Meylor’s last ride has been magical

Oh, absolutely, Max Meylor knows how lucky he is to be nearly 24 and still experience the gift of playing college football.

If ever that reality might escape his mind, rarely does a day go by that a younger UW-Whitewater teammate doesn’t mention his age or his elder statesman status. For perspective, the freshmen in the program were in seventh grade when Meylor played his last high school football game.

Way back then in 2015, Meylor didn’t envision himself as a Warhawk. He was wrapping up a Mount Horeb-Barneveld career that left him among the top passers in state history, and was coming off a starring role for the Vikings’ boys basketball team that won the school’s only state championship when he was a junior. 

Meylor was attracting serious attention from NCAA Football Championship Subdivison schools, traveling the Midwest to show off his big arm at passing camps, even exchanging texts with University of Wisconsin coaches about the possibility of being a Badger.

Ever since then, the guy who made it look all too easy has traveled a long and winding road that’s been anything but. Make no mistake about it, though: Meylor is exactly where he wants to be, doing precisely what he wants to do. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic made possible a sixth year of eligibility, Meylor seized the opportunity to make one last go at an elusive title in football as a super-super senior.

“I had unfinished business,” Meylor said. “My football college career wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I knew if I came back we’d be a really good team. Whitewater always has good athletes, and I knew we’d compete for a national title.”

As has been the case for the majority of the past 15 years, that’s exactly where the Warhawks find themselves. On Saturday, UW-Whitewater (13-0) will host familiar foe Mary Hardin-Baylor of Texas (13-0) in an NCAA Division III national semifinal at Perkins Stadium. Kickoff is at 2:30 p.m., and the game will be televised on ESPN+, a subscription streaming service.

Whichever team prevails will advance to the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl on Dec. 17 in Canton, Ohio, against the winner of the other semifinal between defending national champion North Central (Ill.) and Mount Union (Ohio).

Meylor’s command of an offense loaded with weapons is a major reason the Warhawks have themselves on the verge of their second title game appearance in as many seasons with him at the helm. His versatility was on full display in a 51-21 quarterfinal victory over Central (Iowa) last weekend. 

There, he completed 17-of-22 passes for 230 yards and two touchdowns, ran for one score and even caught a touchdown pass from standout receiver Ryan Wisniewski on a reverse for UW-Whitewater, which totaled 490 yards of offense.

His eye-popping season stats — 70.5% completion rate for 2,950 yards and 35 touchdowns against just two interceptions — earned Meylor the WIAC Offensive Player of the Year honor, and he is one of 15 semifinalists for the Gagliardi Trophy, which is the Division III equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. Finalists were to be named Thursday.

That’s an enviable position for a guy who three years ago found himself shopping for a new home after it became painfully obvious his once-promising path at Division II Lindenwood (Mo.) had transformed into a dead end, and then spent most of his first season at Whitewater as a backup.

“This collegiate run of athletics reminds me of life,” Meylor said. “It’s not all pretty, it takes hard work to get to a spot you want to be, and when you’re there, you’ve got to enjoy it and love it every day.”

‘The epitome of a leader’

And it’s a distinct possibility that no one enjoys himself more on a football field than Max Meylor does.

“When you’re around players like that, it’s so easy to get lost in the moment,” said Travis Rohrer, who was MH-B’s football coach during Meylor’s three-year run as starting quarterback. “He’s a gift. A unicorn. He has that ‘it’ that everyone talks about.”

Observed UW-Whitewater football coach Kevin Bullis: “I spend my whole game looking ticked off, like I had something bad for breakfast. But I desire for our guys to play the game like they’re having fun. … You see him out there chest-bumping and smiling and laughing. And when you’re a leader and you show you’re having fun, it carries over. It effervesces into the offense, effervesces into the team.”

