Kanari Shoulars, 58, blocks in a game against Reagan last season. — Photo by williamson_photography

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

Perseverance and adaptability are two traits that Kanari Shoulars has shown since he became a football player at West Forsyth. 

He started as a defensive lineman, but did not get much playing time even into his junior season last year. Despite that, he and the coaches still saw something.

He was moved to center, a position he had played for much of his Pop Warner career.

“Freshman year, I came in, to be honest, I was tired of snapping the ball and blocking,” Shoulars said. “I really just wanted to hit somebody. I really wanted to try defense. But it wasn’t working out for me, so junior year my coaches had made the switch and it worked out.”

Coach Kevin Wallace, who is about to start his third season as the head coach for the Titans, was the one who ultimately made the switch for Shoulars.

“He was kind of in the rotation as D-lineman, but not getting a lot of playing time,” Wallace said. “He just had a relationship with Coach Ben (Antonio Benjamin, the offensive-line coach) for a while, I think from youth league and everything. So, he played O-line growing up. And I guess he came in as a freshman and wanted to play D-line.”

Wallace, who replaced Adrian Snow after Shoulars’ freshman season, met with Shoulars last season. 

“We kind of talked to him, like, ‘Hey, if you want to start and get more reps on the field this is a spot that you can do it at,'” Wallace said. “And he’s bought into it, finally. And we’d always kind of poked and prodded him a couple years before last year, and finally he agreed to it.”

Moving Shoulars to center was the obvious choice for Wallace.

“Bigger kid,” Wallace said. “I know Coach Ben wanted him there from the get-go. I think he thought that year, sophomore year, he could be up on varsity if he played D-line. And got him up there, but he just wasn’t getting the playing time he wanted as a sophomore, junior. And this year he’s really bought into it since then.”

And agree, he did.

“Defense, all you’ve got to do is get to the ball, get to the quarterback,” Shoulars said. “Play(ing) offense, offensive line or center, you’ve got to snap the ball, then block. Your first job is snap the ball and if they don’t get to the quarterback then the play can’t start. So, you’ve got to really be locked in to do what you’ve got to do so your team can get the ball down the field.”

Even though he had played the position before, there was still a growing curve for Shoulars.

“When I got back to center, I ain’t snapped the ball since Pop Warner, so it was a little weird,” he said. “I hadn’t snapped the football since then, so I really had to practice and I had to really get a lot of reps — to feel the ball, get back to snapping the ball. And now I’m good.”

Shoulars said he’s added about 30 pounds since last season.

“I was like 230 last year on the offensive line,” he said. “It was bad. I was like 230. And now I’m like 260, 265.”

At 6-foot-2 last season, he was a relatively small offensive lineman.

“I had to eat a lot during the day,” Shoulars said. “During the school (year) I was bringing chicken and rice to school. My parents would do a meal prep every week. They would fix it before school, I would take it to school and eat it. I’d eat that, I’d eat breakfast. I’d eat lunch. Then I had to tack on dinner. It was really hard at first.”

It was about eating, and eating protein and carbs that his parents prepared for him.

“My parents went out every Sunday to go to the store to get the stuff I needed for the week,” Shoulars said. “Then I would pack it up for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

It was a whole ordeal to have a meal plan. Shoulars goes to the Career Center, which starts at 8 a.m, and takes an electrical trades class as well as an English class. Shoulars said he would typically wake up at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and eat a meal before school. He would eat chicken alfredo, chicken and rice, and for dinner he would eat something with chicken in it.

“I would usually have three or four eggs or something like that,” he said. “I would have a peanut butter and jelly. I would eat the meal prep before lunch and breakfast.”

Since Shoulars was on the smaller side, the West Forsyth coaching staff devised a plan for him to add some bulk.

“It was weird because he wasn’t in a weightlifting class, but he was there every day after school. And he looked to a lot of the younger guys,” Wallace said. “Which sometimes as a coach, it’s kind of concerning. But he pushed himself, worked on some deficiencies he had.

“His knees were always aching. I think he’s doing better now. And he just bought into what our program is, and you know, it’s a year-long wait list for our program. If they do it and they do it properly it’s going to get them stronger. It’s going to get them bigger. It’s going to protect them. It’s going to make them more explosive. All that stuff that we’ve built into it.”

