Cam Shriey wasn’t given a warning that he’d be doing a middle-of-the-school-day interview earlier this month for being selected as the 2025 Times Football Player of the Year.

The Seneca senior running back/linebacker didn’t hesitate, however, when asked what led to his winning the honor or what led to the Fighting Irish continuing their run of success.

“It always just comes down to working, you know?” Shriey said. “We have a lot of people on the team that were [deserving] for this, I think, and you just have to work to earn your spot. ...

“And it’s not just me. All of the [team] in the offseason were in the weight room. We knew we’d have big shoes to fill this year, but I think we did it well.”

They did, Shriey especially so.

Seneca posted an undefeated regular season for the third time over the past four falls, winning the Chicagoland Prairie Conference championship and advancing to the second round of the Class 2A playoffs before running into the buzzsaw that was eventual 2A state champion Wilmington.

Shriey was a huge part of that success, the focal point of the Irish’s run-heavy power-T offense (1,376 yards, 9.4 yards per carry, 21 touchdowns, seven 2-point conversions) and a key linebacking cog in Seneca’s hard-hitting defense (49 total tackles, 42 solo, four tackles for loss).

“I feel like we did really well,” he said of the season, which opened with 10 consecutive victories. “I mean, our Week 8 game against St. Joe-Ogden – a big school, really good team coming in – that was a good one. Beating Marquette is always a good one.

“Just getting through undefeated in the regular season, like [Seneca head coach Terry] Maxwell said, is really hard to do, and not every good team can do it. It’s an accomplishment, and you’ve got to work to do that.”

If it seems as if the word “work” is being mentioned a lot, that’s because it is. Another one that seems to come up whenever Shriey’s gridiron game is talked about is “contact.”

“I love the contact,” Shriey said. “Any contact I can get, I want it. I see a guy, he’s in my way, I’m going to try to run him over. And if I get tackled, I’m going to keep running as hard as I can.”

“Last year, he was probably more of a blocker for us,” Maxwell said. “He’s always carried out great fakes. He’s won our Ghost Award the past couple years, which we give to our top faking back who gets the most defenders to chase. So he’s always done those little things really well, and he’s worked hard, gotten a lot stronger and faster and really tried to make himself a better athlete.

“I think his freshman and sophomore years, he saw himself more as a baseball player that played football. Now he’s kind of embraced the sport of football more these past couple years, has really grown to love it and has really worked hard to make himself dependable.

“And he loves contact, which is just perfect for our offense.”

Indeed, the old-school power-T seemed a perfect fit for Shriey – a hard-nosed, physical player who enjoys collisions and seems to take as much pride in his blocking and decoy responsibilities as he did in the yards he churned up.

“I didn’t hear about [the power-T offense] before I got to high school, but I’ve grown to love it,” Shriey said. “I love being physical, and every play you get to do something physical – whether you’re blocking or you’re running the ball through a tight hole or you get to fake. ...

“It’s not just one person that makes a run. It’s everybody. The running backs need to block, running backs need to fake, linemen need to block. It [takes] a well-oiled machine to run.”

Shriey said that while he doesn’t have any plans set in stone, he does hope to play collegiately after his graduation from Seneca High School.

With his work ethic and love for the physicality of the game, there’s reason to suspect he’ll adjust to that step up as successfully as he stepped into a featured role for the 2025 Fighting Irish.

“We haven’t really depended on one guy in our offense the past few years,” Maxwell said, “but I think when yardage got tough, most people knew the ball would be going to Cam.

“He’s been great for us. We’re going to miss him.”