Football: Maypray doing many things for Yellow Jackets
By Matt Stanmyre (Daily Staff Writer)
FRONT ROYAL — Tim knows football. Tim also knows basketball. And baseball. And track.
There's not much Randolph-Macon Academy's Tim Maypray doesn't know. Bo Jackson, please step aside.
How to dunk a basketball? Check. How to run the 100-meters in 10.2 seconds flat? Piece of cake. How to command the respect of 75 peers you're in charge of overseeing? Yeah, he can do that too.
What can't Maypray do?
"Nothing I can think of," R-MA football coach Dick Allanson said with a deep chuckle.
Maypray may be the most versatile athlete around. On the football field, he leads the area in receiving and is third in rushing yards. In basketball, he scored around 20 points per game last season. He's the starting center fielder on the R-MA baseball team, and had the fastest 100-meter time and best long jump mark in 2005.
Dynamo's not the word for Maypray. Nor is renaissance man. Maypray is more a freak of nature, a deviance of human stereotype. He's an athlete blessed with other-worldly ability — at the same time he sports a 3.0 grade-point average, and is a flight commander in R-MA's junior ROTC corps of cadets, responsible for the behavior and order of 75 teenagers in his hall.
"If you wanted a model for what a great kid should be like, Timmy's that model," Allanson said. "If you wanted your son to be like someone, you'd say this is the kid I'd like him to be like."
And football coaches, you'd want your running back to be like this also. Last Saturday, the Yellow Jackets (5-3) trailed Benedictine School 21-12 at halftime. The Yellow Jackets were so off that they could barely lace up their cleats.
Then Maypray had something to say.
"He came to me at halftime and said, 'Hey coach, give me the football,'" Allanson said.
Maypray got it. He scored four touchdowns in the second half against beleaguered Benedictine, lifting the Yellow Jackets to a 40-37 victory.
Allanson lost his tongue after that performance. His teammates do the same when asked about Maypray's best quality.
"One thing?" incredulously asked R-MA lineman John Conard, one of Maypray's closest friends. "Everything sticks out about him. He's explosive — that's probably the one things that sticks out. He can score at any time. He's a threat to score all the time, on offense, defense and special teams."
That's an accurate assessment. He's tied for the area lead with six interceptions and has three touchdowns on kick returns. The only thing Maypray doesn't do on the football field is clip the grass and line the sod.
"My role on the team is to just get the job done," Maypray said. "I like being the go-to guy. I have a desire to win. Out there, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help us win."
With R-MA two victories away from a playoff berth, Maypray certainly knows winning. But more importantly, Tim also knows compassion. That's why anyone who knows him intimately speaks first of his exploits outside of sports. When a lonely freshman named Victor McCoy set foot on campus earlier this year, it was Maypray who was drawn to him. And it wasn't because he wanted to improve the newcomer's blossoming athletic ability, or that he wanted to set things straight up front with the youngster.
Instead, it was because Maypray had heard of McCoy's rough upbringing — his ascent in a fatherless home in a modest rural town no more than a speck on a map. It was the same life Maypray was born into back in Madison, Ky., and it was the same lonely upbringing and dependence on a iron-willed mother that Maypray had trudged through a couple years prior.
"Timmy sort of took him under his wing as his prodigy," Allanson said. "I think he relates to him; they had a similar upbringing. That's just the kind of kid Timmy is. Just a nice kid."
Nice and ambitious. Maypray doesn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer, or work with computers or children. No, Maypray wants to be a fighter pilot. He wants to fly planes, take them into combat and then navigate them out unscathed, dart away from enemies in the air like he does so eloquently on the football field. He wants to soar among the endless blue and white sky that blankets the planet, go high up and keep his head resting on the pillowy cumulous clouds that cover the Atlantic and Pacific.
Indeed, Tim yearns to know flying.
"Ever since I was little, I've just been fascinated and had the urge to be up there flying," Maypray said. "That's something that I always wanted to do, and something I plan on doing."
Allanson says Maypray is capable of achieving whatever he desires. The kid could probably scale a mountain or perform Shakespeare on Broadway if the mood strikes him. He's that talented and well-rounded.
"He could step in right now and play quarterback for me," Allanson said. "He knows everybody's positions and where everybody should be on the field probably better than they do themselves."
No one doubts Maypray's inclination toward greatness — that's mainly why college letters interested in his services are stacking up in Allanson's office like Greek pillars. VMI and William and Mary have shown the most intrigue, but Allanson expects the feelers to intensify in the coming months.
But Maypray will be too busy to take much notice. Too busy playing basketball and baseball and running track, from season to season, sport to sport, coach to coach. Maypray will be constantly on the go, never resting, always doing whatever it takes to help his team win.
The kid may know a lot of things, but something Maypray certainly doesn't know is down time.
