SALISBURY POST
SPEED RACERS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2010 • 19D
Fast
guys Speed name of the game in Rowan County BY RONNIE GALLAGHER rgallagher@salisburypost.com
Trey Mashore was an all-county and all-conference defensive back last season, but he wasn’t on the college radar going into the summer. Why? Mashore stands just 5-foot-6. Then, the West Rowan senior attended a camp at Wake Forest. He ran a 4.3 40. Then he ran another 4.3. Then a 4.4. “Right there on the spot, they started talking to me,” Mashore said. Suddenly, size didn’t mean as much. Furman, Elon and Coastal Carolina are now among the schools joining Wake in the Mashore sweepstakes. All because he can flat-out burn you. Salisbury’s Romar Morris was a good player going into the summer. He ran some 4.3s at a Shrine Bowl combine and just like that, he became a great player. Division I powers began offering. His speed gave him a chance to travel the country, as he was invited to just about every big-time camp and combine. Carson running back Shaun Warren ran for 1,977 yards last year, but college recruiters talk more about his 4.3 40 time. The 40 has become a fashion statement for college coaches. “Offenses and defenses are built on it,” Catawba head coach Chip Hester said, speaking in general terms. “Speed just makes up for so many mistakes.” • And speed can force you
jon c. lakey/SALISBURY POST
Blurs on the field are, from left, Carson’s Shaun Warren, Salisbury’s Romar Morris and West Rowan’s Trey Mashore. into mistakes. Just ask West Rowan coach Scott Young. His 3A state titleholders edged Salisbury 14-7 last year, and that seven came on an 80-yard sprint by Morris, the reigning 100 and 200 meter champion in 2A. Midway through the first quarter of a scoreless game, Young watched his team line up wrong, with three defensive linemen on one side and only one on the other. Uh-oh. “Romar hit the gap,” Young grimaced, thinking of the memory. “Unless he hits a hole or pulls a hammy, we never catch him.” Mashore was on the field. “I remember coming downhill and me and another player ran into each other. He was gone. Once Romar broke, there was no chance of catching him.” And believe this. The runners know when they’re gone. “I like to make guys give up,” Warren grinned. “When you get out in the open, that’s what they tend to do.” • Tenths of a second mean everything. While the three Rowan stars have 4.3s and are coveted, others settle for FCS or Division II schools because they manage only a 4.6 or 4.7.
“People are intrigued with 40 times,” Young said. “It goes all the way to the NFL. Guys like Willie Gault were big track guys the NFL wanted to experiment with.” Young said the University of Miami teams of the 1980s were the first to really use all-out team speed. “Now, it’s on the high school level,” he said. And team speed is a big reason West won back-toback state championships in 2008 and 2009. “Most of our guys were sub-5.0 runners,” Young said. “And that’s including linemen. We had 11 people who could get to the football.” Morris’ coach, Joe Pinyan, remembers the old days of the Central Carolina Conference, when Davidson County teams referred to playing Salisbury and North Rowan as the “Speed City” part of their schedule. “You can coach technique. You can make a kid tougher. But you can’t coach speed,” Pinyan said. “And you can’t imitate it when you’re practicing against it.” Amen, says Carson coach Mark Woody. “You’ve got to have everybody where they’re supposed to be,” Woody explained. “You get somebody out of position and
you’re in trouble.” • Coaches are enjoying the notoriety Rowan County is receiving because of speed. Young loves to tell the story of one Shrine Bowl combine in which three of the four fastest 40 times were by Rowan athletes: Morris, Mashore and Mashore’s teammate Daishion Barger. “This is an area where there is a lot of speed,” Pinyan praised. The blazing Barger, a track star, has actually run the fastest 40 of all — a 4.29. But it has yet to carry over BARGER to the football field. Young is trying him at receiver, but he said the senior has had some drops. “You want fast guys but yet you want good football players,” Catawba’s Hester said of the genHESTER eral approach. “A lot of times you get track guys and that doesn’t correlate into good football
players.” Young feels Barger can be a football force if he gets his hands as good as his feet. If it happens, that 4.29 40 will have colleges offering him next summer. “Speed’s the name of the game,” Young said. • Mashore has certainly found that out. There isn’t much calling for a 5-6 defensive back, but with speed, he can help a college program with the ball in his hands. Mashore said colleges are looking at him as a kick returner or perhaps a slot receiver. “When Trey ran for the Wake Forest coaches, one of them told him afterward, ‘If you were 5-8, 5-9, you could name your ticket anywhere because you can run,’ ” Young said. Mashore loves going up against Morris and Warren, especially Morris, in the county track meet. “It’s good competition,” he said. “We don’t see speed like that at our other track meets.” And not many people see speed like Mashore’s. Which leads to the question: How did you get so fast? With a proud smile, he announced, “My mother and father have got good genes.” Good enough to help their 5-foot-6 son possibly earn a college scholarship.