By Brad Crowe
Taylorsville had done it. Months of dedication and hard work by the coaching staff and players had led up to one last game against the Winona Tigers, and the Tartars delivered another signature performance resulting in a 41–26 victory to claim the 2A state championship.
Roughly two thousand fans watched as the team formed a line near the middle of Jerry Hollingsworth Field to receive their state championship medallions. Throughout Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, one word seeped through the cold air over and over from both fans and media personnel: freshman.
Everyone was captivated by the performance of the ninth-grade kid who had just thrown for 333 yards with three touchdowns to lead the Tartars to such a dominant victory.
Social media was filled with fans attempting to put into words just how phenomenal of a game he played. Reporters waited anxiously on the sidelines for a chance to speak with Mississippi’s hottest young gunslinger. Suddenly the announcer exclaimed, “We would now like to present the C Spire Player of the Game Award to No. 8, Ty Keyes!”
Keyes is the 15-year-old son of Tyrone Keyes and Stacey Sullivan and a ninth-grade student at Taylorsville High School.
In recent months, Ty has burst onto the scene as one of the most promising young athletes in Mississippi with an electrifying start to his high school football career.
The Tartar’s quarterback threw for nearly 5,000 yards, more than all but a handful of quarterbacks around the country, and he scored a whopping 53 total touchdowns. He also played very efficiently, completing 67 percent of his pass attempts and throwing only eight interceptions throughout the entire season. To those who know him best, his early success has been no surprise at all.
For one thing, Ty comes from a family with quite the history of athletic success. His mother Stacey and her twin sister, Tracey, played basketball for the Tartars and helped lead them to two south state titles. Ty’s older cousin, Dominique Sullivan, is a former standout quarterback for the Tartars who went on to be a productive wide receiver at Southern Miss. Ty himself has been turning heads with his athletic abilities since he was a young child.
“When he was one, we asked him what he wanted for Christmas,” recalled his mother Stacey, “and his first word was ‘putball.’ I was always amazed by how athletic he was for his age. When he was three, he already had the right shooting form for basketball. When he was six, he played on the 7-year-old All-Star team in Little League. Then when he was around nine, he played youth football at Southern Miss for a state championship, and we watched him play the best game of his life. My mama said then [Ty] was going to be special, because there was no sport that he could not play.”
“I’m not at all surprised by Ty Keyes,” exclaimed his older cousin Perry, a senior who led the Tartars in receiving yards this season. “As his older cousin, I talked to him about avoiding ‘young’ mistakes and ‘excuses’ that can be given when you start for a varsity team at his age. He has tremendous talent and IQ that most quarterbacks develop later through experience. We have worked together since the seventh-grade. Ty has never wanted to play with the younger kids, only
the older ones. I’m not surprised to see him develop into the star he is becoming.”
Reporters rarely get many words out of him, as he prefers to do his talking on the field and deflect attention to his teammates.
“I don’t think he was expecting to get this much attention from the media right now,” explained his mom. “He is not shy around the house because he is the center of attention. He and his younger brother are always singing, dancing and rapping to any beat. But he is humble and doesn’t like to brag about his abilities. He doesn’t show much emotion, and that’s just his personality.”
Perhaps the man most impressed by Ty Keyes is Tartars Head Coach Chuck Robertson, who has gotten the privilege of watching him grow both physically and mentally over the last half year. “He’s such an impressive kid,” exclaimed Coach Robertson. “He’s worked so hard to get to where he is now. He and our offensive coordinator stayed after school every single week working on routes, and they wouldn’t go home until he completed every pass. We never had to ask him to do that; that was all Ty and his desire to get better, and I just couldn’t be any more proud of him.”
After a storybook ending to his first high school football season, Keyes is no longer a small-town secret. He has earned respect and attention of those who follow Mississippi sports, and all will be anxiously waiting to see what he is capable of doing in the future as he continues to grow and develop.
With three more seasons in store as quarterback for the Taylorsville Tartars, one would be safe to bet that the sensational story of No. 8, Ty Keyes, has only
just begun.
