Early Years and College Career
Motley was born in Leesburg, Georgia and raised in Canton, Ohio, where his family moved when he was three years old. After going to elementary and junior high schools in Canton, Motley attended Canton McKinley High School, where he played on the football and basketball teams. He was especially good as a football fullback, and the Canton Bulldogs posted a win-loss record of 25–3 during his tenure there. The team's three losses all came against Canton's chief rivals, a Massillon Washington High School team led by coach Paul Brown.
After he graduated, Motley enrolled in 1939 at South Carolina State College, a historically black school in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He transferred before his sophomore year to the University of Nevada, Reno, where he was a star on the football team between 1941 and 1943. As a punishing fullback for the Wolf Pack, Motley played against powerful West Coast teams including USF, Santa Clara, and St. Mary's. He suffered a knee injury in 1943 and returned to Canton to work after dropping out of school.
Read more about this topic: Marion Motley
Famous quotes containing the words college career, early, years, college and/or career:
“In looking back over the college careers of those who for various reasons have been prominent in undergraduate life ... one cannot help noticing that these men have nearly always shown from the start an interest in the lives of their fellow students. A large acquaintance means that many persons are dependent on a man and conversely that he himself is dependent on many. Success necessarily means larger responsibilities, and responsibilities mean many friends.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“Though her years were waning,
Her climacteric teased her like her teens.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“here
to this college on the hill above Harlem
I am the only colored student in my class.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)