Six months before they made their debuts on the field for Mississippi State’s football team, Kylin Hill and Willie Gay, Jr., were seniors in high school running sprints, doing exercises and lifting weights at Starkville High’s athletic complex where Gay was on track to soon graduate. He and Hill, who was finishing his last year at nearby Columbus High School, had hired a trainer to work with them all spring before they enrolled in classes at MSU and started summer workouts with the team. They wanted to be ready when they arrived.
In fact, the two State signees wanted to be ready so badly that when the Bulldogs started spring practice in March, Hill and Gay would go straight from their workouts at SHS over to MSU’s practices at the Seal Complex.