O’Neal recalls highs and lows of Westfield athletic career

Westfield senior Wayne O’Neal is without a doubt at peace with where he is as a Hornet student-athlete and the opportunities to further his life both academically and in collegiate sports.

That is the case, even with one down moment in his junior year that created a couple of ‘what might have been’ scenarios for both himself and his teams on the football gridiron and the baseball diamond.

A special season was in the making during the fall of 2011. After two seasons of All-State punting for head football coach Ronnie Jones, O’Neal found his way into the offensive unit. First, he played tight end, but just a couple of games into the campaign O’Neal was lining up in the wing-T backfield.

Against Trinity Christian, O’Neal racked up huge rushing numbers in a Westfield victory. He looked for more the following week against Pinewood Christian at Marvin Arrington Stadium. And then it happened.

“It was definitely a major setback,” said O’Neal, who had just made school history with his Hornet baseball teammates as GISA AAA champions in the spring. “It affected pretty much everything that was going on. It affected my junior year of baseball more than I would have liked. I wasn’t doing very good hitting at all and couldn’t seem to get anything together. Defensively I wasn’t as quick, didn’t have as big a range.”

What is “it?” O’Neal took a hit from a linebacker’s helmet on one of his knees. That ended the season in football, but he didn’t miss any time in baseball.

“We were running blue 94 down,” he said. “I took the safety head on. When I lowered my shoulder, the outside backer came in but his helmet on the outside of my left knee. My knee buckled inside.

“(The pain) was very sharp. I didn’t know what to do, think or anything.”

And so, what-might-have-been moment No. 1. O’Neal said he felt bad for his team because his injury wasn’t the only one the Hornets suffered that season.

For the 2012 season, O’Neal was cleared to play and stuck with what made him a major college prospect, the punting game. Prior to the fall campaign, O’Neal joined placekicking teammate Landon Beamon at the Khol’s two-day national scholarship kicking camp in Wisconsin.

“I never really had any punting lessons,” said O’Neal. “Really, where I learned was from my dad (Bill O’Neal). He was a punter here in high school. I would go to camps and they would teach me something, pretty much the exact same things he taught me. I would credit him with most of my success.”

O’Neal can go through the whole technique from holding the football, taking the steps, releasing the ball, the timing and where the ball needs to be when making contact. There’s even a tilt a punter wants the ball to have in order to get the right spiral for length or height, depending on the situation.

That result bolted O’Neal to fifth in the same national ranking.

O’Neal was already accustomed to displaying his athletic talents in a national showcase. As a baseball player, he’s played events in college stadiums.

So he was more than ready to come through for Westfield in the 2011 state finals against rival Deerfield-Windsor. His walk-off two-run home run with two outs won Game 1 5-3 in what was a two-game sweep of the Knights.

“(Rhett Cooper) threw me a curve ball first,” said the left-handed swinger. “I let it go because I knew I wanted to hit his fastball. He’s a big curve ball pitcher. The second pitch, he threw me a fastball, and I was way out in front of it.”

Cooper leads the count 0-2. O’Neal steps out of the box, takes a deep breath and thought about what was on the line.

“I decided whatever happened would happen. I just wanted to make contact,” he said. “He threw me a curve, and I had to keep my weight back. When the bat made contact, I had no idea how far it was going to go.”

Would it be a hit, or would the right fielder track it down? O’Neal watched and watched … and celebrated a great moment. He was a part of Westfield varsity baseball since his eighth-grade year.

“I would credit a lot of my success to Chance Reynolds,” he said. “I’ve been taking lessons from him since I was 10.”

O’Neal’s played with Windward Baseball Academy last summer in events in Atlanta, South Carolina and Kissimmee, Fla., and won a national championship unbeaten. With Team Elite, O’Neal played on the campuses of Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee and Georgia State.

He already discussed how the knee injury impacted his junior year of baseball. As a senior, O’Neal has not pitched for the Hornets after limited mound work as a junior. That’s another what-might-have-been situation because he was a master of the pick-off in his lefty delivery.

“It was hard for me to work out on a regular bases,” said O’Neal. “My shoulder strength started lagging. I guess I started pitching too early.

“I couldn’t work out like I wanted to. The medication affected my muscles. I was so weak and tired. The (shoulder) muscles weren’t able to come back in time for me to start pitching.”

The senior year became a new chapter for O’Neal. He did his job as a punter in football, and now Westfield baseball is heading for the state playoff stretch as the leader in Region 2-AAA.

“This year I haven’t had a single problem with it,” said O’Neal. “Like I didn’t even have an injury.”

He’s committed to play football for Georgia Southern University as a punter and plans to compete for the starting job as a freshman. It’s also his hope that he will be able to try out for the Eagle baseball team.

“Out of all the colleges that contacted me, I feel that’s the best place to be athletically and academically,” he said. “It’s close to home, and being close to my family is one of the major things for me in choosing a college. They do a lot of winning in football, and that’s what I want to be on.”

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