At 11 years old, Matt Zollers’ arm made a youth baseball team reevaluate its safety measures.

Long before he stepped on Missouri football’s campus as the Tigers ’ future quarterback, Zollers was a righty pitcher with a loose cannon.

Ryan Freed, who is three years Zollers’ senior and, as it so turned out, the senior quarterback who Zollers wound up splitting series with at Spring-Ford High as a freshman, went to watch his younger brother play in a baseball tournament.

Zollers was the starting pitcher and teammates with Freed's younger sibling. Zollers threw hard, but he was unrefined.

He wound up for a pitch, and Freed recalls the zip; the rip straight out of the release that the hopes of an SEC football team now hang on. Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puz

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