Meylor entered his sophomore season at MH-B as a backup, but Rohrer recognized an interesting dichotomy that compelled him to hand over the reins to the young gunslinger early in the Vikings’ second game. Despite his fun-loving nature — “he’d celebrate completed passes in practice like it was fifth-grade flag football,” Rohrer recalled — Meylor is an intense competitor for whom the lights are never too bright. 

In that aforementioned contest that became Meylor’s coming-out party, Oregon had rattled off 26 straight points to claim a 39-31 lead late into the fourth quarter. With the Vikings driving but facing a live-or-die, long fourth-down conversion, Meylor delivered a laser to the back corner of the end zone, where Alex Field hauled in his 24-yard touchdown pass. 

Meylor then ran in the tying two-point conversion and future UW-Platteville running back Wyatt Thompson capped the thrilling, 46-39 win with a long touchdown run in the closing minutes.

Every Friday night for the next three seasons became a community event as the Vikings reached Level 3 of the WIAA Division 3 state playoffs each year, won a share of the Badger Conference title in 2014, and recorded the only back-to-back victories over perennial power Waunakee in program history. 

Meylor threw for 7,489 career yards, the sixth-highest in Wisconsin history; threw for 69 touchdowns, the ninth-highest in state history; completed nearly 63% of his passes and rushed for 1,341 yards in his career, which included second-team all-state honors as a senior and honorable mention as a junior.

“That was a special time,” said Meylor, referring to both his high school and youth football days in Mount Horeb. “I was coached really well to be an all-around player from the start,” he added, singling out Rohrer, offensive coordinator Tim Halverson and defensive coordinator Ryan Kleppe for pushing him in high school.

Meylor might have been the ringleader, but his intention was to elevate every one of the talented playmakers around him during the ride, such as receivers Isaiah Lesure, Nathaniel Osterloo, and Riley Coon, tight ends Trey Recknor and Terek Nesheim, and running backs Thompson and Matt Blome.

“He’s the epitome of a leader,” said Rohrer, now an assistant coach at Monona Grove. “There are a lot of players I’ve enjoyed coaching in my 29 years, but hands down, there’s no one I loved coaching more than Max. and I miss it.”

Whenever Rohrer is working with a promising student he is teaching in middle school, or a talented player at the high school level, he brings up Meylor’s name as an example of how to excel.

“With my students, with my athletes, I ask them, ‘Do you want to be the one who turns the lights on or turns the lights off?’ ” Rohrer said. “Max has a light about him, a magnetism. And usually when you’re dealing with someone with that much talent, there’s a level of arrogance — and it’s accepted. He is as humble a human as I’ve met, regardless of talent. And he’s just fun to be around.”

That trait also has been noticeable to Bullis. 

“Max ain’t looking for the spotlight, but he knows it’s on him,” said Bullis, whose teams have reached the national semifinals four times in six seasons on his watch. “There’s a humbleness about him.”

A dead end at Lindenwood

The divide between being humble and being humbled is vast.

Meylor discovered that first-hand at Lindenwood, a school in St. Charles, Mo., within the St. Louis metro area. Meylor bonded with coach Patrick Ross, the winningest coach in program history, and the Lions gave him a generous scholarship at a level where not every player is getting a full ride. It was the culmination of a long search for a place that felt right.

But Ross got fired after Meylor’s redshirt season in the fall of 2016, and suddenly the situation seemed less stable. Feeling the itch to compete after watching football from the sidelines for the first time in his life, Meylor joined the Lions’ basketball team as a true freshman that year and became an immediate contributor — another reminder of his athleticism. He appeared in 24 games, helped Lindenwood to a 6-1 mark in games he started, and turned in a 15-point, nine-rebound showing in a nonconference win over Douglas.

Meylor entered the 2017 season as the No. 2 quarterback, and his first collegiate throw was a 50-yard touchdown pass against Northeastern State. But he appeared in just four games and began to see the writing on the wall. 

