Early Years
Spears was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was a highly sought-after two-sport athlete in the country following his senior season at Southern University Lab High School in Baton Rouge. On the football field, he was rated as the top tight end prospect in America and the third-best overall prospect after earning high school All-America honors. He was named first-team Class 1A all-state selection on both offense and defense following his senior season, becoming the first player to be honored on both in Louisiana since 1991. He finished his final prep season with 28 receptions for 435 yards and three touchdowns and 245 rushing yards and six touchdowns on offense and 22 tackles for losses, 11.5 sacks and four fumble recoveries on defense. The communication studies major was also one of the nation's top basketball prospects. He played in the first ever U.S. Army All-American Bowl game on December 30, 2000.
Read more about this topic: Marcus Spears (defensive End)
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)