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Illini QB Kirkland Michaux sought new ending to his sports career

As a freshman at Blinn Junior College, Kirkland Michaux started to miss playing football. Despite being a pitcher on the baseball team, Michaux was still throwing a football around with friends in his free time and he spent time as a youth quarterback coach at camps.

But it didn’t fill the void of pulling the belts on shoulder pads tight or snapping a chinstrap secure on a helmet before heading onto the field for a big moment.

Growing up in Austin, Texas, Michaux had dreams of participating in college athletics. An impressive two-sport athlete at Westlake High School, Michaux was the starting quarterback on the football team his senior year and a starting pitcher on the baseball team.

Michaux’s high school football career couldn’t have ended in a better way. Despite being a starting quarterback for just one season, Michaux’s statistics during his senior season strongly impressed. He completed nearly 70 percent of his passes for 2,894 yards with 44 touchdowns and just eight interceptions.

Quarterback Kirkland Michaux during Illini football media day
Quarterback Kirkland Michaux during Illini football media day (Orange and Blue News)
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He ran for an additional 404 yards and seven touchdowns over a 12-game season, culminating with Michaux leading Westlake to the school’s first state championship in more than 20 years. In addition, Michaux’s performance in the title game earned him the offensive MVP award. A pretty good way to end a career on the football field.

Meanwhile, on the diamond, Michaux never had a similar storybook ending to his high school baseball career. A class of 2020 high school graduate, the second half of his second semester of high school was moved to an online format with no school sports because of COVID-19 infiltrating the lives of Americans beginning in the middle of March.

Not having a proper ending to his high school baseball career left Michaux with an urge to continue playing baseball in college – living a childhood dream of being a college athlete into reality. But it also meant that Michaux would be denying a blueshirt scholarship offer – meaning Michaux would have to wait until the start of the fall semester to be on scholarship – from the University of Texas San Antonio offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr.

“I didn’t have a senior year of baseball,” Michaux said. “COVID took that out of me. I had closure with football – to an extent. If I was going to go out, winning state was a great way to go out. Not having any baseball games, really [didn’t allow any closure]. I was in Florida on spring break with all of my baseball teammates when they said no games and just cut it off. It was a dagger. I knew at that point that I needed go and give it a shot.”

To continue his baseball career, Michaux enrolled at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas for the 2021-22 academic year. In the classroom, Michaux began taking classes that would eventually work towards a bachelor’s degree in agriculture business. On the baseball field, he appeared in five games as a pitcher with 15 strikeouts.

But the mounting feelings of a pull towards football led Michaux to take a chance – he began to flirt with playing college football. First, Michaux thought that if he was going to play college football, he should be in an environment that he would enjoy.

An outdoorsman, Michaux likes to hunt and fish, so he thought Wyoming would be a good potential landing spot, and with the Cowboys starting quarterback Sean Chambers entering the transfer portal, Michaux thought there could be an avenue to playing time.

He sent emails to the Wyoming coaching staff and later took a non-football visit to the Wyoming campus where he was able to look around. Michaux and his father, Mike, also met with the Wyoming coaching staff. They didn’t have a spot for him on the roster but said that if he found a spot somewhere he should take it because roster spots were generally pretty hard to come by.

Michaux then decided to send a message to Lunney. When Michaux made the decision to play baseball in college, Lunney told him that if he ever changed his mind or had the itch to play football again to contact him.

“He was like, ‘Hey, I’m at Illinois. What’s going on? I know you’re not just texting me to check-in. What’s happening?’ I was like ‘I’m thinking about playing football again.’ And he called me immediately and I got on the phone with him and asked if I would be interested in checking out Illinois. I was like ‘Of course. Big Ten football, how could I pass that up?’”

Michaux came to Illinois during spring football practices and saw Illinois’ first scrimmage of spring football, and it was “everything” he wanted, so he began the process of transferring his credits from Blinn to the University of Illinois and accepted an opportunity as a preferred walk-on for Lunney, who is entering his first season as the Fighting Illini’s offensive coordinator.

Joining Illinois in the summer, Michaux began taking summer classes at Illinois and started participating in summer workouts with the Illini football team as a walk-on quarterback. Quickly, Michaux learned being a junior college baseball player and being part of a Power 5 football team were not at all alike.

At Blinn, Michaux explained that there wasn’t nearly as much structure to the baseball program. If players wanted to get better, they were encouraged to practice individually. While at Illinois, Michaux has gotten used to a tight, regimented schedule with more support staffers in place to help the Illini find success on the football field and in the classroom.

“It’s way different,” he said. “We didn’t have a set schedule in baseball, and we have a very tight schedule here – which I like a lot. We had a tight schedule in high school for football, so getting back to that routine and doing something every day and getting your mind prepared for the season because you’re going to be in and out of meetings in the season and going to school and everything.”

Illinois is now entering its third week of training camp in preparation for the season-opening game against Wyoming on Aug. 27 at Memorial Stadium. Michaux is near the bottom of the Illini’s quarterback depth chart behind Syracuse transfer Tommy DeVito, Artur Sitkowski and walk-on third-string quarterback Ryan Johnson. The Illini also have freshman Donovan Leary, a former three-star prospect learning the position in training camp.

Michaux, though, is still getting used to being back at quarterback. He jokes that when he throws, he’s trying to make sure the ball spins coming out of his hand, instead of turning over like a baseball would rolling off the fingers. But most of the struggles that Michaux has faced through training camp have come with the mental aspect. Seeing defensive coverages and knowing where he can and can’t throw the football are things that have really challenged him.

“I definitely haven’t made the best decisions every time,” he said. “Still knocking the rust off more and more.”

He admitted to throwing a few interceptions in the first two weeks of training camp, but he’s also said that being in a quarterback room with DeVito, Sitkowski and Johnson has been beneficial because all three have been in college since at least 2018 and are owners of a vast understanding of the position. They’ve been considerably helpful with correcting footwork and simplifying defensive coverages.

“The biggest thing for me is to remain calm,” Michaux said. ‘Staying level-headed and not letting a bad throw affect my body language or how practice is going. I’ve thrown a couple interceptions here in camp, and I know have to put those behind me. This is camp, it’s where you make your mistakes and you learn.

“Ryan, Tommy, Art have all been in college now five, six years and are so knowledgeable about the game. This summer, going into quarterback meetings on our own throughout the summer with signals, learning the plays those guys helped with everything on the field, as well. It’s really just the mental aspect of the game is the biggest thing. Learning those coverages again, keys on the defense, things like that have been the biggest thing right now.”

Michaux thought he had a storybook ending to his football career when he won a state championship in 2020 at Westlake. But Michaux was pulled back to the sport, and is in an environment where he wants to be.

“It was my choice,” Michaux said. “To be able to go to school and play football and this [place] has everything that I wanted.”

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