There's a field back in Pearson, Georgia where kids in grade school play football. You'll never know most of their names, but sometimes, there are exceptions.
Herman Hill knew he was raising (and coaching) an exception.
An opposing coach from a team in Lakeland, Georgia--about 20 miles south of Pearson--had heard the stories of this fast kid on Hill's team who everybody wanted to play with. On the field before the game, the coach warned Hill that he had a player on his roster who was the fastest he'd ever seen.
Herman chuckled.
"Your son's fast," he told the coach. "But he ain't no Tyreek."
Herman pulled his grandson Tyreek Hill aside before kickoff and told him he'd be getting the ball on a sweep to the left in one of the game's first plays.
Sure enough, Tyreek got the ball on one of the game's first plays and ran left. Lakeland's so-called speedster tried to cut him off at the sideline for a tackle. Tyreek ran past him and scored.
"I told you," Herman yelled across the sideline.
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On the first play of Tyreek Hill's career at Oklahoma State, he was going to get the ball. He raised his left arm to signal he was ready, but his coach, Mike Gundy knew he was ready months before he made his national television debut.
Gundy raised eyebrows when, a little more than a month earlier, he explicitly stated his desire to give a player who'd never played major college football 15-20 touches a game.
After that first touch, Hill had many wondering why Gundy didn't want him to touch it more.
He caught the ball just to the left of the base of the orange "T" and began his career. At the 15-yard line, he made his first defender dive at air. It knocked him off balance, and he stepped out four yards later before lunging beyond the 25-yard line.
It was a modest beginning that showed a brief flash of something special.
Hill touched the ball 21 more times that night, racking up 377 all-purpose yards and helping the Cowboys impress in a six-point loss to the nation's No. 1 team and defending national champion, Florida State. By the end of the night, the Seminoles were refusing to kick him the ball.
Those 22 touches helped rewrite expectations for Oklahoma State in 2014. In the stands and back home in Georgia, the people who helped Hill get there to do it watched and smiled. Their first "Wow" moment had come long before Hill's big debut at AT&T Stadium.
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Anesha Hill (now Sanchez) and Derrick Shaw were still in high school when their son Tyreek was born. Derrick was a talented basketball player and a legendary high jumper in their small town of Pearson, Georgia. Anesha played basketball and softball.
Herman and Virginia Hill took care of Tyreek from the day he came home from the hospital.
"We felt like, what (Anesha) couldn't do, we would do, to give him what he needed," said Tyreek's grandmother, Virginia Hill.
Anesha still lived with Herman and Virginia, but they took on the responsibility of raising their grandson with some help from Tyreek's great grandmother.
"We were a happy family," Virginia said. "We'd spoil him, he was everybody's baby."
Anesha Sanchez moved to Norman, Oklahoma around five years ago and Shaw lives in Atlanta. FOX Sports Southwest reached both by telephone this week. After initially agreeing to an interview at a later time, neither responded to repeated calls and messages.
Tyreek Hill is not allowed to speak with the media, per Gundy's long-standing team rule against first-year players doing interviews.
"He's got a good relationship with his mom and his dad. He always knew who they were," Virginia Hill said. "We didn't try to hide the fact we were his grandparents. He knew who they were."
Tyreek never seemed to want to do anything but play sports from the time he could walk. His grandparents put a basketball goal in the driveway when he was little. If that wasn't getting work, Tyreek was playing football with kids from the neighborhood, outrunning just about everybody.
"Some kids want to ride bicycles or play a game or something," Herman Hill said. "He just wanted to shoot the basketball or throw a football."
Tyreek's speed as a grade schooler earned him a reputation as one of the town's best talents, but when Tyreek was a freshman, Herman and Virginia moved the family to Coffee County to enroll him in a bigger school district in nearby Douglas, Georgia before he began playing high school football.
With a new school and a new coach in Ken Eldridge, Tyreek held tight to the shy, quiet side of his personality. He made a new friend in Will Gardner, who blossomed into a 6-foot-5, 210-pound, three-star quarterback and now starts for Louisville.
"They fed off each other," Eldridge said. "That's what he was looking for--that competition."
He got it from Gardner especially, but his new team provided it, too. When a teammate challenged a 175-pound Hill to power clean 315 pounds, Hill gladly obliged during a max-out day. After completing his teammate's challenge and setting a new personal best in the lift, sprinted out the door to do a celebratory lap around the field house while screaming in celebration.
