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Clayton Moore cleared to graduate in December
Story URL: http://mississippi.scout.com/2/779734.html

Yancy Porter
OMSpirit.com

Aug 15, 2008

Clayton has overcome many obstacles during his high school career at Louisville. The first one was getting the Wildcats back in the limelight, as he helped lead them to their first state championship in over a decade.

The next one came Thursday when the Louisville city school board voted 3-2 to allow Moore to graduate in December so he can enroll at Ole Miss early.

"It feels real good," stated the always personable Clayton Moore. "I have been waiting on that for a while. I really wanted to get to Ole Miss in January to see what the SEC is all about. The main thing about me graduating early is not about me trying to get the starting job at Ole Miss, it is to get me getting in an SEC weight training program and it gives me a spring of being under Coach Austin, who I think is the best QB coach in America."

It is unusual having to be cleared by a city school board to gain the right to graduate early. Why does Louisville have it set up in this manner?

"Our school board director thinks if one kid graduates early, he will have a bunch of kids try to get out early and it will cause an avalanche. I have done a lot for the school, me and Dennis Thames both, and I still barely got voted in to graduate early. It was a 3-2 vote, but I would like to say thank you to the three board members who understood my situation. I am very thankful to each individual."

Is Clayton the only person out of the '09 class that is trying to graduate early?

"Yes sir, but if someone else wants to graduate early, you have to go through the same process. The city school board will have to vote you in."

Now that this issue has been resolved; there is a bigger task at hand.

"Practice is going well. We had our first open scrimmage tonight, and everybody was a little rusty. Nobody was perfect, that is for sure (laugh). I made some bad reads. The receivers made some bad drops. It was your normal first scrimmage of the season. There is nothing too wrong about our team, and really, what stood out to me was how good our defense looked. Our secondary is really young. We only have one senior, but I scrimmaged against them, and they were really/really good. All the credit goes to Keith Braddock, our defensive coordinator. I would hate to play against him. Everytime I roll out, he has somebody in front of my face. He has a great defensive mind."

Louisville will play in the marquee jamboree on August 22nd, as they host South Panola and Meridian in arguably a showdown of the state's top three teams.

"As far as South Panola and Meridian goes, we will be ready for them. We play South Panola in the first game and then we play Meridian that night. But when it comes down to it, it is still a preseason game. Everybody is hyping it up with South Panola being number one and Meridian being number two and we will be somewhere in the Top 10. But we are still playing in a preseason game. Everybody will be working on their stuff and not trying to show too much. But to have the opportunity to play both South Panola and Meridian before we play Starkville is a huge advantage to us."