Another move won’t faze Weed

Livingstone coach Greg Richardson has suggested that quarterback Malcolm Weed will see action at another position soon.

It will be one of the few moves that hasn’t required the well-traveled Weed to pack his bags and change addresses.

Richardson plans to get his backup quarterback some snaps at wing back in Saturday’s game against Virginia State.

Weed’s shift to the backfield will be much simpler than the one that has brought him to Salisbury fromVancouver, British Columbia with a two-year stop in Cedar City, Utah along the way.

“I’ve seen a lot of the continent,”said Weed, who lived in Montreal before moving to Vancouver when he was 13.

“I just like to do new things, taking things one day at a time. I’m just enjoying life, getting to see the world and experiencing everything new. At a spontaneous moment, I might go and do something new and challenging, that’s what life’s all about.”

Weed, the Blue Bears’ backup in two of their three games, is almost fully recovered from a high ankle sprain he suffered during his debut as a starter against Edward Waters.

Weed will take snaps at quarterback, probably see some at wing back and maybe even get a few at wideout against the Trojans.

“I just feel like I’m a good enough athlete to be out there the whole time on offense,” Weed said. “When Joel (Ward) goes in there at quarterback, I’m more than welcome to help the team out at any position that I possibly can.”

That’s why Weed came to Livingstone in the first place, for the chance to get on the field.

He attended high school in Vancouver and went to play his college ball at SouthernUtah. But he spent two years there as a backup for a team with potent option attack.

Richardson called Southern Utah coach C. Ray Gregory — who previously worked with him at Buffalo — this summer to see if he had any quarterbacks that might want to transfer.

Gregory passed along Weed’s name, and all it took was a 30-minute phone conversation to Weed’s home in Vancouver to persuade him to move South.

“It was a total surprise,” Weed said. “I had no idea, he said he was from North Carolina, in Salisbury, and I was like ‘Really, wow.’

“I was really shocked that somebody would call me from all the way over here. But I was really happy and I was glad to meet him.”

Livingstone and Southern Utah share one similarity, but there is also one striking difference.

Southern Utah, a Division I-AA school, runs the triple option just like Livingstone. The Thunderbirds ranked first among all Division I, Divsion I-AA and Divison II schools with 394.2 yards a game on the ground.

“It was obvious with the offense that we run, which is the same as theirs, that he could help our program from a quarterback perspective,”Richardson said.

Weed has been trying to showcase his talents and speed this week at practice as he moves closer to 100-percent health. Weed runs the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, and Richardson says he’s the second-fastest player on the team.

Weed took the practice field Wednesday in his old Southern Utah gear — red socks and white pants with the initials “SUU”printed at the top.

“I try to take what I learned at Southern Utah and adapt it to Livingstone because they run the exact same offense,”Weed said. “I’ve been trying to even to show the coaches a little something of how we blocked it at Southern Utah.”

That’s where the similarites end between the two schools. Weed guessed that 15 out of the 7,000 students at Southern Utah were black when he was there.

He has come across the country to a traditionally black college where three students — including teammate Michael Tubolino — are white.

Weed said Richardson briefly mentioned that Livingstone was a predominantly black school during their telephone conversation, but it wasn’t an issue to him.

“Ididn’t care coming here, I just wondered how they were going to perceive me,”Weed said. “As soon as I got here — there’s three of us on campus — I don’t even feel like there’s a difference in races here. They’ve totally accepted me as one of their own, they’ve embraced me.”

Weed has found a home in Salisbury, where he hopes to finish his career with some stability.

Even if that means playing three positions.

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Contact Bret Strelow at 704-797-4258 or bstrelow@salisburypost.com .