RESERVE —To learn the real story about Riverside Academy running back Jeremy Gibson, you have to go the expert.

It’s not head coach Chris Lachney or any of his teammates.

It’s his grandmother, Kathy Gibson.

She’ll tell the story about how, when Jeremy Gibson was just a tot, he loved the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

No one in his family knows exactly why he loved that particular NFL team, they just know that every time the team played on TV, little Jeremy would come out of his room in a complete Tampa Bay uniform to watch the game with his grandpa.

“He’d say, ‘I gotta watch the BUCK – a – neers,’” she said. “Just like that. ‘The BUCK – a – neers.’”

When he was a little older, Kathy said Jeremy would walk down the street in his Reserve neighborhood with a baseball in his hand and a football tucked under his arm while dribbling a basketball with the other hand.

“He always was the best athlete,” Kathy said.

Eventually Jeremy gave up baseball and basketball and now wears the uniform of a Riverside Rebel.

The athlete part hasn’t changed though.

Jeremy is the workhorse running back for the Rebels, a 5-foot-11, 190-pound brute who has speed and finesse.

He finished the 2016 season with 955 yards on 162 carries and 13 touchdowns to earn the All District 12-2A MVP nod and earn a spot on L’OBSERVATEUR’s All-St. John team.

Those numbers also made him a top recruit on a team that seems full of them.

With offers from Utah, Tulane, Purdue, Arizona State, Southern Miss, Kent State, Southeastern, Marshall, South Alabama, Troy, Colorado State, McNeese State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Texas Tech and Nicholls State, Jeremy put it all to rest with a Twitter commitment to Arkansas.

“It’s the tradition of running backs,” Jeremy said. “And I just feel like people up there are from down here. De’Jon Harris (who went to Ehret), I talked to him. The coach who recruited me (Michael Smith), he’s from here. I went to visit with my aunt. Just talking to the coaches, seeing the campus, seeing the players, I thought it would be a good place for me to call home for the next three or four years.”

Now that the decision has been made, Jeremy said he’s glad that part of his football career is behind him.

“I just wanted to get everything over to focus on my senior season,” he said.

That’s just fine with head coach Lachney, who took over the Rebels when Bill Stubbs retired in January.

Stubbs’ longtime defensive coordinator, Lachney takes over a team coming off its most successful season in school history, with its first state championship trophy to prove it.

Lachney said Gibson certainly deserves the accolades and the attention.

“He did have a really good season,” Lachney said. “He was kind of the workhorse, the bell cow, if you will, on an offense that was really, really good last year and had some real good players. ”

That hasn’t changed, either.

Gibson once again will be the primary ball carrier on a team with a top-notch quarterback in Jordan Loving (1,397 yards, 13 TDs) and stellar wide receivers in Jalen Banks and Kash Foley.

Ask Jeremy about his “breakout” game, and he’ll tell you it was a 34-20 win over Plaquemine High.

“I think I had 99 yards that game,” he said (it was 98). “I just feel like everything people said I couldn’t do, I did. I ran with power. I had balance. I was elusive. If you see the film, I just did everything. And I played against (safety) Todd Harris, who went to LSU.”

Ask Kathy, though, and she’ll tell you his breakout game was much earlier, during his sophomore season against Ehret.

The Rebels lost that game, 29-28, but that was after rallying back from a 22-7 deficit in the second half.

Gibson scored twice in that game, taking short passes 57 and 45 yards for scores.

“That’s the one I remember,” Kathy said.