Stephens Carving His Own Niche At Receiver in Opening Weeks

At first glance, sophomore wide receiver Mike Stephens does not look like the formidable force that he has shown himself to be on the football field this season.
Standing at 5 feet, 10 inches and weighing 180 pounds, Stephens appears more like a surfer than a football player, and, when talking to him, you shouldn’t expect to hear about his accomplishments in the first two games of the season, because he’s remarkably humble.

“After the game [last Saturday] I felt good,” Stephens said. “Even if I feel like I had a good game, there’s always things I can correct.”

Though he may still have a lot of unexplored potential, one sure thing is that his performance seems to be improving with each day in practice, and it is showing in games.

Over the course of the season, he has had a total of seven catches for 100 receiving yards, averaging 14.3 yards per catch.

Last Saturday alone, in the Lions’ game against Towson, Stephens had five receptions and posted 82 receiving yards, including his first collegiate touchdown.

“I felt pretty good before the game,” he said, noting that he felt that “going through all the practices, the game plans” really helped him play his best in the game.
Stephens has not always been such an integral part to Columbia’s offense. As a freshman, the wide receiver played on the junior varsity squad, so he only got to practice with the team, and didn’t play in games or travel with it.

“Basically, I can attribute it to working hard in the offseason, but the biggest deal was just getting into my playbook more and getting to know the offense better,” he said.
For Stephens, the biggest change between playing JV and varsity is the focus that players have during the week.

“The biggest deal is that when you’re on the JV team, you don’t get to practice all week, so you don’t get to practice going against the defense,” he said. He compared this to the varsity squad, on which “you’re preparing the whole week to get ready for that one game.”

One of the things that Stephens has been working on, both in practice and in this season’s two games, is building his relationship with junior quarterback Shane Kelly.
“I’m sure it just helps for him to have the confidence in me,” Stephens said. “But it just helps to have confidence in one another, and you just get that by practice and doing the right thing in games.”

But learning to do the right thing in games is something that Stephens only got to do this year, especially because of his work during the offseason and in the summer.
During the summer, at his home in Flower Mound, Texas, he said he worked out at a facility called Velocity Sports Performance, which he said “helped tremendously” in getting him in shape for the season.

And it was there, at his home in Flower Mound, where, in seventh grade, he first discovered that he could have a future in football.

“It was just the cool thing,” he explains. “And everyone was doing it.”

After competing all four years on the Flower Mound Jaguars, Stephens said that, even though some teams in Texas were looking at him, “the opportunity to come to Columbia—the education you get here—is what made me come here in the end.”

The move up north certainly provided a big change for the man who, just one year before, had been playing on a Division 5-A team, which is the top division in the state.
In his most memorable game in high school, Stephens played at Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys—which happens to be Stephens’ favorite team—in front of a crowd of 17,000, and he caught two touchdowns during that game.

Though he knows that he may never get to play in front of a crowd of 17,000 at Baker Field, he does stress that “it’s still a really big deal, but it’s just different.”

In the touchdown celebration department, you should not expect anything Terrell Owens-esque, from Stephens. Though he plans on being a contributor and scoring more touchdowns, his celebrations will be limited to “maybe a back-bump here and there.”

But even if he isn’t carrying around a Sharpie, if the first two games are any indication, the rest of the season will give Stephens a chance to showcase his creativity when it comes to putting points on the board for the Lions.