Drake Maye would be by far the most famous athlete for most families, and it’s likely he still holds that distinction in the Maye family with the possible exception of one area: Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Maye comes from a family of well-known UNC athletes, ranging from his dad, a former Tar Heel quarterback, to his older brother, a national championship-winning forward for the Tar Heel basketball team.
By the time it’s all said and done, Maye might wind up being the biggest name in his family. He’s currently projected to be a top-three pick in the 2024 NFL Draft after concluding his shining career at North Carolina.
“[Drake] was always an athlete,” Luke Maye, Drake’s older brother, told SN in 2022. “He was always a person who dominated his age group, and he played up quite a bit. We definitely toughened him up a bit, but I’m just so proud of him. I just love him to death.”
Drake was the ACC Player of the Year and ACC Offensive Player of the Year in 2022. In three years at North Carolina, including two as the starting quarterback, Maye completed 64.9 percent of his passes for 8,018 yards with 63 passing touchdowns and only 16 interceptions. He also rushed 302 times for 1,209 yards and 16 more touchdowns.
His play has earned him comparisons ranging from Carson Palmer to Justin Herbert, and he’s viewed by many as a franchise-altering quarterback.
What about the rest of his athletic family? Here’s what you need to know.
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Drake Maye family tree
Brother: Luke Maye
There are plenty of college basketball fans who will be familiar with Luke Maye. The 6-8 forward was largely a bench player for the first two seasons of his collegiate career in 2015-16 and 2016-17.
Though Luke was coming off the bench in 2017, he was still an impactful player for the Tar Heels during their March Madness run. He had three double-digit scoring games and averaged 8.7 points per game coming off the bench for the Tar Heels as North Carolina went on to win a national championship. He also made an iconic buzzer-beater against Kentucky in the Elite Eight.
That March Madness run helped vault Luke into the starting lineup for the final two years of his collegiate career. He had a tremendous impact both seasons, averaging 16.9 points per game as a junior and 14.9 points as a senior. He also averaged more than 10 rebounds per game in both seasons.
In his career, Luke earned two All-ACC honors (first team in 2017-18 and second team in 2018-19. He was also named a third-team All-American in the 2017-18 season by both the Associated Press and Sporting News.
Luke Maye declared for the NBA Draft between his junior and senior seasons, but he returned to college for another year. He went undrafted after his senior year but signed with the Wisconsin Herd, the Bucks’ G League team. He played for the Herd in 2019 and 2020, but he has since played basketball overseas. He currently plays for the Ibaraki Robots in Japan.
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Father: Mark Maye
Drake is following in his dad’s footsteps as the starting UNC quarterback. Mark Maye spent two years with the team in 1984 and 1985 before he took over as the starter in 1986. He completed 110-of-176 passes for 1,401 yards with 10 touchdowns and six interceptions. In 1986, North Carolina went 7-4-1 and was 36th in average scoring at 25.4 points per game.
The next season, Mark was again the starter, this time completing 143-of-270 passes for 1,965 yards with nine touchdowns and 15 interceptions. The Tar Heels averaged 19.5 points per game (76th in the country) and went 5-6.
Mark went to the NFL for a brief stint with the Buccaneers, but he wound up returning to North Carolina to work as a graduate assistant while earning his MBA. The head coach at the time? Mack Brown, who later returned to Chapel Hill after more than a decade at Texas and wound up coaching Drake.
Though Drake was originally committed to Alabama in high school, he wound up flipping to North Carolina. Brown was not surprised.
“I never thought Drake would go to Alabama because this is his school,” Brown told SN in 2022. “This is his family’s school.”
Mother: Aimee Maye
Aimee Maye did not play collegiate athletics, but don’t sleep on her athleticism. Growing up, the Maye family H-O-R-S-E games were often won by Aimee, a high-school basketball player, according to The News & Observer.
She also had experience playing a bit of football, as well. It was when she was a player on a Powder Puff football team and Mark Maye was a coach that the two first met, per the News & Observer.
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Brother: Cole Maye
Every member of the Maye family played either basketball or football. Cole Maye chose another route: baseball.
He was a pitcher for Florida, pitching in five games in 2017 with a 12.27 ERA, four strikeouts, and three walks in 3.2 innings. That team went on to win the College World Series.
Cole pitched in the 2017 Valley League, a summer league, for the Charlottesville TomSox. He had a 2.45 ERA in 14.2 innings on the mound.
Brother: Beau Maye
The second-youngest of the brothers, older only than Drake, is Beau Maye. Like Luke, he has gone down the basketball route.
Beau appeared in two games for the Tar Heels in the 2022-23 season and collected a pair of rebounds in two minutes on the year. While in high school, he had nine knee surgeries.
