Austin Peay's Matthew Gayle is a defensive lineman from Knoxville, Tenn. … currently a redshirt junior that saw a solid amount of playing time in both his redshirt freshman and redshirt sophomore years. But when it comes to attributes? Gayle’s biggest is definitely his academics.
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Gayle puts the student in student-athlete. Gayle has made the AD’s honor roll twice and made the Dean's list once. A student-athlete making any of those is impressive but to do it three times is nothing less than incredible. Gayle has been playing football since he was six years old and has apparently was a good student then too.
“I think I consider myself a pretty good student-athlete. School has always comes natural … family always emphasized I put school first," Gayle told HERO Sports.
School is hard enough alone. Juggling it with a sport is seemingly impossible. “Well. I make sure that I make sure I got my school work done,” Gayle said when asked how does he juggle both academics and athletics. "The only way to rise and juggle both is to prioritize one."
Gayle has definitely shown the ability to prioritize both school and football: “Well, I make sure that I got my work done. That’s what got me here in the first place. I juggle them both pretty well.”
Gayle definitely juggles it well. The amazing thing is he’s been on it for three years. It wasn’t one year, or two, it’s been his whole entire college career. As you can guess, juggling athletics and academics can definitely get challenging.
“Yeah, it can be challenging sometimes. Serious workload if you have a lot of work to do. When being an athlete you gotta travel away. You lose a lot of time you could have,” when Gayle was asked if balancing both is tough.
Gayle is no slouch as a football player either. He’s appeared in 25 career games thus far and has 55 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks. He’s shown to be a valuable asset along the defensive line and on the defense period.
“I honestly want to accomplish being the best defense. So far we are the #2 defense (in the OVC). I feel like with this group of guys and coaches we could be No. 1. We have determined dudes willing to do whatever it takes to do it”, he said when asked what he was most looking forward to this season.
Being an athlete is rightfully rewarded, but an even bigger eye-raiser is definitely an athlete that’s also a scholar.
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