The Real McGill

Player of year took teammates with him on championship run

William Blount Middle eighth-grader Parker McGill (No. 5) delivered a transformative season for the Governors. Game Photos by Mandy Street

By Stefan Cooper
Editor
Blount Press Row

Many of the friendships went back years, but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t be held accountable.

“We were all buddies,” Parker McGill, the 2016 Barley’s/Blount Press Row Middle School Player of the Year, said, “but everybody would show up (last spring) and be mean. Nobody was fooling around.”

William Blount Middle running back Parker McGill, the Barley’s/Blount Press Row Middle School Player of the Year, accounted for 21 Governor touchdowns during the 2016 season.

Last fall, that seriousness about the task at hand carried William Blount Middle all the way to the top.

In a thrilling season finale at William Blount High’s Mike White Field, the middle school Govs rallied twice in the last two minutes on McGill touchdown runs to stun Sevierville Middle, 21-19, in the East Tennessee Football Conference championship game.

The win capped a perfect 9-0 season for 3-year-old William Blount Middle, the team comprised of students from Carpenters and Union Grove middle. McGill’s heroics in the championship game were beyond impressive.