Brush with police could have derailed top UNC football recruit. He remembered joy instead

Two pivotal memories — spanning the natural emotional responses of joy to anger — mark the teenage years of Malcolm Ziglar, a Fuquay-Varina High senior bound for North Carolina on a football scholarship.

The first filled him with gratitude, taking place as a 7-year-old on Nov. 9, 2013, at North Carolina’s Kenan Stadium. The joyful day, upon growing into a college football recruit 10 years later, unwittingly influenced his commitment to the Tar Heels. More on that later.

The other could have embittered him as a 14-year-old on January 30, 2021. He was outside his home when Fuquay-Varina Police Department police officers arrived to look into a report of a stolen dirt bike. Ziglar, who is Black, was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police cruiser. His friend, who is white, was only briefly handcuffed and wasn’t detained in the car, The News & Observer previously reported.

Ziglar tried to explain the dirt bike in his possession was the result of a business he started. He bought dirt bikes from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and fixed them to resell. The incident ended when his father, Sharndale Ziglar, came outside with the bill of sale Malcolm had saved.

Malcolm, though, didn’t let anger or bitterness take him to a downward cycle.

“I forgive,” Ziglar said earlier this week before football practice. “I’m not the get-angry type. There is no going back on what happened. People make mistakes. You just hope people learn from it.”

Leave the Triangle? No way

But if he had given into basic human emotions — and no one would have blamed him — he had plenty of opportunities to leave Fuquay-Varina in his rearview mirror.

As a high school player, the IMG Academy in Florida wanted him for its elite football program. Private schools made subtle pitches to transfer. But he wasn’t interested in leaving home.

“This is a great place,” Ziglar said. “I’ve always had friends here. I know the people in this town and they know me. When I go out on the field on Friday nights, I know they support me, and I know they’ll support me the next four years at Chapel Hill.”

As a 4-star college recruit, Ziglar fielded seductive pitches from the likes of two-time defending national champion Georgia; college football icon Notre Dame; and ACC power Clemson among 26 schools offering scholarships.

But Ziglar shook his head at all of them.

“With everything UNC had done for my family in the past and having a great relationship with the coaching staff, my decision was easy,” he said.

UNC in his heart

His comment referenced the day when his family was invited to attend a 2013 Virginia-North Carolina football game that celebrated the Veterans Day weekend. At the time, his father was serving in the Navy on a 10-month deployment aboard the USS Harry S. Truman.

Malcolm, then 7 years old, was joined on the field at halftime by his three siblings, Brianna, then 12; Reagan, then 5; and Matthew, then 3; and his mother, Ty Ziglar.

As a message played on the stadium’s scoreboard, Sharndale Ziglar appeared on the screen as if his image had been transmitted from somewhere in the world. But then the screen’s audio and image turned garbled. The public address announcer apologized for technical problem. He asked the kids look behind them to the end zone.

On cue, their father ran to them. Big hugs all the way around.

Sharndale soon retired from serving 20 years and has been home for Malcolm’s high school career that is ticking down to its final games.

Ziglar ‘a smart football player’

This week, Fuquay-Varina (1-4, 0-2) travels to Clayton for a Greater Neuse 4A Conference game at 7:30 p.m. Friday against Cleveland (5-0, 2-0), the state’s No. 6-ranked 4A division team.

Ziglar, a 6-foot-2, 198-pounder, was recruited as a safety, but the Bengals use him as a do-it-all player in his fourth varsity season. He plays receiver, wingback, defensive back and return man.

In last week’s game, a 20-11 loss to Southeast Raleigh, Ziglar scored the Bengals’ lone touchdown. He took a left-to-right jet sweep and pivoted up field when he saw a hole outside the right tackle. Moments later he took a handoff up the middle and ran with the power of a fullback to convert a two-point play. In the team’s win over Apex, he scored from both sides of the ball — a touchdown reception and a scoop and score of a fumble.

“He’s a smart football player,” said Jeb Hall, Fuquay-Varina’s veteran coach. “He came here knowing the game, and we don’t get a whole lot that. We have to teach kids the game. His dad coached him at a young age, and I’m sure that’s how it all got started.”

More than raw talent

But there is more to his game than talent and football IQ.

“His leadership for us has been off the charts since Day 1,” Hall said. “He gets on kids about how they should be on the field and off the field. He knows how things should be in the locker room, and he isn’t afraid to tell someone to check themself.”

Hall said that included when he was a freshman talking to seniors.

“I’ve never seen that before from a freshman,” Hall said.

Ziglar’s freshman year began during the COVID-19 pandemic when the 2020-21 school year was virtual. That meant Hall didn’t meet the Bengals’ promising prospect until Wake County high schools were permitted to resume football. The fall of 2020 season wasn’t played until spring of 2021.

Hall got his first glimpse of Ziglar’s maturity, not on the football field but while he watched the TV news and the dirt bike story came on his screen.

“I saw how well-spoken he was on TV in a difficult situation, and I was impressed,” Hall said. “I told him the next time we see you speaking (publicly), you’ll be telling everybody where you’re going to college.”

Ziglar plans to major in business, and that brings this story back to the dirt bike incident. Having the bill of sale readily available was more than a stroke of luck. He’s a young businessman.

“I like to tinker with things,” he said, “and fixing dirt bikes was something to do during COVID.”

Since then, Ziglar and Anderson Pope, a football teammate, have started a window tinting business, “TINT ON.”

“I’m proud of Malcolm,” his mother said. “He could have been angry, but he rose above it. He has soared.”