Justin Evans is one of the more highly talked about athletes to have ever come to Mercer University. Wearing number five for the lacrosse team is a 5-foot-10 midfielder that also does face offs, where he was listed as an All-American coming out of high school. Evans was state runner-up twice as a starter for Harrison High School in Kennesaw, Ga.
Justin is a biomedical engineering major on the pre-med track. Someday, he wants to either become an orthopedic surgeon or a NCAA Division I face off coach. He is quite humble, speaking about his All-American status: “Becoming an All-American is more due to those around me, because I’ve always had great teammates and a great coaching staff.”
This past week, the Mercer Cluster spent a typical Wednesday with Justin Evans.
Wednesday:
5:30 a.m. - Justin’s roommate has an earlier practice than he, but he gets up early anyway to go watch film and begin repetition work to stay on top of his form.
7:00 a.m. - Justin hits the weight room, where he can do 275 on the bench, a 405 squat and a 255 hang clean.
8:20 a.m. - He heads back for a quick shower, using some Old Spice.
8:35 a.m. - Justin chows down on a fast breakfast: either pancakes or French toast with chocolate milk.
9:00 a.m. - He heads over to Calculus II with Dr. Hartfield.
10:00 a.m. - At this point, Justin has been up since before dawn, so he heads back to his room for a mid-morning nap. Some of us don’t wake up until after then.
11:00 a.m. - After his nap, Justin heads to a Chemistry lecture with Dr. Moore.
12:00 p.m. - Justin heads to the cafeteria for a lunch that is a robust double patty melt. If he is feeling healthy, he’ll go after a salad with lite Caesar. Blue PowerAde is his drink of choice.
1:00 p.m. - Dr. Moses has Justin in his intro to engineering design course.
2:00 p.m. - Justin heads over to the locker room to begin prepping for practice.
2:30 p.m. – Face-offs with Tyler Schott is what he does before official practice.
3:00 p.m. - Justin preps with the scout team, and he runs drills on offense and defense. He gets ready for the upcoming team.
5:00 p.m. - Back to the film room he goes, and Justin gets more preparation for his opponents on Saturday.
5:45 p.m. - Instead of going back to the car, Justin heads to the UC Food Court and picks up a Chick-Fil-A spicy chicken sandwich with some Chick-Fil-A sauce. Also, he does a half sweet tea/half lemonade mixture.
6:00 p.m. - Time to relax! NBA 2K12’s Blacktop mode is what he and his teammates do. Justin picks a team of Kevin Durant, Ray Allen, Kevin Love, Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash. He claims to be “pretty good.”
8:00 p.m. - He heads over to study hall, where he will watch two more hours of film and look at different things such as wing play, opponent tendencies, his own tendencies, fast breaks and how to change up his personal playing style to not be predictable. “It’s all a big chess game.”
10:00 p.m. - Finally, Justin heads to bed, where he sleeps and does it all over again the next morning. It might seem like he does no homework whatsoever, but he said that homework does not happen on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Those days are more set aside for preparations for an upcoming game. It is just another Wednesday for Justin, and he just makes sure he does everything right so Mercer can win games.
