By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
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Tamir Rex may be little, standing just 5-foot-7 and weighing 160 pounds, but he made a huge impact on the Atlantic City High football and basketball programs during his prep career.
Before Rex arrived on campus, the football team went just 3-7 in 2021. Since then, the Vikings have become a legitimate force in South Jersey Group 5, playing to a 10-2 record this past fall that saw them advance all the way to the sectional championship game before falling to Kingsway. Rex had a solid career as a slot receiver, catching 35 passes for more than 600 yards and six touchdowns as a senior, and in his career he racked up 1,157 yards and 11 scores on 64 receptions.
But more than the stats, Rex brought a never-give-up attitude to the programs, and he was one of the key building blocks to Atlantic City’s resurgence as a football program.
The same could be said for his basketball career, where this past winter he helped lead the Vikings to their first Cape-Atlantic League Tournament championship in more than a decade, and his team made it all the way to the sectional semifinals before a loss to Cherry Hill West.
“Tamir is the heart and soul of our team,” said Vikings basketball coach Wayne Nelson. “He’s not the biggest guy and he has a job that’s not always rewarded. It doesn’t show up in the stat sheet, but he’s been taking players out of their game all year because he is a physical guard who will pick you up at 94 feet. He loves the contact. I told him that he really gets beat up out here. He gets fat lips from being elbowed but the kid never backs down.”
Nelson said Rex has never let his diminutive stature be an excuse despite playing sports that glorify size and height. In basketball, he scored more than 500 points in his career, and had 100-plus rebounds, assists and steals.
“With him, it’s heart over height,” Nelson said. “He came into a leadership role (as a senior), and as a result that trickled down to the other players. The other guys want to play as hard as he does, and that makes for a pretty good basketball team. At the beginning of the year I asked him to be a leader, and he kind of shied away from it — because it’s hard. You don’t want to be the guy who’s not liked, or the vocal one, but he accepted that role, and when he did that it changed the way we played.
“He’s a great kid, a great student. Just an overall great kid.”
