CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After a neck injury curtailed his college football career, Matt Myers found a way to extend his stay in athletics.

Instead of dodging tacklers, the 1997 Kittanning High School graduate is dismantling tires as part of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s race team on the Nextel Cup circuit.

Myers' father, A.J., owns the A.J. Myers &Sons, Inc., bus company that serves four area school districts with 200 vehicles. The company has also supplied Lernerville Speedway with vehicles for its annual bus races.

"Dad and I used to go to the Outlaw shows at Lernerville all the time,"Myers said. "We never missed them."

Now he never misses a NASCARrace. And he's got a pretty good view from pit row.

Myers was a fullback at Kittanning and earned a scholarship to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

"I tore up my neck my sophomore year," he said. "Icame back to play a little here and there, but that was pretty much the end of it."

But he was down south in racing country. A college friend had done business with Hendrick Motorsports and suggested Myers give it a shot.

"I told him I didn't want to get involved in that stuff, but they were having tryouts and he talked me into showing up,"Myers said. "I was hired on the spot.

"I was a college athlete — bigger, stronger and faster than most of the others who tried out — and race teams need athletes on pit row. That's a sport in and of itself."

Myers has been with the Hendrick racing organization for six years. He worked in the shop for the first two years and served on pit crews for Brian Vickers, Kyle Busch and Casey Mears before joining Earnhardt's team this year.

He found victory lane once each with Vickers, Busch and Mears.

"I was part of the No. 25 team with those three guys,"Myers said. "When Dale came over, they put together a strong pit crew for him. The No. 25 team was renamed the No. 88 team and I was the only one who stayed."

Myers is a rear tire changer for Earnhardt Jr., one of seven members of his pit crew. After a 76-race drought, Earnhardt Jr. finally found victory lane Sunday in the Lifelock 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

"That has to give him a boost of confidence and it's a sigh of relief for all of us,"Myers said. "Dale's just been down on his luck. We've been competitive every race.

"We'd be leading a race and stuff would happen. A flat tire, a spring collapses ... stuff that doesn't normally happen. This win is what we all needed."

Myers is 29 and doesn't know how many more victory lane celebrations he'll be part of. He said he plans to stay with Hendrick "one or two more years, at the most."

Also running his own construction business in Charlotte, Myers admitted to feeling worn down.

"It's a young man's game, working in the pits," he said. "Most NASCARpit crew guys are in their low 20s to maybe age 31. You get an occasional straggler doing it until he's 40, but not many.

"You're jumping in front of a car that's going 60 miles per hour and you've got 13 seconds to change a tire ... It's not easy."

Myers only spends three hours with his crew-mates during the week — two 90-minute practice sessions — but catches flights in the early morning hours on Sunday mornings to get to the race.

When one considers the NASCARseason is 39 weeks long, that's a grueling schedule.

"I'm catching flights at 5 or 6 a.m. and have to be at the track four hours before a race,"Myers said. "There's eight pit stops in a 400-mile race ... It takes a toll on your body and I'm beginning to feel it.

"Your shoulders get sore, your knees ache. Like I said, it's a sport. People don't realize the athleticism that goes on down there."

From football star to fast cars, Myers doesn't regret a minute of it.

"If a guard misses a block in football, the play breaks down. If the jack man or tire carrier doesn't do his job, our race breaks down. This is a team sport, too.

It's fun being around racing. It's hard work, but it's rewarding work."