Karlos May‘s childhood living room was small, warm and adorned with wonderfully worn furniture.
“Like the type your grandparents had back in the day,” he said with a laugh at the descriptor that is somehow universal regardless of age and background.
That room always managed to feel full, but not because of its size.
There, May would learn some of the finer points of tackling.
His mother, Kandyce May, would strategically place the couch cushions on the floor. He’d tackle her into them and vice versa. This went on from when he was 4 years old — and already too aggressive for flag football — until middle school, when May was bigger than Mom.
But it really wasn’t about training.
Family. That was at the center of the living room.
May’s sister, Kayden, would join in. So would his godbrother. His friends would come over as well for the tackle tournament.
It’d get competitive and last for hours as bodies flowed through a sea of oversized couch cushions.
“I think that has something to do with the way I am now, the way I’m wired,” May said.
Kandyce May calls her son a big teddy bear. It fits as he’s fiercely competitive as a football player, yet fun-loving and quick to smile away from the game. That blend has served him well as May, a four-star prospect out of Birmingham (Ala.) Ramsay, announced his Ohio State commitment Saturday evening.
“To know the work he’s put in, I’m so proud of him,” Kandyce May said. “I told him, ‘You got this out of the mud, you watched your videos, you practiced outside of football.’ He deserves this.”
A SETBACK AFTER THE RISE
Youth coaches began telling Kandyce that her son was different, although those words weren’t really necessary. He was so dominant on the defensive line that opponents began just constantly running in the opposite direction, so his own coaches just moved him to linebacker in order to assure he couldn’t be avoided.
“He was the biggest linebacker I’d ever seen,” Ramsay head coach Ronnie Jackson said, thinking back to May’s reputation in youth football.
Jackson didn’t need much time to realize that he had something special in May. There’s a rite of passage at Ramsay where incoming freshmen have to attack The Hill, a four-block stretch of uphill running that more or less tests the resiliency of future varsity players.
Most will save themselves for the expectation of 10, 11, or even 12 attempts at The Hill.
Not May. He went all out on the very first attempt and was pushing to do the same on the second.
“It’s like he doesn’t know better,” Jackson said.
He ended up starting for Ramsay, a championship-caliber program most years, as a freshman. They needed size at right guard, and so that’s where May played even if it was a foreign position to him.
May proved himself to be a top talent and has eventually ascended to being a Top247 prospect, but the climb to that ranking wasn’t a smooth one.
Fresh off an Ole Miss offer, May suffered a sizable setback entering his sophomore season after he came down to earth following a dunk. His knee felt weird. It hurt, but he finished the pickup game.