Shoulars has had since last November to get ready for this season, especially since school ended in May.

“We wish we had the whole offseason last year with that spot,” Wallace said. “It was a little late to catch up. He’s really bought into it. He’s put on a lot more muscle mass, he’s bigger, he’s stronger, starting to get the scheme stuff down. So, it’s been good.”

After Shoulars moved to offensive line during the season last year, he kind of had to learn the position on the fly.

“I was learning more and more plays,” he said. “My technique was getting better. When I first started, in Pop Warner, I didn’t have to (prepare) to pass or anything. All I had to do was stand in front of the guy. So, when I got to high school, it’s a lot more technical. You’ve got to block passes, you’ve got to know the lateral step, the vertical step, just all these steps so I feel as the season got on and we did the drills more and more. We got more frequent with it and I really got better.”

All the hard work has paid off as Shoulars prepares to embark on his senior season with the Titans.

“I feel like the run blocking is better because you’re getting to push the guy,” Shoulars said. “You’re getting to push the guy against his will down the field. Pass block is more of just stay in front of the guy.”

There is also one other thing Shoulars has had to work during the offseason.

“New plays this year. We’ve gotten to pull a little bit,” Shoulars said of Wallace’s offensive system. “I didn’t do much of that last year.”

According to Shoulars, Benjamin has been instrumental in not only preparing himself to pull as the center, but getting the rest of the offensive line to pull.

“I was excited and fired up to be honest,” Shoulars said.

Wallace is not only the head coach. He knows a little something about playing offense.

“Being an ex-center, an ex-O-lineman, I always try to make it as simple as possible,” Wallace said. “There are things he’s got to do. In what we do you start learning little things that when he was playing last year we wouldn’t allow him to do — check certain pullers and pull based on the leverage of the down lineman — that we’re allowing him to do in spring. He’s starting to understand it and grasp it all.”

Part of grasping it is Shoulars’ intelligence. He said he has a 3.5 GPA.

“I don’t think you ever really see stupid classroom players and smart football players,” Wallace said. “There’s a correlation to it. So, you know for us, and especially when you could grasp things. And I think that’s some of the hardest stuff, is that we’ll force him to learn things fast.”

Much like in a classroom, you make a mistake the first time, but you learn from your mistake.

“I feel like from the football field to the class, when things got hard because it was first time doing it. It was really difficult at first,” Shoulars said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. But as things got hard, the next play, just brush it off and keep going. As time went on I got better at it.”

Shoulars is going to have to grasp the schemes very quickly, because not only does the season start on Aug. 22 at Davie County, Shoulars will be playing with a new quarterback this season. Haines Robitzer transferred from Lake Norman High School early this year and will be a senior this season.

“Haines has been there all spring and the offseason, so it’s been good,” Wallace said. “They’ve gotten used to each other. They’ve been fine. They’re on the same page.”

Because of all the effort Shoulars has put into his position, he has a realistic chance of playing in college. He said he has one offer from Hampden-Sydney, which is an NCAA Division III college. He will likely receive some more offers.

“I think a lot of DIIIs will look at him,” Wallace said. “He’s a good-sized kid, got good grades, and he’ll want to play and go in. If he wants to play there’s places for him to play. There will be schools that want him to play for them.”

The team will try to build off last season, when it went 8-4 overall and 5-2 in the Central Piedmont 4-A. However, realignment has occurred all around the state within the NCHSAA. West Forsyth has gone from Class 4-A to Class 8-A. And the Central Piedmont 4-A is also different. It’s now a combined 7-A/8-A conference with West Forsyth being the lone 8-A team. Gone are Davie County, Mount Tabor and Glenn. The conference has added Northwest Guilford, which is where Wallace was the head coach before replacing Adrian Snow after the 2022 season.

“I feel like I just want this team, this year, to go out with a bang,” Shoulars said. “I just want my senior year to be great. I don’t want us to fall off, I want us to try to run for state (championship). I feel like we’ve got the talent built around it.

“I feel like if we stick to the system, we stick to what Coach Wallace is telling us, we stick with everything, we come to practice and stuff like that, be attentive and listen up, and do what we’ve got to do, work hard outside of football and work hard on the field, I feel like we can be great this year.”