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Conyers ready to burst onto the scene

Ask Detroit Jesuit defensive back Ian Conyers and he'll tell you himself – by the end of next season, he will be a household name. You can say things like that when you back it up the way he does. After May's stellar performance at the NIKE Football Training Camp in Ann Arbor, the 6-0, 182-pound Conyers is ready to welcome the biggest and best in college football.
Conyers already has played host to some of the biggest names in D-1. The week following the NIKE Camp, where he posted the top 40-yard dash time (4.3) and scored a SPARQ Rating of 97.11, Jesuit became a popular place to find college coaches. In the running for Camp MVP honors, Conyers performed when he knew he had to.
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"I knew I was going to test well. I focused in on it and was thinking about it everyday. I went up there and went low," he remarked. "I came in underrated – no one really knew who I was. That NIKE Camp just helped me explode onto the scene basically. The next week, pretty much everybody in the Big Ten came in. Boston College came in and all the MAC schools."
Since that showing, Conyers said Iowa, Michigan State, Michigan, Boston College and Cincinnati have been recruiting him the hardest. Eastern Michigan was the first school to come through with an offer and is still the only team on his list, but he believes there is a reason for that and plans to do something about it.
"I think what it is, I think the bigger schools want to see me play the position. They know I can hit, they know I can run but they want to see me actually play the position and go through the motions," Conyers remarked. "I expect to pick up a lot of offers up after those first couple of games this year because I'm really going to go out and show them what is going on.
"I think the smaller schools are waiting to see what the bigger schools are going to do because they don't want to offer a guy that is going to be offered by the bigger schools."
In order to capitalize on the momentum he gained from the NIKE Camp, Conyers has put together a couple of trips to college camps this summer. He attended Cincinnati and Iowa's camps in June and will go to Northwestern on July 29. At the Cincinnati camp, he posted a 4.41 40-yard dash time, even though he felt like he had a bad day.
What he displays on the football field is not all there is to the talented young man. Motivated and supported by a family that includes congressman John Conyers, he is very focused on academics and holds a 3.2 GPA at a school that is recognized for their academic prowess. He has also notched a 23 on his ACT and hopes to utilize his football talents to help him get a quality degree.
"In school I like History and I like reading and writing," Conyers noted. "In college I am probably going to major in Sociology or something pre-law because I want to go to law school after college and follow after my uncle and get into politics."
There is also a lot of pride taken in his school and representing his peers and community. On the gridiron, Conyers expects to do that this year by bringing home a championship.
"I think we can take it all and win the Catholic league because if you match up our junior class with other junior classes, we won the Catholic league or freshmen and sophomore years," he noted. "What I think it was is our senior class did not match up well with the other senior classes [last year]. We only had three or four starters in that senior class so we have a lot of guys returning and a lot of guys with experience. We're going to go out there and do something."
After playing out of position last fall at defensive end (at 165 pounds), Conyers will line up at strong-side linebacker this fall which in Jesuit's defense is similar to a bandit or strong safety in other teams' defenses. On offense he will start at wide receiver.
He has two games circled on his calendar for this season. The first is against rival Orchard Lake St. Mary's and the second is Warren DeLaSalle where his friend and former teammate, Cecil St. Pierre, is the quarterback.
"With DeLaSalle there is going to be no love between us because Cecil used to go to our school. I'm always up to hit Cecil," laughed Conyers. "Our big game is St. Mary's. I want to beat them and I know we can do it."
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