“I played running back as a kid, and I was pretty damn good,” Evans said. “So I was a little bit bigger than other guys. In middle school, everyone kind of caught up a little bit, and I kind of grew up a little bit. Like, I was athletic still, but also kind of awkward, getting my body.
“I knew I was going to be tall because my mom’s side was just pretty tall and my dad’s pretty tall, so growing up I knew I knew I was going to be eventually taller. But that middle school time is when it stopped for a little bit.”
And that in-between phase almost left the Panthers perilously close to not having their in-case-of-emergency-break-glass lineman, who was ready to abandon the sport to become a basketball player before he was old enough to get a driver’s license.
“Yeah, that’s where I lost my love for football, I almost quit,” Evans said of those days as a reserve interior lineman for the Wadsworth Middle Grizzles. “I had to get convinced to come back out.”
The good news is it worked, and he found his footing again in football.