Inside Gunner Stockton’s big night, and the small corner of the world he calls home
Gunner Stockton stood in the north end zone of his high school football stadium Friday night, surrounded by a small cadre of friends, family, a mentor and a few onlookers.
The game had been over for less than an hour, but Frank Snyder Memorial Stadium in Rabun County had all but emptied, the parking lot a familiar sea of lights in a line, waiting to depart onto dark north Georgia roads. The night was still warm, warmer than one might expect in the mountains, and there seemed to be an air of savoring this one, perhaps a little more than most, though the scene remained one mostly familiar at the end of many a high school football game.
It was close to midnight, and Stockton was still in uniform. He hadn’t made it off the field as he took photos with fans, friends and family.
Even with the prodigious start to his high school football career — one that saw the quarterback capture the attention of the national recruiting scene and the minds of University of South Carolina football fans since he made his college commitment — it’s too early to speak of any legend of Gunner Stockton. He’s only a junior, for goodness sake.
But his evening on Friday was the stuff that can fit the mold of a legendary night. (His coach even told him to be a legend in the most crucial moment.) He dueled with one of the best players in the country, playing for a national audience. He was called upon at the end and delivered victory with high drama, with his idol in the building along with the ESPNU cameras.
An uninformed observer might have mistook an easygoing, sometimes quiet persona in the pregame and a slow first drive for a few nerves, as his Wildcats, No. 1 in their class, took on Prince Avenue Christian. The Wolverines were the No. 3 team in their small private school class and led by quarterback Brock Vandagriff, the No. 13 player in the class of 2021 and a Georgia commitment.
But Rabun coach Jaybo Shaw said his QB just stayed himself, didn’t try to change anything on that stage. For Stockton, he said with a wide smile, it was just another night in a small community in north Georgia.
“It was just a normal Friday night,” Stockton said. “Look up in the stands and see familiar faces. But just playing with my buddies and competing. That’s all we can do.”
The player: A road through to Rabun
As one approaches Stockton’s hometown of Tiger, Georgia from the south, the geography stretches out in a sort of linear nature.
In a big city, things might spiral out from some central hub. But up this way, a winding four-lane highway is the connecting feature for an entire community as it rolls through the mountains.
Tiger and this county in whole are where the Stockton clan calls home.
Businesses sit alongside the road, dotted wherever they seem to fit. Signs appear for a school or a church, oft sitting above or below the road, sometimes hidden by trees.
Every so often one finds clusters of mailboxes, just at the end of a steep mountain road, a sign of acquiescence that delivering postage along the larger way is simply more practical than a mail truck braving those steep grades.
The town of Tiger is small and quaint, anchored by a four-way stop. Drive past orchards and the school district buildings on the way into town and one finds on one corner the post office; the next the Tiger Food Mart, a spot for dynamite breakfast and biscuits; and on the next corner, an old antiques shop and ice cream shop that’s no longer in business.
To the north of town is the drive-in movie theater, a rolling hill with spots for cars and cutouts of Tigers with holes for children’s faces , a play structure sitting just below the screen. Drive north a little more, one finds a vineyard and winery on the mountain slopes, a business started by a doctor who was born in Rabun County, left and then returned, and his wife, a former Colorado state senator and opinion writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Nearby, a house sits with a set of fishing poles and camp chairs leaned up next to the front door, as the town isn’t far from several lakes.
But it might be a mistake to focus one’s attention on just Tiger.
Pull up the town on a map, and the official border is basically a circle, not even stretching to the high school across Highway 23. But much of the county of 16,000 or so seems congregated around that road.
Travel a few minutes up from Tiger and one reaches Clayton, the county seat and its largest town. The layout of the place might be a familiar one across the country — chain restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, as well as local spots, cluster densely around the highway, just a few blocks from a decidedly quaint downtown bustling on an early Friday evening.
