. “At the beginning of the season I didn’t even want to play O-line. I was thinking about not even playing, but I figured I might as well see what I can do to help the team. Last year, I let them down by quitting, so I wanted to make it up to them. I made a lot of bad decisions so I couldn’t play how I wanted to play. Not because I wasn’t good enough, but because of the decisions that I made. I started playing less so I felt like I was wasting my time. I feel like this is putting me back on the right track.”