Kendron Wayman has earned a reputation as standout basketball player. After all, Wayman has played the sport since third grade. But during his freshman year at North Caroline High School, Wayman made a big change. He decided to give football a try for the first time. As a result, he had rough freshman and sophomore seasons.
“He was big, fast, and strong,” North Caroline Football Coach James McCormick says. “But we kept him on jayvee because he had never played before. He had no idea what he was doing. We brought him up to varsity as a sophomore. Still, he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Over the course of the next two seasons, Wayman, now a senior, made dramatic improvements that no one could have anticipated. The three-sport athlete simply dominated opponents, and college scouts noticed.
Wayman, a three-year starter at defensive end, received a football scholarship from Wake Forest University, where he will major in pre-med. He carried a 3.8 grade-point average at North Caroline.
“Growing up, all I did was basketball and I wanted to play it in college,” says Wayman, who also played the sport in high school along with football. “I started improving in football late in my sophomore year. After the season was done, (teammates) Jamion (Franklin) and David (Bailey) went on some college visits.
“I went with them and saw what it was like getting recruited,” he adds. “I said, ‘I want to push myself and get recruited by a Division I college.’” Wayman’s goal came true. He received scholarship offers from nine schools, including the University of Maryland, Stanford, and Syracuse.
McCormick says the 6-foot-4-inch tall Wayman made a great choice in picking the Demon Deacons. “He will be an awesome college football player,” McCormick explains. “He will be 260, 270 pounds in the blink of an eye. He has so much room to grow.”
Wayman earned Bayside Conference Player of the Year honors in both 2018 and 2019. Last fall was clearly his best season. He finished with 13 sacks, 65 tackles (24.5 for a loss), and forced five fumbles.
“I have been coaching in the Bayside Conference for 25 years and I can’t remember a player who has gotten Defensive Player of the Year two years in a row,” McCormick says. Meanwhile, the 18-year-old Wayman remained a standout on the basketball court. He started for four years on the varsity squad at power forward and this past winter was his breakthrough season.
Wayman averaged 21 points and 15 rebounds. He totaled 30 points and 15 rebounds in a 94-28 rout of St. Michaels in mid-January and had 29 points and 17 rebounds in a 66-58 conquest of Cambridge-South Dorchester in mid-December. He is expected to surpass the 1,000-point mark late in the season.
North Caroline Boys Basketball Coach Steve Perry called Wayman the best inside player he has coached in 14 years at the school. “He is such an inside presence and is probably the best big man in the Bayside Conference,” Perry says. “He has size, jumps well, rebounds, and plays great defense. He has come a long way since he was a freshman and he started as a sophomore on our team that went to the state championship game.”
Wayman also decided to try out for track and field last spring and he ended up having a sensational year in that as well. He won a Class 2A state championship in both the shot put and discus.
“I thought I would be pretty decent because I improved over the season,” Wayman says. “But to win two state titles was pretty amazing. It was surprising.”
North Caroline Track and Field Coach Robert Thomas would probably say the same thing. “For someone to win two state titles that had never picked up a shot put or discus before is unheard of,” Thomas says. “Most high school kids you have to push for two hours of practice. He was always ready to do two hours. He would ask one of the coaches, ‘Are you free this weekend?’ He wanted to put in that extra time.”