That wide road will take someone from Emery’s Woodworks, past a large county rec center and small arena, past the Goats on the Roof confection shop, past Oinkers BBQ and a “we do not accept credit cards” sign with the “not” taped over, to that downtown, all in a drive of less than 10 minutes.
Rob Stockton’s family moved to Rabun County from Anderson when he was 1 1/2 years old. His wife, Sherrie, arrived with her family when she was in seventh grade.
They were high school sweethearts, but both left to pursue athletic careers, hers a high-scoring basketball career at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, his a decorated run at Georgia Southern that put him in the school’s hall of fame in 1998.
They reunited after college and made a return to where they matriculated. Sherrie is a counselor at the high school, while Rob is the defensive coordinator for the football team.
Gunner Stockton spoke of the pride of putting this small, mountain corner of the state on the map in a more national sense, but doing it as part of a longer tradition. The program has risen up in the past decade, first under Lee Shaw, now led by his son Jaybo.
Charlie Woerner was part of that success, going from Rabun County to playing 54 games in a career at the University of Georgia before getting selected in the sixth round of the NFL Draft.
“He just got on the San Francisco 53-man roster,” Stockton said, noting his goal to carry that forward. “Just him playing and watching him grow up. And just kind of being like him and putting Rabun County on the map.”
The town has enough football pride that one could find the school superintendent chatting with the clock operator before the game, with just a bit of a fretting tone about changes in the usual music. Perhaps it was OK to move away from “Sandstorm” on kickoffs (it still got played a few times), but on this night? Changing up tradition?
Rabun County is something his father, a son of this edge of the state, looks at with pride, nestled in a nook just south of the North Carolina border. It’s home for him and his family and a place most meaningful for him.
“Rabun County is an unbelievable place to be,” Rob Stockton said. “It’s a wonderful community that’s got unbelievable support.”
Game night: Wildcats on the offensive
One might have been able to call Friday night’s start for Rabun County’s football team a bit inauspicious, but that didn’t last long.
A missed block on a screen pass behind the line put the Wildcats in a hole. Gunner Stockton escaped the pocket on third and long, looking to improvise, and had to take a short scramble and a punt.
A 10-play Prince Avenue drive fizzled inside the Rabun 40, and then things broke open.
Stockton guided the Wildcats on marches of 66, 71 and 77 yards.
His first score of the night was a 31-yard strike, inches from the fingers of the defensive back, to Adriel Clark, a transfer who joined the team this year.
The next two came courtesy of Stockton himself. He took a counter run 45 yards, cutting up and turning to the trailing defenders as he scored. After the Wolverines cut the deficit to 14-7, Stockton led an 18-play march, converting two fourth downs and plunging in from 2 yards out.
A field goal to end the half put the Wildcats up 24-7, and things were looking pretty.
The player: Gunner’s path to Columbia
Rob Stockton wanted to make sure not to underplay the fact of how much his son liked Will Muschamp, even before another crucial connection between the family and the Gamecocks fell into place.
“He loved coach Muschamp before all of that was there,” Rob Stockton said. “He did really have a mutual positive feeling about coach Muschamp, and that came because he saw kids there when he visited, he loved it and he wanted to play for him.”
One could be forgiven for going right to the Shaw and Bobo ties that run so deep with the Stocktons and now the Gamecocks as well.
Gunner Stockton was years away from middle school when Lee Shaw came to Rabun County from Flowery Branch. Stockton was a ball boy for those teams, and when Lee Shaw took over the job once held by current Georgia coach Kirby Smart’s father, Shaw’s son Connor was in the midst of leading the Gamecocks to three 11-win seasons.
And young Gunner Stockton had someone to look up to.
“He was my idol,” Stockton said. “I got a jersey of him, a South Carolina jersey. I used to wear it all the time.”
Connor Shaw, who joined South Carolina as director of football student-athlete development this offseason, was at Friday night’s Rabun County game. The program passed from the hands of his father to his brother, Jaybo. The success hasn’t stopped, with 23 wins the past two seasons, and the South Carolina legend was out on the field after , sharing a chat with family and a congrats for his brother.
