Football was taken from him, but his new path means two more years as a Gamecock
Kiel Pollard didn’t quite imagine getting to this moment this way.
The former South Carolina tight end assumed it would come after a productive senior year, probably in the midst of his team preparing for a bowl game. Instead he didn’t play a down in 2019.
“This year has been very different and challenging,” Pollard said days before graduating from college. “But I know it’s a big step. It’s a step I couldn’t take without the stuff happening to me.”
A spinal condition ended his career ahead of what looked to be a promising senior campaign. He was in line to start, finally a top-line guy after working his way up behind more senior players.
It ended his chance at playing, but he stuck around, helped coach, and that opened up a new avenue. An avenue that means two more years in Columbia.
“That’s awesome,” Pollard said. “You know, that wasn’t in the plan but like I said, it’s awesome, an awesome feeling to get that opportunity.”
Instead of moving on to training for a run at the NFL, he’s staying on campus as a graduate student. He’ll be a GA with the football team and work toward his Master’s degree.
He was South Carolina’s No. 4 player in receiving yards as a junior and No. 5 in catches. It represented a modest breakout for a player who had worked diligently as a special teamer, but found himself slightly buried behind Hayden Hurst, Jacob August and K.C. Crosby.
August and Crosby left Columbia after the 2018 season, and it appeared he’d be in line for a heavy workload. After the injury, USC played much of the season thin at tight end, and through much of the latter half of the year, the Gamecocks looked like a team that simply needed more play-makers such as Pollard.
He said his teammates helped carry him through the tough times. Wide receivers Bryan Edwards and Chavis Dawkins said they always tried to give a kind word or do small things like getting him out of the house.
“It’s a great pleasure to have the type of guys I had in my life,” Pollard said. “I was at my lowest but I had guys that were always (bringing up) my spirit.”
His coach, Will Muschamp, simply declared the coaching profession needs more people like Pollard, as he sets off on that journey.
Pollard came to Columbia an in-demand recruit, one of the most productive players in the state of Georgia. He went through the downs of not playing much offense early, fighting his way up the depth chart, and then had the game taken from him with one injury and a scan that revealed an issue that had been there all along.
The person wearing his robe, putting on a ring to signify the end of his undergraduate career, he learned something crucial through all that, something that helped him on a path he didn’t expect and will likely help on the path set out before him.
“Just patience,” Pollard said. “Just patience and let everything work out for itself, because everything, there is a plan. God does have a plan and, you know, it might not be the plan that I wanted to be, but it is a plan.”
