Gamecocks senior announces he’s been granted a sixth year of eligibility
South Carolina football said goodbye to running back Ty’Son Williams early this week. But another member of the running back room who had to wait to find out if his career would continue tweeted he will get one more year with the team.
Tailback Caleb Kinlaw tweeted he’d been granted the sixth year of eligibility he had been seeking. He was set to play his senior year this past fall, but a torn ACL sidelined him.
The former Goose Creek High School star has been through a lot from a career that took him from the Lowcountry to Madison, Wisconsin, Mississippi and back to his home state. The injury robbed him of a senior season, but he said he didn’t want it to end that way.
“It’ll mean just the world,” Kinlaw said in December. “When you’re on back end of it, you kind of cherish things a little more, especially playing football, you realize you only get to play college four or five years.
Kinlaw redshirted his first college season and then played a small role in 2015 at Wisconsin. He left that school, spent 2016 in junior college fighting through injuries and then walked on at USC. He had 47 yards in 2017 against Wofford deep in a blowout .
But that season, he also became a valuable member of South Carolina’s special teams unit, which included recovering a crucial onside kick to secure a victory.
Out of high school, Kinlaw was a three-star recruit and ran for 4,186 yards, averaging 8.9 yards per carry on a series of strong Goose Creek teams.
Kinlaw admitted he felt flat-out depressed when he tore his knee, but now calls it a blessing in disguise. It allowed him to gain appreciation for what he had and the chance to play.
Even something like special teams, the grunt work, grew into something he cherished.
“I think I enjoy it a lot more now than I ever did before,” Kinlaw said. “I never played special teams until I got here. The only time I played special teams was with the ball in my hands.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 9:04 PM.