[Editor's Note: This story first was published in the AJC Sunday sports section as a Sports Extra on March 18 and is the main reason the GHSA is investigating the recruiting issue at Shiloh.]
At the end of his freshman year at North Atlanta High School, quarterback Wil Larimore transferred to Shiloh in Gwinnett County. A year has gone by, and the move was beneficial for Larimore, but there were challenges, too.
By Wil Larimore
I love football — the physicality, the philosophies and the fact that you are never guaranteed a win. Football depends on hard work, being smart and how you react. It builds a brotherhood that lasts the rest of your life, and football also gives you opportunities. There are many reasons why I took the opportunity to go to Shiloh.
One of the many important reasons was the relationship with my coach, Brian Montgomery. When he took the head coaching job at Shiloh, he asked several of us to transfer. Leaving my teammates wasn’t easy. You don’t ever want to feel like you are going against them, but you have to look out for yourself and your future. It was good that three of us left together because none of us wanted to be the only transfer. I wanted stability with my coach because I had already experienced a lot of change in football and my family life.
I was living with my mom when I started playing junior varsity football in seventh grade at one of the smallest high schools in Florida. I played against teams where the players were three to four years older. I got beat up a lot in games, but I was persistent.
I moved in with my dad in Buckhead when I was 14. At North Atlanta, we had to play at Grady High School. We didn’t have our own stadium. We didn’t even have a practice field. We practiced at an elementary school that had a field that wasn’t big enough for football. The weight room at North Atlanta had maybe four racks of weights, and we were all piled in there.
Shiloh offered a chance to play in the toughest region in the entire state. It has an 8,000-seat stadium with a working scoreboard and a better weight room than some colleges. It’s the program that [former Georgia player] David Pollack came from, and it’s been down for a few years, so I felt that I could be part of getting some positive momentum going.
We moved out of the 16th floor of a high-rise in Buckhead overlooking Atlanta. Today, I live a couple of miles from Shiloh in a house in a quiet neighborhood.
When I moved to Shiloh in May 2011 for spring football, it was tough because the teachers were teaching different things. But I got up to speed quickly. The football team accepted me, and we were a big family in a week. I got some nicknames, like “Wonder Bread” and “Great White Hope.”
Transferring was a good decision for me.
As told to Michelle Hiskey, for the AJC
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