~Senior wide receiver Paul McRoberts has a total of 99 catches, 1,495 receiving yards and 20 receiving touchdowns for his three-year career thus far on the Southeast football team

If there is one thing Paul McRoberts loves, it is having fun with whatever he is doing in life.

McRoberts, a senior wide receiver for the Southeast Missouri State football team, started having the fun he still has today when he started playing football when he was 7 years old across the street from his home with other children in the neighborhood. That is where he found out he was a force to be reckoned with on the gridiron.

"Just growing up playing a lot across the street," McRoberts said. "[I was] just always out there with my friends, and really good at it. Tall, one of the biggest kids out there. They couldn't stop me at all."

One day when he and his friends were playing a normal game of football, a life-changing moment occurred for McRoberts.

"This football coach came rolling past just out of nowhere, it was just like a movie scene, rolled up out of nowhere and just asked me if I wanted to play for him," McRoberts said. "My brother always played football, and I was like, 'Well, it's an opportunity to get involved,' and I just wanted to take it to be like my big brother for real."

The coach that pulled up that day happened to be Justin Tatum, who would later be McRoberts' high school football coach, basketball coach and was also the athletic director at Soldan High School.

After Tatum influenced McRoberts to start playing organized football, he ended up joining a peewee football league where he played quarterback instead of his current position at wide receiver, which he wouldn't solely play until high school.

"I kind of remember it like yesterday, it was pretty good," McRoberts said about his first organized football game. "I used to play quarterback. I was playing under coach Mike Toller for the City Rake Wolves, and I was really young -- 7 years old. So the coach can be on the field with you when you're that young and just tell you to go through the motions. But I played quarterback most of my life until I got to high school, so I was just a thrower, a runner, I can really do anything. It was just fun from the get go, from the jump. That's why I really wanted to stick with it."

McRoberts is from north St. Louis where he said it was a tough place to grow up when he was younger because of the danger that came with the territory.

"It was a dangerous area," McRoberts said. "But now it's pretty cool and has died down, and criminals are locked up or either deceased, but it was kind of tough until I got involved with sports really early just trying to stay out of harm's way, and because I loved it. So I kind of just tried to stick to that to make a way out and to achieve success."

Sherry Triplett, McRoberts' mother, raised McRoberts and his four siblings by herself, and that's something that McRoberts will never forget about and will always cherish his mother.

"First off giving me birth, and deciding to keep me and things like that," McRoberts said. "There's parents out here today that don't want to have kids and they abort kids. First off having me as a parent and raising me as a single parent, you know that's pretty tough raising five kids. I mean taking the time to put her energy and time out to raise me that means a lot to me. Me and her relationship been like this (crosses fingers) since I was little."

McRoberts' is the youngest of all his siblings and said that he was and still is the "baby" of the family and still holds the tight relationship he has always had with his mother.

"I'm the baby, so of course she's going to baby me and things like that, but I can remember just through elementary all the way to high school our relationship was like this," McRoberts said, again crossing his fingers. "And that [she] was my best friend. I didn't have any guy or female best friend, my mom was my best friend. We could talk about anything, you know, she guided me in life and things like that. Even though I'm out here in college, we still communicate. The distance is not that close, but she's my superhero."

Growing up, McRoberts' said his two older brothers, Eugene and Leonard, were role models that guided him and molded him to play football. He also looked up to Coach Tatum growing up and that really he guided him to become the player that he is today.

"There's just a lot of people in my life that really helped shape me and it was up to me at the end of the day to keep striving and to keep working hard," McRoberts said. "People are going to tell you what to do, they can't make you do it. So I play a big part in the role, too, so I'd really just like to thank those people and give myself a little credit because I don't really give myself any credit sometimes."

At Soldan, McRoberts shined on both the gridiron and the basketball court and was even a jumper for the track and field team.

On the football field, McRoberts made the St. Louis Post-Dispatch first-team All-Metro his senior year where he snagged 64 catches and had 1,607 receiving yards with 23 receiving touchdowns.

McRoberts also helped lead his basketball team to a Class 4 State Championship victory where he scored 18 points in his final high school basketball game.

Thinking about his collegiate athletic career, McRoberts was set out on proceeding with basketball, but his brother Leonard had other plans.

"I was going to play basketball in college, but my big brother told me, he cut that short, period," McRoberts said. "A lot of people that know me say that they had something to do with it. But really at the end of the day, I appreciate those people too for giving me their opinions, but my big brother's opinion was really the one that mattered because he didn't tell me what I should do, he told me what I was going to do. So I appreciate him a lot. If it weren't for him I probably would've just chose basketball, period."

Though McRoberts has mainly been focusing on football in his collegiate career, he did manage to find a way to get back on the court as a walk-on at Southeast.

He played in 13 games for the Redhawks during his sophomore year and averaged 5.9 points per game.

On the field is where McRoberts has made a name for himself in the Football Championship Subdivision, and he was named on the third-team preseason All-American list prior to his final year at Southeast.

Last season, McRoberts earned first-team All-Ohio Valley Conference honors by grabbing 44 passes and leading the team in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns with 711 yards and nine touchdowns.

McRoberts accomplished that while only playing in seven games for Southeast because he suffered a Lisfranc, or midfoot, fracture late in the fourth quarter against then No. 3 Southeastern Louisiana at home. He ending up catching the game-winning touchdown despite suffering the injury, but had to sit out for the next five games.

For his career, McRoberts has caught a total of 20 touchdown passes, which is only six away from Southeast's all-time career record.

This offseason McRoberts has been focusing on being a better leader and getting rid of the weaknesses that he and his receivers coach Salim Powell found in his game.

"Blocking, yards after the catch, things like that," McRoberts said. "I'm just trying to get better at everything instead of just knowing I can catch the ball. Everybody knows I can catch the ball, but what can I do once I've got the ball in my hands? So I'm just still trying to get better at that and it's coming along."

Powell added that working on the details of McRoberts' game this offseason is poising him to have a big year.

"The biggest thing within our room is consistency, not to be up and down but to be at that high level, stay at the high level," Powell said. "That's on my board right now: consistency. Consistency in the perimeter blocking was a big issue for us that we've got to get better at and we've been hammering that."

McRoberts will go into his final year of playing football at Southeast with the same mindset that he has had with every season of every sport he has ever played, and that is to have fun with it.

"Everything about me on this field is fun," McRoberts said. "If I ain't having fun I'll probably have a bad day, I'll probably -- I don't really have bad days really. But I feel like if I ever have a bad day I wouldn't be so in-tuned in it and just kind of sluggish. But I come out here every day trying to have fun and not be worried about, 'Oh, I'm a senior,' this and that and just tune the negative outlooks and outtakes out and just go out there with a positive outlook and have fun and just do what I do."