After another impressive basketball season — Meylor started 16 games and averaged 5.8 points and 2.7 rebounds — he appeared in just three football games in his redshirt sophomore season in the fall of 2018. Playing for his third offensive coordinator in as many seasons, Meylor recognized there was no promise of ever breaking through to the starting job under the new coaching staff.

“I’ll be honest, I lost a little step mentally because I wasn’t playing,” Meylor said. “You kind of doubt yourself because you can’t show what you’ve got.”

Meylor comes from a tight-knit family; his parents, Joen and Dave, made the trip to St. Charles from Mount Horeb for every home game. They saw the toll the situation was taking on the normally fun-loving Max, but have always been proponents of allowing their kids — including his older sisters, Maddie and Olivia — to follow their own path.

“He always kept his head down and kept working hard, but finally, one night, he broke down at dinner,” Joen recalled. “He said, ‘I gotta make a move. This situation is not going to change. They brought in their own people and they’re not going to even look at me.’” 

Rather than try to find another Division II opportunity, Meylor decided it was time to find a school closer to home in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. His top two choices were UW-Platteville and UW-Whitewater. 

The scale tipped toward the Warhawks because of their national profile and the graduation of incumbent starter Cole Wilber, who had guided UW-W to the national semifinals in 2018.

“When he reached out to us after two years there, we were pretty excited. It was very thrilling,” Bullis said. “We knew the level of talent that he was and is.”

A postseason emergence

Meylor wasn’t promised anything coming into Whitewater, and once more he found himself as the backup throughout much of 2019, his first season in the program. He played in all 12 games, but primarily as second fiddle to Zach Oles, a transfer from FCS program Butler who had a one-year head start on learning the playbook and personnel for the Warhawks.

“When moments in life are adverse for people, you see their true colors,” Bullis said. “When he was in his down moments of that competition for the job, he never wavered. I’m sure that on the inside, he was having some doubts about himself, That’s normal. But he never showed it on the practice field or in the meeting room. 

“He came to work with his lunch pail, and he kept on laughing, and that’s when I knew had someone special when I saw him competing even though the tough times. That tells you a lot about him as a human being.”

Meylor’s determination eventually paid off. In the second-to-last game of the regular season, Bullis turned to him after UW-Stout had pulled within six points in the fourth quarter, and Meylor responded by promptly throwing two touchdowns to standout receiver Ryan Wisniewski to give the Warhawks a runaway 37-17 victory.

When the playoffs started two weeks later, Meylor was under center for good. He threw for four touchdowns in a 35-7 rout of Monmouth (Ill.), then settled into more of a game manager role for the remainder of the postseason as the Warhawks advanced to the NCAA championship game. 

Meylor’s One Shining Moment came in the national semifinals against St. John’s (Minn.), when he put his foot down on an option play to the right side of the field and sprinted 38 yards for a touchdown. After a bad interception that led to the tying score for the Johnnies, Meylor rebounded to lead an 11-play drive for a field goal that secured a 35-32 win.

“In my mind, I wish we would’ve made the change earlier,” Bullis said, “but hindsight is 20/20.”

Preparation in pandemic year pays off

Then, 2020 became the year that never was in WIAC football circles. With the pandemic raging, the league announced in July it was canceling its fall sports seasons, but would grant that year’s seniors an extra year of eligibility should they desire to return for the 2021 campaign.

Many of Meylor’s teammates decided to call it a career — understandable at a level where you’re paying your own way to school and want to get on with life. Meylor wasn’t quite ready, not after battling so hard to finally earn his role and coming up a step short of a title in 2019, which ended with a 41-14 loss to North Central.

Even with no games, the NCAA made available 114 contact days throughout the academic year. Sensing a unique opportunity at player development, Bullis made use of 93 of them.

The mantra within the program is to get 1% better every day — as a player, as a student, as a man. The Warhawks took that challenge to heart, Meylor among them. 

