Kenneth Hayes, left, works on his dropback with quarterbacks coach Dondrial Pinkins at practice Tuesday at Thomasville High school.

THOMASVILLE — The Bulldogs had to run Monday at practice, as they do most days. Some players were “dogging it” though, not “Dawging it.”

So the team’s new starting quarterback took charge.

“We kind of told them, ‘don’t worry about it, just keep running, it’s going to pay off this Friday in the game,’” senior Kenneth Hayes said. “’You never know, there might be a time when they’re holding you back, but you just got to keep persevering through.’”

The role of quarterback is by nature a leadership position. And Hayes, by nature, has been a leader for all of his 18 years.

“Kenneth is a young man (who is) a leader regardless,” second-year head coach Leroy Ryals said. “He’s a leader. People flock to him. Kids for some reason listen to him. He’s a little kid, he’s ain’t very big, but since he was a little kid as far as I understand it, they always listen to him.”

But it wasn’t always the kind of leadership you’d want to run your team.

“Those types of kids, they’re going to lead regardless,” Ryals continued. “So you kind of have to make sure they’re going to lead in a positive way. That’s what I told Kenny, you got to be a positive leader or you can’t be around at all because unless you lead the right way, it’s going to go astray, to be honest with you.”

Hayes understands that and approaches his role in a way even many older adults don’t approach their high-up leadership roles.

For one, he doesn’t use the “one size fits all” system.

“My type of leadership is, I try to see others around me and how they intervene so I know how to persuade them, how to come at them, because if you don’t know how to come at a certain person or group you won’t know how to become the way the whole team should be,” Hayes said. “So I just sit back and I just observe everybody and I try to come at them a way they’ll understand or a way I can encourage them.”

And he also realizes the essence of what Ryals was saying when he told the young man about being a positive leader: peers pay close attention to what you do.

“Sometimes leading isn’t always talking, sometimes it’s showing your actions and doing it and they’ll pay attention and they’ll follow along,” Hayes added to the end of the conversation, unprompted by any question. “So sometimes you don’t have to talk you just have to do it.”

He noticed this partly through what his teammates were saying to him.

“Sometimes when you just sit back and observe things, certain people might come talk to you and they’ll tell you stuff that you might not even know you do on a regular basis and you’ll be like, ‘dang, they pay attention to me that much? I’m really a leader on the team.’ I didn’t know people really realized what I do.”

Everyone will be paying closer attention to what Hayes does, especially while he’s on the field as Thomasville’s starting quarterback. It was a role he had been suggesting he wanted to take, but his coach felt he wasn’t ready for.

“He’s kind of mentioned to me before, but I wouldn’t let him do it because I didn’t think he was ready,”

Ryals said. “After I had a long talk with him and kind of watched how he worked at other positions, I kind of decided to give him a shot.”

Hayes was a starting safety last season and hadn’t started at quarterback until this summer. In the Bulldogs’ scrimmage against Mitchell County last week, Hayes completed six of 12 passes for 69 yards and ran for 66 with two touchdowns.

He can run the show, Ryals said, and is a gamer who likes to study film and learn what is going on.

Just as leadership is a strong component of quarterback play, so is possessing a short-term memory.

There’s no use in focusing on the interception the last drive when there’s an entire three quarters left to make it up.

“I like being quarterback because it’s a leadership type role,” Hayes said. “I’m the type of person that’s not afraid to lead, and when I mess up I know everybody is going to mess up, so I don’t get stuck in the past. I just move on to the next play.”

On the field, Hayes has encouraged teammates to cut out the profanity. Off the field, Hayes encourages his teammates to join him at Fellowship for Christian Athletes on Thursdays and occasionally a group will attend church together. He’s also taken others under his wing, bringing up the next group of leaders at Thomasville and incorporating those who haven’t been at the school very long.

“I’ve been with Jalandin (Jones, a senior transfer from Cairo) a long time because we always play football together,” Hayes said. “But the freshmen, I saw something in them during the spring when they were playing with us because they were getting in with a lot of seniors and I saw they had a lot of heart. When I go running or something on the weekends, I try to call them and ask them, ‘do you want to join the older guys in doing it?’, because I know as a leader they’re going to be the future.”

cassandra.neglely@gaflnews.com

Twitter.com/casnegley