Packers video coordinator Darius Townsend, center, with fiancee Jara Baker, left, and son Jace.

MOULTRIE – When Darius Townsend was a sixth-grader at Willie J. Williams Middle School, he approached Colquitt County head football coach Tim Cokely about becoming one of the team’s ball boys.

Cokely and assistant coach Bill Ragans suggested instead that Townsend film practices and a career behind the video camera began.

“They told me that if I was good enough, when I got older, I could get a scholarship,” he said.

For Townsend, Colquitt County’s 2023 season is his first as the team’s video coordinator, but he has been a familiar presence for many years at Packer football games and practices.

He became adept with the Hudl Sideline video program while working on coach Rush Propst’s staff and still says one of his professional highlights was operating the camera on the Packers state championship victory over Archer in 2014 in the Georgia Dome.

Packers coach Sean Calhoun remembers Townsend from that 2014 season and when he had an opportunity to get the young man back in the Packer fold, he did so about halfway through the 2022 season.

Townsend now has an office just down the hall from Calhoun’s and three students working for him.

“We knew each other from when I worked here the first time and we got along well,” Calhoun said.

“He’s a hard-working guy and really cares about his final product. You always want to have young guys who care.”

And, of course, he’s a 2010 Colquitt County High graduate: a Packer.

“He bleeds black-and-gold,” Calhoun said. “He knows how important his job is. Sometimes those behind-the-scene guys don’t get enough credit. But he’s done a great job and it’s good to have him back.”

Townsend took the advice given to him by Cokely and Ragans and continued to learn and perfect his craft.

Not long after Rush Propst took over the Packers program, Townsend was shooting on the sidelines and did some Friday night work for Ron Hunter and his Packer Report.

From 2011-2014, he was responsible for shooting Packers football practices and uploading it for the coaches.

In 2013, he learned the Echo 316 program that allowed the coaching staff to have access to instant replays on the sidelines.

“We were the first team in the South to have it,” he said.

Colquitt County got the Hudl Sideline program the next year and he mastered it, too.

Hudl Sideline allows the video to be uploaded to devices, such an iPads, on the sidelines.

“It gave us the advantage of allowing coaches to make adjustments on the sidelines and at halftime,” Townsend said.

Fans at The Hawg Pen might remember Townsend setting up the camera high above Tom White Field in the north end zone and coaches using the camera’s product to instruct players in front of computer screens on the sideline.

One of Townsend’s career highlights, he said, was getting the video of the 2014 state championship game and even has a photo on the wall of his office of him working that day.

After the 2014 season, he had offers from three colleges to join their video programs: Houston, West Alabama and Kennesaw State.

He decided to stay in the state and spent two seasons taking classes and working as an assistant to the Owls football video coordinator.

He also went to Ellijay in 2015 to install Hudl Sideline for new Gilmer High head coach Zach Grage.

The next year, he made the trip to Gray to install the program for Jones County head coach Justin Rogers, who, three years later, took over the Colquitt County program.

In 2017, he left Kennesaw State to become the video coordinator and assistant recruiting coordinator at Lassiter High School.

The next year, he took a similar job at Centennial High School.

But in early 2019, Townsend’s brother Kemetrius Daniels died while in his middle 30s.

“When he passed away, football just didn’t seem as important to me,” Townsend said. “He had always been my biggest supporter.”

Away from the practice fields and Friday night lights, Townsend worked in tech support for Comcast, was a dock coordinator for Coca-Cola and was working for Procter and Gamble last year when he learned Calhoun was returning to Moultrie to become the Colquitt County’s head coach.

Townsend had been at the Packers game against Lee County when a coach suggested he needed to look into rejoining the football program at Colquitt County.

By the time the Packers played Cedar Grove two weeks later, he was back in the fold, recording games and practices.

This year, with Colquitt County audio/visual instructor and video coordinator Greg Hall operating the new video scoreboard at the stadium, Townsend’s experience was needed even more.

He has taken a job at Stringfellow Elementary as a paraprofessional and heads to football practice not long after the final bell rings.

He is at the football field getting practice coverage and then uploading it for the coaches and overseeing the work of student assistants Jocelyn Clay, Messiah Bender and Kamiya Moore.

He usually doesn’t head for home until 8 p.m.

But being around the Packers players and coaches is where he wants to be.

“This is a big deal to me,” he said. “It’s always been my goal to be the video coordinator at Colquitt County.”

But he has other goals as well.

Townsend is involved with Brian Knighton, Xzavier Ward and R.J. Taylor in Colquitt County’s Leadership Legends program, which is aimed at helping young African American males to become productive members of the community.

There are currently 14 students involved in the program.

“We are trying to help them know that our Zip Code does not define us,” he said.

Townsend also mentors a group of 16 fourth- and fifth-graders at Stringfellow called the Bee Kings.

“We are trying to give them some life skills so that they can act as men in our society,” he said.

Townsend’s decision to become more active in the community was a promise he made to his brother Kametrius.

“I told him that when I came back to Moultrie I would try to make an impact,” he said. “That’s my goal: to make a difference.”

Townsend, the “baby of the family” remains close to his mother Deandrea Townsend and to his 13-year-old son Jace, who plays football at Montford Middle School in Tallahassee.

And he also finds time for fiancee Jara Baker, who is an academic advisor in the biology department at Florida State University.

In fact, Jara and Jace made the drizzly trek last Friday to Tifton, where Darius was manning the video camera that helped record the Packers 40-2 victory over Tift County.