When Myles Stone first joined the Starkville High School football team in 2017, the fit was natural.
Right away, the Holly Springs transfer stepped into a leading role in the Yellow Jackets’ ballhawking secondary by securing six interceptions in his junior season alone — the most by any Starkville player since 2010. The cornerback also inspired his new teammates in the locker room.
In short, Jackets coach Chris Jones said, Stone was “a great, great leader” on and off the field.
One of the state’s top cornerbacks, Stone earned himself a football scholarship to Northeast Mississippi Community College, intending to make a name for himself with the Tigers and eventually play NCAA Division I football.
But even during his senior year in Starkville, Stone had already realized something didn’t feel right. Another urge had struck him: the desire to start his own business in sports photography and videography; to be his own boss.
“I was dealing with, ‘Do I want to continue to play football?’ even though I was playing at a high level,” Stone said.
Two weeks into fall camp in Booneville in August 2019, Stone left the school and went home to Holly Springs. His promising football career was over, and not long afterward, Stonecold Productions LLC was born.
Less than a year later, Stone — currently in talks with the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District on a contract that would make him the first sports video director at the high school level in Mississippi — harbors no regrets.
“Even though I was top notch, and people had expectations of me to go play Division I, you should still follow what your heart tells you to do,” Stone said. “If you have an urge to go do something, go do it.”
#LLI
Before the start of his senior season, Stone met Ian Reed, a Mississippi State graduate who convinced Jones to let him volunteer as the team’s unofficial videographer that year.
On Aug. 29, 2018, two days before Starkville’s game against West Point, Stone and Reed struck up a conversation at practice about their plans after football. Stone told Reed he would major in mass communication at Northeast, hoping to be a sports commentator; but Reed showed the cornerback the basics of videography and got Stone thinking.
Two days later, Stone and the Jackets beat the Green Wave, 23-7. The next morning, the team woke up to shocking news in their group chat: Reed, 24, had been killed in a car accident on Highway 82 in Columbus. His Toyota Camry had been hit head on by a wrong-way driver in a stolen Prius, and both drivers had died instantly.
Stone — whose Twitter bio includes the hashtag #LLI for “Long Live Ian” — decided to take Reed’s advice in honor of his friend.
“Once he passed away, I was like, ‘I want to continue his legacy the way he was doing it,'” Stone said. “Once I started that, then I fell in love with it.”
That spring, Stone shot photos and videos at Starkville sporting events for the first time. He wasn’t using any fancy equipment — just his iPhone 8 Plus — but his classmates took notice.
“‘Man, you’re pretty good at this,” they said.
Stone graduated in May and headed to Booneville in August to prepare for the season, with his friends’ praise for his new hobby still stuck in the back of his mind.
“Once I fell in love with it and started doing it more, that’s when that urge came that I wanted to actually make this into a business,” Stone said.
‘I’m all in’
With one week to go before the 2019 football season began Aug. 29, Stone made the call: His time at Northeast was done.
His parents, coaches and teammates all understood, which helped. But in the first two weeks after leaving Booneville, Stone still had regrets.
“‘I should have stayed in school,” he thought to himself. “I should have stayed and played football.'”
The qualms soon faded. A few weeks after Stone left the team, the Tigers’ defensive coordinator called him up, telling Stone he could come back if he wanted. Stone, committed to his new dream, said no.
“I’m all in,” Stone insisted. “I’m all in.”
This fall, he was on the sidelines as Starkville’s football team reached the north state championship but fell on the road to rival Oxford.
Jones said Stone, as a former player, always knows the best shots to get, the best angles at which to position himself and his Sony a6000 camera.
“It’s been awesome to have this guy on the sidelines recording and taking pictures and stuff,” Jones said.
In early March, Stone was in Oxford again with Starkville, taping a “documentary-like” film chronicling the second straight state championship for the Jackets’ boys basketball team.
Working with the school has been a way for Stone to stay in touch with his former classmates and teammates.
“I’m in contact with a lot of them to this day, so we still have a pretty tight bond,” Stone said.
He’s found work all around the state: taping games at Holly Springs, Rust College and Northeast; shooting basketball and football games at Mississippi State; and even filming a private video for former MSU women’s basketball assistant coach Johnnie Harris.
Stone has also filmed two weddings and even traveled to Kentucky to help out with high school football.
“To be honest, I didn’t think it would get to this point, get as big as it has now,” he said of his business.
He hopes to work with even more high schools and colleges, noting that as long as he puts in the effort, “people will find me.”
Jones, too, sees his former defensive star’s potential in his new career.
“Who’s to say 10 or 15 years from now he won’t be the best in the business?” Jones said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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