Prep Confidential

Jackson's 5 Part IX

Posted by: Marcus Jackson

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 3:50 PM

Each week staff writer Marcus Jackson poses five questions to an area prep athlete. This week's guest is Urbana University High's Michael Renner, who is the Illinek's all-time scoring leader in basketball and an outfielder on the Champaign Post 24 American Legion baseball team.

MJ: I heard a rumor that you wore a Brett Favre jersey under your gown at graduation and flashed it when you walked across the stage. What's the story behind that?
MR: Brett Favre was my favorite player. I wore the jersey to graduation because when he retired I said I would never wear it again. But I wore it to graduation and I told all my friends I was going to do it, I didn't tell my parents or anything. My friends didn't think I was going to do it. But when I did they all laughed and thought it was pretty sweet.

MJ: Did you catch any heat from the people at Uni for that at all?
MR: No, they liked it. It was a pretty informal graduation. My parents didn't like that I didn't tell them because they didn't get a picture of it.

MJ: You've decided to attend Notre Dame and I know you talked about MIT before. What other schools were you considering?
MR: University of Illinois and Notre Dame basically. Those were the schools that I got into.

MJ: What are you going to study at Notre Dame?
MR: Business. I have no clue right now what I will want to do after college though.

MJ: Are you going to try to play sports in college?
MR: I'm going to try out for the baseball team, but there is a slim chance I will make it. I kind of accepted that I'm not going to be playing sports much more after this. It's going to be hard but I'll still do intramurals. They have a lot of intramurals at Notre Dame. They have full-pad football and I might try that since I never got to play in high school.

MJ: What position do you think you would play?
MR: I'd probably play safety. I want to hit somebody for once.

MJ: You haven't played high school baseball the last two years because Uni hasn't had a team but you're hitting fourth and playing well for the Legion team. How are you pulling that off?
MR: I worked with a coach the last two springs, Joey Yager. He worked with me on hitting and throwing. He really just motivated me mostly to get out and work instead of just using my springs as fun time. He helped me use my time to work at baseball.

MJ: Now with how tough challenging things are academically at Uni, do you think things might get easier in college?
MR: I don't know if they're going to be easier but I sort of feel like I'm prepared. My brothers said when they went to college they felt like they were prepared and the transition was easy. The workload was no different and you have to put in the work if you want to do well. It's the same thing at Uni, you have to put in the work if you want to do well.

MJ: Have you caught any heat from your brother about breaking his scoring record in basketball?
MR: He laughs about it. He reminds me that in last Sunday's paper, where there were the top 10 Uni athletes that he made the list and I didn't. But I just tell him I have the scoring record so it's all good.

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Previous Entries

• 8/13/2008
  Jackson's 5 Part XIII
• 8/6/2008
  Jackson's 5 Part XII
• 7/23/2008
  Jackson's 5 Part XI
• More…