That connection will be there with the Gamecocks for a long time, but the Bobo connection just fell into place this year.
George Bobo moved from south to north Georgia to work with his friend Sonny Smart. Bobo had helped mold his son, Mike, into a passer so good that he turned down Mark Richt and Florida State in the early 1990s to play for UGA.
And George Bobo was instrumental in Gunner Stockton’s development into a quarterback. George Bobo was in the building Friday as well, along with his grandson Drew Bobo, a talented recruit in his own right who has gone fishing with Stockton since they were young kids.
Mike Bobo went on to coaching success at Georgia and became Colorado State’s head coach. This offseason, he returned to the South and joined the Gamecocks as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Already liking Muschamp, plus those other factors, just seemed to make things fall into place, and the feelings have been good ever since.
“They’ve been awesome,” Gunner Stockton said. “Coach Mike and I have a really good relationship. Just trying to get some more guys to come become Gamecocks.”
Rob Stockton could see how the choice to announce a commitment somewhat early in the recruiting process made things easier for his son. Gunner Stockton is fiery on the field but seems a bit more laid back off it.
He certainly doesn’t come off like a person who relishes the attention that comes with a high-profile recruitment, as some kids seem to.
“He’s had a peace about him and he’s felt extremely comfortable,” Rob Stockton said. “We’ve not had a conversation about recruiting. We’ve not had a conversation about how many people he’s supposed to be calling back. We’ve not had a conversation about where do you want to go? What games do you want to attend? He is at peace. He loves that staff. He loves that town. He just fell in love with it.”
It’s meant he could turn his attention back to the field, to this season and to a bit more normalcy.
“I just wanted to get it over with and just focus on playing with my friends. It was a relief,” Gunner Stockton said.
Game night: Wolverines strike back
The second half of Friday’s game started much like the first, with more good things from the Wildcats and another Stockton score.
For Prince Avenue, Brock Vandagriff got hit as he threw deep on the first play and his receiver fell down, leaving the ball for safety Cory Keller to snag on the first play of the half. Stockton promptly led his team 70 yards, capped with a 46-yard run where two defenders jumped his running back and he took off up the middle, tailing to the sideline and spiking the ball after he passed the pylon.
And then Vandagriff started to show the reason he’s the No. 13 overall prospect in the country.
The Prince Avenue offense fired to life: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, field goal on consecutive drives. Vandagriff hit Troy-bound receiver Logan Johnson twice for scores.
Stockton and the Rabun County offense hit a rocky spot, first with a tipped-ball interception on a misdirection screen and then on a punt when Stockton was stopped short on third and 3. He did lead the offense 71 yards to set up a 29-yard field goal with his team clinging to a three-point lead, but it felt short. Vandagriff then took his team 53 yards before a penalty helped with a Wildcat stop to force a game-tying field goal.
And all of this put Rob Stockton in a tough spot.
As the defensive coordinator for the Wildcats, he’s not actually able to watch his son in live action for the most part, though he often watches later on film. While Gunner was slinging it Friday, Rob was trying to figure out how to keep Vandagriff from doing the same.
“As a defensive coordinator, I knew I’m fixing to have to go back out there and stop a really, really good quarterback,” Rob Stockton said. “So you didn’t get to celebrate long knowing that Brock Vandagriff is fixing to bring his offense back on the field.”
It wasn’t the easiest day for the Wildcat defense, allowing more than 6 yards per play, but Rob Stockton did get the chance to see a little of, or at least hear, his son’s final strike.
The player: A particular talent
One could see it on an early third down, a play coming before one of Gunner Stockton’s five touchdowns on the night. He carried the ball outside needing only a few yards, carefully reading his blocks.
He even had that carefully considered moment as a defender came barreling down with him maybe a yard from the mark to gain. Then he lowered his head. The defender got lower, but Stockton popped over and made the conversion.
It was one of five third downs of three or shorter he ran on. He converted four.
So at the very least, one can see he’s a tough kid.
