JASPER, Tenn. — Much like he does on the football field when he lines up to make life miserable for opposing offenses, Myles Mays took the most direct route when attacking a question recently.
Seated at his locker inside the Marion County High School field house, Mays was asked what motivates him most on the field.
With a sly grin, the 6-foot-3, 275-pound defensive end replied bluntly: “I get to hit people. Hard.”
This season, the massive Mays will get to hit a new group of people after transferring from Georgia’s Northwest Whitfield to Marion County, where he joins a defense that brings back eight starters from a unit that gave up an average of just 10 points per game last year, including six games of allowing seven points or less.
The only new starter along Marion’s defensive front, Mays is ranked No. 9 on this year’s Times Free Press Dynamite Dozen list of the area’s top college football prospects. He has offers from more than a dozen programs, including Air Force, Ball State, Furman, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Kennesaw State and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as the Ivy League’s Cornell and Yale.