Membou's rapid ascent taking him to Mizzou
LEE’S SUMMIT — Lee’s Summit North head coach Jamar Mozee will admit it. Eighteen months ago, if you had told him that offensive lineman Armand Membou would commit to Missouri, he wouldn’t have believed you.
That wasn’t because Membou lacked interest in his home-state school; he simply showed no signs of being able to play college ball, much less in the SEC.
As recently as last August, Membou hadn’t even played a snap of varsity high school football. He picked up the sport in eighth grade and admits he wasn’t good. He played on his middle school “B team,” and even then struggled to find playing time. As a high school freshman, he didn’t get any better. At the start of his sophomore year, Membou wasn’t even starting for the junior varsity team at Lee’s Summit North. Interestingly, it took Cayden Green, the four-star prospect in the class of 2022 who Membou is now actively recruiting to Missouri, being moved to the varsity squad as a freshman for Membou to crack a starting lineup for the first time in his football career.
“Eighth grade, that was my first year playing, middle school, I was on B team, and I was not good,” Membou said. “Just not physical, it wasn’t it. Ninth grade, was on B team again, just was not really it, was not clicking. Sophomore year I was not even starting on JV. I was like bench JV, and then I think Cayden moved up to varsity that year — that was his freshman year, he moved up to varsity — so that got me to be able to play on JV.
“So I played a few JV games, and then the offseason my coach said I would have a chance to play on varsity if I won the spot, so I just started working hard, gaining weight, just getting bigger, and it just started clicking.”
During the course of his most recent high school season, not only did Membou carve out a starting role on the varsity squad, he turned himself into a sure-fire Power Five recruit. By the end of the year, he found himself being recruited by the likes of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas State, Nebraska and Oregon. On March 27, his birthday, Membou shut down his recruitment by announcing his commitment to Missouri.
“For a while I really was just leaning more and more towards Mizzou,” Membou explained. “They had just been giving me more reasons why I should commit, and I feel like one or two weeks before my birthday I kind of realized, like, dang, I want to commit now.”
Mozee believes Membou’s transformation over the past year and a half illustrates the work ethic and upside he will bring to Missouri’s offensive line. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mozee didn’t see his players from mid-March of 2020 until workouts resumed late last summer. He remembers seeing Membou walk through the door for the team’s first workout and doing a double-take.
“It was so weird, because last year, COVID, when it first hit, we didn’t get this time of offseason training,” Mozee said. “And so I didn’t see him really until summer hit. So when summer hit, here’s this guy, he’s walking out, we know who he is, but he had changed dramatically from when we last saw him. He’s bigger, he’s taller. So his body has kind of evolved.”
Membou said he both grew a couple inches and added weight to his frame during the offseason a year ago. Yet he also seemed to improve his athleticism during the course of the offseason. Physically, Mozee said that athletic ability is what stands out most about Membou. He’s now listed at 6-foot-4, and Mozee believes he could weigh as much as 320 without limiting his mobility.
“He’s scary athletic, and that’s what’s going to really catch people off guard,” Mozee said of Membou. “I think they’ll really see it this year, too, because we’re going to move him around some, take advantage of some things, but his athleticism is second to none. He can run, he can jump, he can bend, he can move. He’s really physical, he’s really strong.”
At the same time he matured physically, Membou started to develop a better understanding of the game. Prior to last season, he found that “click” that had been missing during his first three years playing football. One key realization, he recalled, was figuring out how to use leverage, combined with his improved size and strength, to drive defenders off the ball rather than just holding his ground.
“I can’t even explain it, I was just like finally able to drive defenders past the line of scrimmage,” Membou said. “My past years, on JV, I was just stonewalling people. Like I can’t even drive them, and I saw other people do it and I was like, how? Now I’m able to do it, so that’s pretty cool.”
Membou started every game at left guard for Lee’s Summit North last season. It took just two varsity games for him to start attracting college offers at the highest level.
Kansas became the first school to offer Membou a scholarship on Sept. 7. Missouri followed suit the following day, then Iowa State the day after. He wound up with seven offers from Power Five schools.
While the college interest represented a dream come true for Membou, the sudden change from not being recruited at all to fielding unending texts, phone calls and Zoom meeting requests proved a bit overwhelming. After about six months of constant virtual interaction but no in-person visits with coaches, Membou said the process was “wearing him out.” It got to the point that he would wait hours before responding to texts and calls, sometimes never getting back to the coach. A few coaches even reached out to Mozee, wondering if something was wrong.
The exception, however, was Missouri. Membou had built a strong relationship with Tigers offensive line coach Marcus Johnson as well as head coach Eli Drinkwitz and recruiting coordinator Casey Woods. He and his mother had sat through not only Zoom calls with the coaching staff, but a meeting with the Missouri academics support staff and came away impressed. His coaches urged Membou to hold off committing until he could take recruiting visits — the NCAA is widely expected to lift the current recruiting after May 31 — but Membou didn’t want to wait any longer. His birthday provided the perfect opportunity to end his recruitment.
“I felt like I was just wasting my time, and I wasn’t really responding to (coaches) that often, anyways,” Membou said. “... I was really only responding to Mizzou fast, the other coaches, I wasn’t responding to that fast. And then like I told (Mozee), it’s just been like wearing me out, like this whole recruiting process is kind of tiring, and I just really liked Mizzou. I decided I really wanted to commit.”
The Missouri staff recruited Membou as an interior lineman, but he doesn’t want to pigeonhole himself at guard. He’s going to start doing drills with the Lee’s Summit North centers this offseason, and he’s hopeful that if he grows another inch or two (doctors have told him he might, he claims), he could play tackle, as well.
Mozee doesn’t plan to place any limitations on where Membou can line up. With his athleticism, Mozee believes he can make up for his lack of length if he wants to play tackle. He’s also seen how quickly Membou transformed himself from a junior varsity benchwarmer to a Power Five recruit, so he’s not betting against Membou at the next level.
“I would have never guessed that he would be who he is at this moment,” Mozee admitted. “That’s what makes it fun, really seeing him evolve.”
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