Early Years
McDuffie was born in Marion, Ohio. He attended Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio, excelling in football, basketball, track and field and baseball. He set Hawken's record for all-purpose yards with 7,302 in his high school career. In 1986, McDuffie returned an interception 108 yards, an unofficial Ohio state record. During his senior year in 1987, he was named the A-AA Ohio Player of the year. For the 1987 high school football season, he scored 136 points (21 touchdowns) ahead of future professional football players Desmond Howard and Robert Smith.
His number 32 is retired at Hawken School and The News-Herald named McDuffie the number 3 player of the 20th century in Northeast Ohio. Memorabilia from McDuffie's days playing Marion Midget Football are featured in an exhibit entitled "A Passion to Play" at the Marion County Historical Society.
Read more about this topic: O. J. Mc Duffie
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,—how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)