Traylon Ray has been used to adjustments.
A three-sport athlete in high school who played football, basketball and baseball, Ray is used to adapting and that certainly helped him when he arrived on campus at West Virginia last summer.
Ray arrived at West Virginia later than many of the others in his freshman class as he was wrapping up his baseball season but quickly learned that college was a different animal.
“I was pretty raw. I played in high school and trained a little bit, but actually getting that foundation working with Coach Lal (Marshall) and being around the older guys that knew what they were doing helped me grow quicker,” he said. “And being in that role playing I had to learn things quicker.”
That progression caught the watchful eyes of the coaching staff and Ray impressed during fall camp. He had a knack for catching the football and he attributes that to all of the time he spent fielding pop flys and learning how to track a baseball in the outfield.
“He’s smooth,” head coach Neal Brown said at the time. “He’s going to be a player.”
Ray displayed natural ball skills and also had the added bonus of playing in a similar scheme in high school at North Florida Christian so he was familiar with many of the concepts.
“A lot of the routes and formations we use here, we kind of used that in high school,” Ray said.
His performance and understanding of the scheme led to the true freshman seeing snaps in the season opener against Penn State and catching a pair of passes for seven yards. West Virginia needed help at the wide receiver spot and Ray could provide it.
He then saw the field for snaps against Pittsburgh, Texas Tech and TCU.
But after that things changed for Ray as he made his first career start against Houston catching three passes for 43 yards and his first career touchdown. He would go on to start five more games down the stretch and developed into one of the top options in the wide receiver room for the Mountaineers.
“That was a bit of a surprise but once I got rolling I showed what I could do,” Ray said.
That was capped off in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl game where he took the opening play of the game 75-yard to the house and showcased his impressive skill set.
The off-season was geared more toward increasing his strength as that was an issue at times as he even sat out the Duquesne game in order to physically recover given the fact he was still adjusting to the college game.
“It adds up tremendously. Putting on the weight and learning how to move a lot faster and it helps my speed and all-around play on the field,” he said.
The biggest area is when it comes to taking hits as Ray is much more confident going across the middle and taking contact than he was at any point last season. He also has been working on his game as a blocker in order to become more effective there.
The sophomore has bigger goals for his second year in the program especially with an entire off-season under his belt after arriving so late a year ago. As part of that, Ray would like to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark but understands the competition in the room could prevent that.
But that doesn’t matter to him as he wants to win above all else.
“Definitely more for me this upcoming season, this will be a big season for me and what I want to do,” he said.
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