Starting at 6-years-old, junior Kylan Boyle juggles playing football and working at his parents’ bakery, Mickey’s Cakes and Sweets.

“I started out making icing and I quickly decided I wanted to start baking cakes,” he said.

Boyle said that his parents started the bakery in 1994 when his grandmother bought the baker from a family friend.

“When we are all working together and trying to get the correct product I feel like it brings my family closer together,” he said.

When he started, he said that he mainly taught himself, but then eventually his parents guided him with the harder tasks.

“They eventually taught me but I would always stick my head in the kitchen and just started to mix stuff up, but I have always worked alongside my parents,” he said.

His parents started paying him when he was 10, works three days a week, and he makes $9.25 an hour.

He and his family make a variety of cakes, like children and adult birthday cakes, wedding cakes and cakes for other special occasions.

He said it’s tough to cope with working at the bakery and playing football, and he doesn’t work as much during the football season.

“It’s hard to play a game on Friday, get home late and then have to get up for work on Saturday morning,” he said.

He said he hopes to go to college at U of A in Fayetteville and get a degree in business management and come back to the bakery and own it someday like his family.

He said that he not only enjoys making the cakes, but the accomplishment he feels after he finishes the cakes.

“There is not a greater feeling than actually making the final product exactly the way it is supposed to be,” he said.