Georgia Football
Feature Stories
Growing up tough: Terry Godwin was Faced with Difficult Life Choices Before Coming to Georgia The Red and Black By Layne Saliba November 30, 2017
ATHENS — There’s a house on Valley Street in LaGrange, Georgia. It’s where Terry Godwin spent his early years. And just near that short, dead-end street is a field where Godwin used to go to play all sorts of games, but mostly football, with the older kids in his neighborhood. It’s sort of where it all started for him. It didn’t have to be that way, though. It could have happened on an actual field with kids his age, but Godwin never really liked the altered rules of little league sports. He could hit a baseball to the outfield when he was young. He was just five years old, and his parents, Olivia and Terry Sr., signed him up to play T-ball since he’d grown up around the sport. His uncles, Aundra Trammell and Jerry Godwin, played baseball, so Godwin naturally wanted to get in on the action to follow in their footsteps. “He went to run the bases and they told him he only could go to one base,” Godwin’s mom said. “He said ‘I don’t want to play this anymore’ because he thought it was going to actually be like real baseball.” The same thing happened with football. Godwin only wanted to tackle. So when he was told he had to pull a flag from his opponent’s waist, he didn’t want to play that either. He simply had to wait until the rules caught up. Growing up on Valley Street, Godwin was always the tough kid. He had to be. He didn’t have any brothers. It was just him and his two older sisters, Keyatta and Terryuana, until his younger sister, Tyterria, came along. “I mean, he wanted motorcycles and we had given him all that,” Goodwin’s mother said. “And he was just rough with it.” Since then, Godwin’s life has been all about proving he’s tough and making tough decisions.
Lil’ T goes to Callaway
Growing up in LaGrange was fun for Godwin and his family. His mom and dad went to and graduated from LaGrange High School. That’s where his older sisters went too. He played for the Monarchs, a travel baseball team in LaGrange. The team was specifically started for him and his friends by Broderick Stargell, who was like Godwin’s second father. He saw something special in Godwin and his group of friends. “I just wanted to be a part of what they had going,” said Stargell, who still stays in touch with Godwin to this day. “So in order for me to keep my hands on them, I had to kind of dangle
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baseball out in front of them to kind of grab their attention.” Travel baseball isn’t cheap, though. But Stargell was so serious about keeping this group on the right track and making sure it had a bright future that he started a trucking company just to fund the baseball team. That trucking company, Allstar Transport, was around for about five years, which was just enough time to get that group of kids through travel baseball. “He would come by in his little Honda, away from his family, and pick Terry up every day while I was working or his father was working and take him to baseball practice,” Godwin’s mom said. “And Terry loved it.” All of that was good, but eventually, the Godwins needed a bigger home, something nicer to live in because their home in LaGrange just wasn’t working anymore. So, they found a house in Hogansville, Georgia, just a little over 10 miles from LaGrange. Also, just out of the LaGrange High School district. “I really didn’t want to leave my friends or anything like that and transfer schools and try to get to know people,” Godwin said. “Because, I mean, as a young kid, that’s kind of hard.” Hogansville is a much smaller town than LaGrange, and the transition was difficult for Godwin. He couldn’t just walk to his friends’ houses anymore or walk out his own front door and meet up with other kids to play football across the street. But the change was necessary. Their house in LaGrange was built in the 1920s. It was old and needed work. So after looking around for homes, the Godwins found one the right size in Hogansville for a good price. Even though Godwin struggled at first, he grew to like Hogansville and eventually Callaway High School, so much so that when his mother offered to move him back to LaGrange, he said no. “I made a brotherhood with some of the guys that were in middle school,” Godwin said “We went in high school together and, I mean, just being able to connect with people like that, it will take you a long way.” And it did take him a long way. The relationships carried him through three sports at Callaway. He played football, baseball and basketball, all of which he excelled at. But the two that were at the forefront were football and baseball. “He always brought a positive attitude on the field,” said Pete Wiggins, Godwin’s high school football coach. “At practice he was a leader, in good times and bad. He is a positive guy that works his butt off and that’s why he is where he is.” Godwin was being recruited by top football programs like Alabama and Auburn, on top of Georgia, while being recruited by Major League
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