Queen City Senior Bowl could be a showcase for Myers Park QB Wendell Thompson

Wendell Thompson and his Queen City Senior Bowl teammates don’t have to wait until they get old to reminisce with buddies about their football exploits.

“No, we’ve been doing a lot of that this week,” Thompson, a Myers Park quarterback, said with a laugh. “There’s a lot of talk about what happened when we played each other.”

Players who were once opponents are now teammates, and Thompson said there has been plenty of good-natured needling in preparation for Saturday’s fifth annual Senior Bowl.

The game is set for a 1 p.m. kickoff at Olympic High.

“Yeah, I’m practicing with a lot of guys we played against,” said Thompson, who will share quarterback duties on the West team with Trenton Sherrill, who led East Gaston’s high-powered offense. “It’s been funny, talking about things that happened in games. There’s a whole new perspective now.”

For Thompson, appearing in an all-star game is a high note on what was an up-and-down season.

It started with him recovering from a torn knee ligament that sidelined him for part of the 2022 season.

He worked his way back into football shape, but he and the Mustangs started the season with three straight losses. Then came a remarkable turnaround, as Myers Park won its final seven regular-season games before losing to Charlotte Catholic in the first round of the 4A playoffs.

“After those first three games, it all came together for our team,” Thompson said. “I wouldn’t say I was too surprised. We had guys who were capable of doing well.”

He wasn’t always a quarterback.

A former ball boy at Myers Park football games, Thompson was a defensive back.

“In eighth grade, the starting quarterback got hurt, and I stepped in,” he said. “I learned on the fly.”

But it was his sophomore year before he got serious about the quarterback thing.

“One I hit my sophomore year, I was a quarterback,” Thompson said. “But I always kept ‘safety’ in my back pocket, just in case.”

He didn’t need to reach for the back pocket this season.

Thompson showed he’d recovered from the knee injury by throwing for nearly 2,000 yards and 32 touchdowns, to just five interceptions. He was named SoMeck 4A Conference Offensive Player of the Year.

Now he is trying to mesh with receivers in just a week. He has one advantage, as Myers Park teammate Jahari McDonald is on the roster.

“Having Jahari is nice,” Thompson said. “But I’ve been working a lot with the other receivers. They are all good players, and we have great coaches working with us.”

Some of the 80 high school seniors who will make up the East and West squads already have made their college commitments.

But Saturday’s game is also important for players like Thompson, who have some college offers but are hoping that the all-star game will give them more opportunities.

“That’s important to a lot of us,” he said. “We have a chance to show what we can do. But we do it within the team format. Our main goal is to win the game.”

And when it’s all done, Thompson and his teammates will have a few more stories to tell in years to come.

Senior Bowl details

The fifth annual Queen City Senior Bowl is set for a 1 p.m. kickoff Saturday at Olympic High.

The series is tied 2-2, with the West winning last year’s contest 21-0. It was the lowest-scoring of the four Senior Bowl contests.

Tickets are $10 and available at www.queencityseniorbowl.com. The game will stream on the NFHS Network.

Steve Lyttle on Twitter: @slyttle