Tank Full

Gene Wier, the head football coach at Olathe North High School, has heard many a youngster state that he’ll be the next great running back at Olathe North, which has turned out some of the best ball carriers in Kansas. Years ago, when his daughter informed him that “Tank,” her third-grade classmate, had made such a boast, Coach Wier smiled, patted her on the head and forgot all about it.

“You hear that a lot around here,” says Wier. “Especially from third-graders.” But Tank proved to be a pretty fair prophet.

As a senior, Darren “Tank” Sproles led Olathe North to a 12-0 record this past football season and rushed for 2,485 yards while doing it. He also scored an unbelievable 49 touchdowns as the Fighting Eagles won their fourth Kansas 6A state championship in the past five years.

Don’t rush over those numbers. Read them again, and then read this: A year earlier, as a junior, Sproles set the school single-season scoring record when he rushed for 2,034 yards and scored 22 touchdowns. As a senior he obliterated those stats.

At 5-foot-7 and “a ham sandwich shy of 175 pounds” (says his father, Larry), Sproles was the smallest player on the field almost every time he buckled his chin strap for a high school game. That never bothered Sproles. “The best advice I have ever gotten was from my parents,” says Sproles. “They said, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do anything.'”

They also told him to be humble. “The first time he touched the ball, he made a cutback move and went 80 yards for a touchdown,” explains Larry. “He was 8 years old. When he got into the end zone, he started jumping up and down and he spiked the ball. I ran down there on the field right then and told him, ‘No, no, we’re not going to have that.'”

“Darren understands that his football abilities are a gift given to him by God and that God can take those gifts away at any time,” says Sproles’ mother, Annette. “For Darren to act too cool and like he’s all that, that’s not allowed in this house.”

It would be easy for a 17-year-old football phenom with 4.3 speed to act like he’s all that. But Sproles is not your typical Friday-night hero. “I feel that I am a role model; that’s why I try to do all the right things — because no one wants a role model who makes the wrong decisions,” explains Sproles.

So when it comes to partying, Sproles maintains below-average stats. “It’s not hard at all to be an athlete who doesn’t drink or smoke,” says Sproles. “People tell me that they have even more respect toward me.” Coach Wier says he’s never heard anyone say a negative word about his star.

Tank will study speech pathology next fall at K-State. He wants to help kids who stutter, as he does. “My advice to kids who suffer from stuttering is to keep working on it and it will get better, and not to let anyone tell you that you can’t do anything because you stutter,” says Sproles. For him, it’s not a big problem except when he’s excited, like right after a big game when someone sticks a microphone in his face.

Sproles accepted a Wildcat scholarship last spring before his senior season started. “Kansas State told me Darren was their number-one recruit in the whole nation,” says Wier.

“I just knew that K-State was where I wanted to be,” says Sproles, who heard from Kansas, Missouri, Georgia, Oklahoma and Iowa.

Nebraska recruited Sproles throughout the season — and after, despite his verbal commitment to the Wildcats. “They pushed hard!” Larry says. “I told them, ‘What do you want with my boy? You recruit 250-pound running backs up there. You just want to warehouse him up there with a stockpile of other running backs.'”

Asked whether college will change her son, Annette pauses. “This is where the test comes in,” she says. “Larry and myself have been backing off lately and allowing Darren to make more of his own decisions in order to prepare him for when he is away at school.

“We will go up to Manhattan for the football games, of course, but we want him to learn what it’s like to be on his own and live his own life,” she continues. “Darren does a really good job of making his own decisions.”

Larry is sure that Darren will behave at college as he has in Olathe. “The same rules apply at school that he has here at home,” Larry says flatly. His voice softens, and in almost a whisper he adds, “He makes me so proud.”