"Course, he was back in about five seconds," Eldridge said.
The quiet, reserved Tyreek melted away as he gelled with his teammates at Coffee.
"He has to develop a trust in you," Eldridge said. "He got to where he'd open up. That smile, he'd light up a room with it."
Hill joined the track team his sophomore year. As a junior, he'd finished second in the 100 meters in a photo finish.
"That whole summer, every chance he'd get, he'd run," Herman Hill said. "He kept saying, 'Nobody's going to beat me again.' And he was right."
As a senior, Hill won state titles in the 100 meters, 200 meters and long jump.
On the football field that year, Gardner tore his ACL in the team's first game and missed the rest of the season.
"He meant more to us then than any other time," Eldridge said. "When Will went down, he stepped up and became a leader vocally and with his ability. He had to do a lot."
When college selection time came around, though, Hill had to face consequences for some bad semesters early in his high school academic career. He'd struggled, but Eldridge challenged him to take the same competitive approach he had on the field to the classroom. He had waited too long to make up for lost time and earn admission to the schools that had expressed interest in him out of high school.
He eventually signed with Garden City Community College and left Georgia for a new home 1,300 miles away in Kansas.
"They all would like to go D1, but it was a good thing for him," Eldridge said. "He went and made the most of it, did what he had to do."
Garden City head coach Matt Miller did not return multiple calls placed to his office and cell phone.
"I think it made him more responsible," Virginia Hill said of Tyreek leaving home. "It made him into a strong young man. We wanted him to make his own way."
His speed drew attention quickly, and jumped off video when Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy was reviewing another prospect's game tape.
"We looked into it and found out as much about him as we could. We found out he wanted to play in a no-huddle offense and have the ability to play multiple positions," Gundy said.
The Cowboys seemed like a perfect fit.
Hill also made it clear he wanted to run track. The Cowboys got an assist from sprints coach Diego Flaquer, whose legal recruiting window was different than the football coaching staff's.
A year after Gundy saw that first glimpse on video, Hill was on campus and officially a Cowboy, having picked Oklahoma State over a number of college football bluebloods like USC, Texas, Florida State and Alabama.
"When I first started practicing with him, my angles immediately changed," linebacker Ryan Simmons said. "I had to make sure I take the proper the angle so I don't get embarrassed."
Gundy knew Hill was fast, but seeing it in action against his defense garnered his speed a new respect. Every day, it seemed, Hill would find a crease in the defensive line, fit through it, make a defender miss at the second level and run away from the Cowboys secondary. Sometimes, those runs would happen without a defender even getting a chance to put a hand on Hill.
Gundy's out-of-character offseason hype festival for Hill earned the Cowboy preseason Big 12 Newcomer of the Year honors, further ramping up expectations for his new, versatile offensive weapon.
"You know me, I don't talk about guys until they've proven themselves. He's performed in practice," Gundy said. "In the preseason, people kept asking me about him, and I kept saying, there will be a time in the season when he gets out and starts running and everybody will say, 'Wow.' And it happened three or four times in the first game."
For Gundy, it happens every day. For now, Gundy still sees the quiet, reserved side of Hill.
"He's just like Kendall Hunter," Gundy said. "Around the facility, he never says a word. It's just, 'Yes sir, no sir."
Teammates get to see a different side, especially his roommate and NBA2K rival, Cowboys defensive lineman Sam Wren. Receiver Jhajuan Seales and defensive lineman Eric Davis also share an apartment with Hill. He met Wren, a juco transfer from last year's recruiting class, on one of his first days on campus.
"I didn't know that much about him, but he was a pretty small guy, so I knew he had to be fast," Wren said. "I just didn't know he could be that fast."
Wren learned about Hill's background at junior college during their first conversation, and before long, NBA2K smack talk kicked in. That's preceded a handful of battles as a favorite pastime of the household.
Hill loves to play with the Lakers, especially Kobe Bryant. For a player Eldridge described as the most competitive he's ever coached, that shouldn't be a surprise.
Those battles in the living room over the summer carried over the the practice field in preseason camp. Gundy likes to say Hill makes him say 'Wow' every day. Wren and Simmons agree.
"He's like Sonic (The Hedgehog) out there," Wren said. "One cut and go. He has tremendous footwork."
For Hill, it always comes back to that 'Wow' moment. He produced plenty in Oklahoma State's first two games. More are coming.
