Almost three years ago, in May 2012, In the Game spent a few minutes with Mason Lawing, at the time an eighth-grader at Thomas County Middle School. Lawing was a talented football player, wrestler, and an important member of the TCMS’s track team. Now, Lawing is back within the pages of ITG, and he has brought a pair of friends with him.
Along with Lawing, Zack Johnson and Noah Harnevious are excellent football players who also play other sports and sit near the top of their graduating class. Johnson holds the highest ranking of the trio; he sits at fifth. Lawing is eighth, while Johnson is eleventh. Together, they do their best, both on and off the field, encouraging each other in athletics as well as in the classroom. All three are also juniors and have another year and a half to further leave their mark on their school and community.
Lawing, who has also been his class president for the last two years, is an offensive lineman, and at 6’0” and 210 pounds, he’s the kind of small, quick lineman that head coach Bill Shaver likes in his veer offense. Though the Yellow Jackets didn’t have the kind of season they had hoped for – they missed the playoffs this season for the first time since Coach Shaver has been there – Lawing was pleased with the way he played.
“We wanted to get to the playoffs but we didn’t make it. We lost in the region play-in. But overall, I thought the season went well,” he said.
In particular, Lawing recalled when he took out Monroe’s Brentavious Glanton, a three-star defensive lineman who has committed to Georgia Tech, allowing the Yellow Jackets to score on a halfback draw.
Interestingly, Lawing would like to join Glanton at Georgia Tech, where he plans to study mechanical engineering. Last year, Lawing entered the Science and Engineering Fair, where he took first place in the region. He moved on to the state fair and was one of the students who received first honors, meaning he was in the top 10 percent of all competitors at the fair.
“That’s when I found out I was pretty good at science and math. I would like to get into automation, robotics, that kind of field,” he said.
Zack Johnson is another relatively undersized football player for the position he plays. A wide receiver, he stands 5’11” and tips the scales at just 150 pounds. Despite his small stature, he plays with the tenacity of a much bigger and stronger player. In the run-first Yellow Jackets’ offense, wide receivers are primarily blockers and only occasionally have the ball come their way. Johnson caught eight passes this year for just over 100 yards. The biggest testament to Johnson’s talent was that he earned a starting spot at all. Coming out of the spring, he wasn’t expecting to even make varsity, much less starting position. However, he didn’t miss a summer workout, and he was there for all the seven-on-seven passing drills.
“I guess Coach liked what he saw. He must have seen the potential. I started the first game and even caught a pass,” he said.
When Johnson was in middle school, one of his basketball coaches (he still plays basketball today; he’s started in two of TCC’s four games at the time of this interview) reminded the team that 
they were students first and athletes second. Already a gifted student, he never forgot that coach’s words and he used that to further motivate him to make the best grades possible. It worked, and Johnson, another math and science wiz, is one of the best students at Thomas County Central.
“School has always come easy to me. I kind of lucked up there. But I’ve also been really focused on my grades for a long time,” he said.
Johnson usually picks up on new material the first time his teachers introduce it. Around the sixth grade, he looked around and noticed that many of his classmates were struggling with math. He, however, wasn’t having trouble at all. He even began tutoring many of his friends who were having trouble with the material.
These days, Johnson still loves math and plans to attend Georgia Tech with Lawing. He would like to be an electronics engineer.
“I just love math. There is a formula behind everything. If you follow that formula, you will find the right answer,” he said.
Noah Harvenious is a 6’1”, 195-pound tight end who, according to Lawing, makes significant contributions to the team. He was the Yellow Jackets’ leading receiver and finished the season with a touchdown, which came against Cairo on TCC’s second offensive play of the season.
Like Lawing and Johnson, Harvenious loves math and science. Unlike them, though, he has not yet decided where he will attend college or what he will study.
“It comes easy to me. School has never really been that hard,” he said.
Don’t let those previous statements fool you; Harvenious has to work and work hard to maintain his GPA. He also wrestles and plays baseball, which means he is pretty much playing a sport from the time the school year begins until the time it ends. He has to balance a very difficult academic load, all the while competing at a high level (he was a state qualifier in wrestling last year, and he’s pretty good baseball player as well).
“I just study when I get home. I have to manage my time. I just make sure school always comes first,” he said. Harvenious also gets a little push from Johnson. Jokingly, he says that Johnson likes to compete with him in the classroom. “But I always try to do better than him,” he said (laughs).
In addition to playing key roles on the offensive side of the ball and sharing many of the same upper level academic classes, these three young men are very good friends off the field. They are all complimentary of each other, praising their friends for their hard work and desire to make the players around them better each and every week.
They also have a standing appointment with each other every Tuesday during football season. According to Johnson, the three of them go to a local Chinese buffet after practice on Tuesday and eat as much as they possibly can. Now that football season has ended, they haven’t eaten together. “We really need to start that up again,” he said.
Favorites:
Mason Lawing
• Sport you wish you could play: Golf
• Subject: Physics
• Least favorite subject: English
• Superpower: Super strength
• Super hero: Captain America
• Place to travel: Australia
• Person to meet: Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter
Zack Johnson
• Sport you wish you could play: Lacrosse
• Subject: Math
• Least favorite subject: English
• Superpower: Fly
• Super hero: Superman
• Place to travel: Las Vegas
• Person to meet: Charlie Ward
Noah Harnevious
• Sport you wish you could play: Basketball
• Subject: Math
• Least favorite subject: English
• Superpower: Super strength
• Superhero: Superman
• Place to travel: Antarctica
• Person to meet: President Barack Obama
Academic Athlete/South Georgia/January 2015
Mason Lawing, Zack Johnson, and Noah Harnevious
Thomas County Central High School
Thomasville, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Three friends play hard, study harder
