Vestavia Hills’ Will Macoy juggles academics, sports on the Plains

When choosing a college, student-athletes must sometimes choose between athletics and academics. Will Macoy found a place he could do both.

The ultra-successful former Vestavia Hills High School student-athlete, adept on the hardwood or the concrete circle, was a multi-sport athlete with the Rebels and is now one at Auburn University.

At Auburn, Macoy has walked on to the basketball team and will throw javelin for the outdoor track-and-field team.

“Right now, it’s pretty good,” Macoy said. “We just started [basketball] practice a couple weeks ago.”

He’s also found that being a collegiate “student-athlete” means devoting a great deal of time to both sides of that hyphenated word.

“It’s really hard, trying to balance your schoolwork with sports,” he said. “I expected it though. I came in knowing it was going to be hard and that I was going to have to work harder at my school.”

Macoy said he knew he wanted to play basketball in college. He had the option to attend Spring Hill College in Mobile or Samford to do so. But he wanted to go to a large school and move somewhere an easily accessible distance from home.

Auburn also had his preferred major of engineering. He is attempting to decide whether to pursue an industrial or mechanical path.

Macoy is spending a large amount of his time with the Auburn basketball team this fall, and he said he is impressed with head coach Bruce Pearl, one of the other factors in his decision to attend Auburn.

“It’s great. I love it. I wanted to come to Auburn because I thought that [Pearl] would teach me a lot about basketball, and I could learn from him,” Macoy said.

While Macoy cannot control whether he sees much playing time as a freshman walk-on or travels with the team to away games, there are a few things he has power over.

“I just wanted to come here and be a good example on the team. I wanted to come in and be the hardest working guy on the team,” he said.

Macoy already has witnessed firsthand the growth of the Auburn program, with Pearl now in his third year. He mentioned being impressed by the incoming talent of players such as Mustapha Heron, Jared Harper and Danjel Purifoy.

The Vestavia Hills native is “knocking out two birds with one stone” in terms of his spring plans of throwing javelin. The conditioning program the basketball team is working through is similar to what the outdoor track-and-field program is doing. 

Macoy said he has already put on some weight that will help him improve on his high school career, one that saw him set the Class 7A state record and win the state championship the past two years.

He’s wasted no time hitting the ground running at Auburn.