Culver City's Mekhi Evans-Bey was there for his mother

Season Interrupted: Culver City’s Mekhi Evans-Bey was there for his mother

Columnist

May 29, 2020 6:30 AM PT

Throughout the spring, The Times will interview high school seniors whose athletic careers were cut short by the coronavirus outbreak.

Name: Mekhi Evans-Bey

School: Culver City

Sport: Football, track.

Key stats: The standout running back was the defending Southern Section Division 2 400-meter champion with a best time of 48.18 seconds in 2019.

Fall plans: Undecided, plans to play football and run track in college.

On the sudden cancellation of the track season:

“It hurt me a lot. Track and football I’ve been doing all my life. Now I’m doing boxing.”

How boxing helps his training for other sports:

“It’s helping me for football, keeping my shoulders strong, my legs strong, my stamina up. I run on the treadmill five miles a day.”

On life without sports:

“I really don’t think of anything but sports. That’s the only thing on my mind. I’ve been doing 300 push-ups in the morning and 300 at night since I was 15.”

Where he sees himself in 10 years:

“Either in the Olympics or in the league for football. If sports doesn’t work out, I want to be a firefighter.”

How the pandemic changed him:

“It’s changed me because my mom had the coronavirus and I was taking care of her. I was nervous. She got better but at the time, it was rough.”

And a word from his mom, Traci Brown, who learned she had the coronavirus in March:

“The virus was terrible. If I didn’t have this young man taking care of me, I don’t know what I would have done. He took me to the doctor appointments; he picked up my medicine; he made me soup; he made me tea. He would get me up in the middle of the night when I was real sick to do breathing treatment and would physically pick me up. He was such an inspiration.”

Video interviews of each athlete can be found at latimes.com/sports/highschool.