He focused on better conditioning his body, and on fine-tuning all the little things — footwork, timing, understanding the nuances of ball placement — to a level he had not previously. Most importantly, Meylor developed a chemistry with offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Peter Jennings that allowed the veteran quarterback to introduce his own wrinkles within the system. 

“I learned that here in college. It’s about trust. Every coach is different,” Meylor said. “My QB coach at Lindenwood is different than Coach Jennings here at Whitewater. There’s a certain way they want things. I’ve learned his way and he trusts me and I trust him and it’s paying off.”

Big time. Meylor won another quarterback battle — this time with Evan Lewandowski, a talented transfer from UW-La Crosse — and has dramatically improved his efficiency and command of the offense. In 2019, he completed just 59% of his passes and threw nine interceptions, and Bullis expected some growing pains again early coming off a one-year absence. 

But Meylor went 140 passing attempts before throwing his first interception in the seventh game of the season. By then, he’d amassed more than 2,500 passing yards and 21 touchdowns in leading the Warhawks to an average winning margin of 30 points.

“Most quarterbacks see their efficiency increase during the year. He’s doing that right off the bat. That’s the thing that was startling,” Bullis said. “His efficiency was blowing my mind … it was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ That put proof to taking advantage of that pandemic year.”

The Warhawks eked out a 34-28 victory over River Falls in that game where Meylor threw his first interception and edged UW-Eau Claire 13-7 in their only other competitive game of the season. 

“I’ve never been part of a more hungry team than this one,” Meylor said.

That was literally the case after the regular-season finale against UW-Stevens Point, when a group of the most veteran players on the team gathered for an early Thanksgiving feast at the home of captains Ryan Ponick, a running back, and Kyle Gannon, the starting right tackle. The players’ girlfriends — including Morgan Schyvinck, Max’s longtime significant other  — organized the event as a chance to celebrate past success and gear up for another postseason run.

“We rehashed memories, and talked about embracing these next few weeks,” Meylor said. “I love those guys.”

One final ride?

Meylor has always been driven to succeed. His father, Dave, reflects on the many nights when Max was outside their house shooting baskets even after the sun set. And he’s always been someone who shines when the chips are on the line, as he did during Mount Horeb’s state championship run in basketball, scoring 18 points in a semifinal win over West De Pere and 21 in the title game victory over Rice Lake.

“And I’ve seen him golf – he’s a hell of a golfer,” Bullis said. “Probably good at darts and bags, too. He’s my first pick.”

That natural ability and wherewithal didn’t protect him from a challenging college experience, but he’s finally found a groove. And the opportunity to shine in his sixth year has been all the more enjoyable for his family, which gets flooded with supportive calls, texts and social media posts from friends around the country who are enjoying Max’s final ride along with them.

“He’s a kind, gentle, big-hearted kid — that’s what everyone loves about him,” Joen said.

Joen, in particular, has been a guiding influence for Max. 

“I’m kind of a momma’s boy,” he admitted. “She talks to me a lot. She always just says when you’re out there, take care of your body, lead your team, be the player that you always have been. She’s watched me since I started playing and has always loved it.”

In addition to his family, Meylor still draws inspiration from his high school experiences at Mount Horeb — particularly those deep postseason marches in football and basketball.

“That really prepped me for these postseason runs at UW-Whitewater,” he said. “The playoffs are a really fun time. It is stressful, but when you’re out there playing, you can’t fret about the do-or-die element. We’re in this position because we play our game. If we play well, we win. That’s how it goes at any level.”

This postseason might mark the end of Meylor’s football career - but with his impressive senior season, he has propped open the door just a sliver to a potential professional future. While heading out the door back to Whitewater after his most recent visit home, Meylor casually mentioned to his parents that he and Wisniewski received invitations to an NFL scouting event, the College Gridiron Showcase in January in Fort Worth, Texas.

Should they choose to accept those invites, it might be just a story to tell the grandkids. But it also could be an opportunity. 

And after all that Meylor has been through to put himself in this position, would you ever bet against him?