Gunner Stockton’s game has a style that isn’t exactly that of a traditional drop-back player or even a typical dual-threat runner.
He’s not the tallest at 6-foot-1, but standing next to him, he’s got this stocky, thick build. He’s not necessarily the pure burner like Gamecock freshman QB Luke Doty — few are — but he’s a willing runner, showing the toughness that had him playing linebacker before Bobo helped steer him behind center.
Last season, the Wildcats didn’t have much in the way of a true running back. No problem. Stockton took more than half his team’s carries, accounted for more than 1,100 yards and helped open things for the next two most-used runners to average better than 8.5 yards per carry.
One can’t 100% divorce Gunner Stockton the passer from Gunner Stockton the runner. Despite the prevalence of called runs for him, he also gets some of those yards as a result of high-level feel and mobility within and outside the pocket.
On the ESPNU broadcast, he was described as “active” in the pocket, and there’s a sort of ease in the way he moved. There’s not too much hurry. He slides around, slips around outside rushers, has a feel for how to extend the play and then makes it.
Oh, and his arm is top notch.
He showed it off on some of those deep throws Friday, but one understated impressive toss came early in the second quarter. Facing third and 10, he fired a laser from the right hash to the left sideline, hitting Clark on a 12-yard comeback.
His skills impressed former Gamecock and Hammond coach Erik Kimrey, who tweeted “Gunner has elite arm talent. Built like Garcia and runs like Shaw!”
It’s trite to make the Shaw comparisons, but it’s hard not to see the grit and the improvisational skills Connor Shaw possessed in Stockton.
Soon enough, he’ll be following in the lineage of those two, donning garnet and black. For now, he’s helping out another Shaw in Jaybo, a man who is very happy George Bobo guided him to offense all those years ago.
“Thank goodness he’s slinging that rock,” Shaw said.
Game night: He delivered
The setting fit almost too well.
In Columbia, Connor Shaw was the master of the late drive, pulling wins from tight spots over and over. In Tiger, Shaw was in the stadium, and Stockton was asked to do the same sort of thing, also on national TV.
The 24-point lead evaporated Friday. The previous march was a good enough one to score but did not. And the ball was in Stockton’s hands.
Like Stockton waiting in the pocket, the play calling showed the patience of a seasoned hand running the show with 4:24 on the clock and 77 yards to go.
Stockton ran power, then what looked like a sweep off a fake toss. He took a quick hitch to Clark against off coverage. Two more counters, one where he had to corral an errant snap, and another hitch brought the Wildcats down to the Prince Avenue 32.
Then Shaw and Stockton went for the jugular.
“We knew we had that shot for a touchdown,” Jaybo Shaw said. “It was just when we wanted to call it and when it was the right time.”
Stockton got good protection. Clark left his man in the dust and the ball was perfectly on target.
“Adriel, he’s awesome,” Gunner Stockton said. “I know he had beat him on the (move), but it was pretty awesome. He just went up there and got it.”
Minutes later, Rob Stockton’s defense delivered a stop, as Keller intercepted the third play of the drive to seal it. Gunner Stockton carried the ball once and then handed off for the final first down on the clock-killing drive to seal the 38-31 win.
His final line was impressive: 182 yards on 19-of-30 passing with two scores and one interception, plus 180 rushing yards and three scores. After the game, he seemed happy and calm, but not too high.
“We started out pretty fast,” Stockton said. “We just played as a team and played together. It was awesome.”
As the stadium emptied, he remained, working through interviews, chats with 7-on-7 teammates, photos with family and friends. His coach raved about him — better person than a player, better teammate, better friend and role model.
In a few years, he’s on track to be playing in a bigger stadium, a five-star chasing his promise. But Friday, he was a high school kid asked to deliver a dramatic moment on a national stage. And he came through.
“I’m just so proud of him,” Jaybo Shaw said. “Of the way that he handled the national stage and led our football team. Just really impressive, man. Thank goodness I have him for another year.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
