Broken Arrow’s Demeco Roland a late bloomer
BROKEN ARROW — Lying on the turf after his first week of spring conditioning, Demeco Roland croaked out the words every coach dreads.
“I want to quit.”
It had been a week of wind sprints, updowns, pushups and weight training for Roland, who had just ventured over to give high school varsity football a try.
He told coaches he didn’t think he could make it through the following seven weeks of spring and summer football at Broken Arrow High School.
Broken Arrow coach David Alexander didn't want to hear it.
“We just kind of told him straight up,” Alexander said. “Don’t quit. If you put in the work, I promise it’ll pay off.”
Roland picked himself up off the turf and he never looked back.
Heading into his senior season, Roland is one of the top defensive tackle prospects in the state for Broken Arrow and checks in at No. 23 on The Oklahoman’s Super 30 rankings for top recruits in Oklahoma.
Roland, who stands at 6-foot-3 and just added 10 pounds this spring to reach 290, has eight scholarship offers total, including Division I offers from Tulsa, North
Texas and Missouri State. He also has offers from Stephen F. Austin and Abilene Christian.
Alexander said if Roland continues the level of play he showed late in his junior season, that offer list should grow.
“He’s such a late bloomer physically,” Alexander said. “By the end of last season, he might have been our best lineman and we had another guy that went Division I playing next to him.
“He was impacting the game in so many ways.”
For Roland, those initial practices before his sophomore year really set the tone for his varsity career.
“Back then, I think I was scared about the work,” Roland said. “Now I want to go and dominate everybody I go against. I feel like my attitude and my work ethic is better now. I’m just hungry for it this year.”
Hungry and willing to put in the work. Alexander
said Roland has taken pride in becoming a leader. Roland has gone out of his way to go the extra mile, including 5:30 a.m. CrossFit sessions multiple times a week.
Roland said it also helps that he gets to go up against offensive lineman Andrew Raym every day in practice. Raym, while only a junior this coming season, is considered to be one of the top prospects in the state with scholarship offers to OU and Alabama already.
“I need it every day,” Roland said of the competition with Raym. “He’s working me, and I’m working him. We are
good friends since fifth grade but once we strap it up nobody is friends on the field. He’s either going to whoop me or I’m gonna whoop him.”
In June, Roland was named senior MVP at the Bixby lineman camp. He’s finishing first in wind sprints and showing younger lineman proper technique in drills.
“Demeco will be a whole chapter in my book,” Alexander said. “Just because of the work it took and how far he’s come and not only how much work it took physically but the mental change it took.
“He will be a dominant force at the next level.”