DALTON, Ga. — Four years ago, two standout athletes from rival high schools arrived at college. They didn’t know what their futures held, but they also didn’t know their destinies were about to merge between the hedges in Athens at the University of Georgia.

Northwest Whitfield High graduate Silas Ledford and Dalton alumnus BJ Rowland competed against each other on the football field for years. Ledford as a quarterback, Rowland as a center. Both had the chance to play football at small colleges, but instead decided to attend UGA. Looking for a way to still be involved with football, each connected with the right people to pursue positions as student managers for the Bulldogs’ football program. The result was four years of irreplaceable memories, lots of hard work and a friendship.

Though the bond may have seemed unlikely when the pair graduated from high school, they quickly overlooked old disputes and eventually became roommates and best of friends.

“I was a team captain at Dalton and he was a team captain at Northwest, and that’s what you’re taught is that Dalton is supposed to hate Northwest,” Rowland said. “When we took these jobs working together, we knew our past but I just said let’s start fresh and it turned out to be a great friendship. We might still jaw on each other a little bit, but it really taught me to have an open mind, because you never know who you might meet that could become your best friend. We ended up being fraternity brothers and roommates for three years, too.”

Everything they hoped for (and then some)

Ledford and Rowland got connected to the Georgia football support staff through connections to previous managers, Dalton graduate William Sanchez and Northwest alum Drew Allen. After interviewing during the spring of Ledford and Rowland’s senior years in high school, they each accepted paid positions as student managers for the following fall. Rowland was assigned to work with the defensive line, while Ledford worked with the quarterbacks.

Some of their duties included setting up the practice equipment, managing the equipment needed when the team traveled and assisting their position coaches on the sidelines during games by providing anything the players needed.

The job required long hours spent loading and unloading equipment, sometimes in the middle of the night after a long road trip. And while the players and the coaches traveled to road games on chartered planes in comfort, the managers had to stay with the equipment truck, resulting in long road trips on charter buses.

But it wasn’t just the road trips that required the time commitment. Each day the managers were expected to have everything prepared for practice. They arrived two or three hours before and stayed two to three hours after. That, Rowland says, is the part of the job most don’t think about prior to accepting.

“The time commitment is every day,” Rowland said. “It’s a blessing in disguise because it teaches you time management. But it’s every day, working about eight hours, while also taking a full schedule and trying to be a college student and have a social life. For the away games you have to drive with the equipment truck and basically be the team’s moving guys. All of the helmets, or trunks full of the coaches’ gear, we were in charge of getting it to the places it needed to be. It definitely teaches you how to be a better worker.”

It’s not the life most dream about when they think about being a member of the support staff for the football program at UGA. It’s the vision of being on the sidelines at Sanford Stadium  with the team in front of more than 90,000 screaming fans that draws people in. And Ledford admits gameday is one of the job’s highlights.

“Everyone says game days are the best part and they aren’t lying,” Ledford said. “It makes up for all the work you do. You know it’s going to happen when you take the job, but you still get butterflies and you’re not even playing. I am just out there shuffling footballs to the quarterbacks, but it feels like 90,000 people are watching you. It makes you feel special and that you’re a part of something that a lot of people care about. It’s amazing to be part of something that is nationally known. And you always get that feeling again every game. Right around kickoff, that’s my favorite part of every game, the 30 minutes right up to kickoff.”

Adjusting expectations 

Another aspect of the job that required some flexibility was working with different personalities. For instance, Ledford worked with four different starting quarterbacks. He began with Aaron Murray (who went on to play in the NFL), then moved on to fifth-year starter Hutson Mason. In 2015, University of Virginia transfer Grayson Lambert won the starting job, and lastly Ledford worked with true freshman Jacob Eason in his fourth year.

Each player had a different way of doing things, which required Ledford to alter how he did his job. But the opportunity to work with the starting quarterbacks of the Georgia Bulldogs is an experience he will treasure.

“When I tell people I get to work with the quarterbacks, they assume they are rude or a bunch of prima donnas,” Ledford said. “Aaron Murray was a fifth-year senior my freshman year and he couldn’t be a nicer guy. Quarterbacks do require specific attention, like rosin bags to keep their hands dry and I always had to have some extra Hot Hands in my pockets to give them to keep their hands warm.

“Whenever the starter got picked, I would sit down with them and figure out what they liked, what they needed from me. Mason was a fifth-year starter, too, so he knew how he liked to do things, but Lambert was a transfer so he had to get used to us and we had to get used to him. Then with Eason being a freshman, I actually gave him some input and told him how Murray used to do things. I remember the first away game the last thing I said to him was to be loud out there. Some things like that the coaches may not even think about to say, but you pick up from working with the players along the way.”

Both managers experienced the ultimate transition between the 2015 and 2016 seasons as Kirby Smart was hired to replace Mark Richt. While acknowledging that both coaches were very talented and equally driven to win, Rowland said everything changed from one staff to the next, especially the tempo and intensity of practices.

“Both were equally great staffs, in 14 years under coach Richt Georgia had a lot of great teams,” Rowland said. “Coach Richt had a great relationship with his players and he gave a lot of responsibility to his assistant coaches. He built an organization that knew what he wanted and was in sync on and off the field. Now, with coach Smart, he came in with the mindset of turning the program around and he really changed the coaching style. Where coach Richt might have overlooked a drill, with coach Smart it doesn’t matter what position it is, if you dropped a ball or miss an assignment or move 6 inches in the wrong direction he is going to be in your face and correcting you himself.”

Smart’s style also put more pressure on the managers.

“With coach Smart it definitely felt like there was more pressure,” Ledford said. “Whether it was because of his first year and wanting to make changes or because he learned from (Alabama head coach) Nick Saban, it was intense. We would run 25-30 extra plays every practice and that puts pressure on us to set up the drills before the players get there and he wanted it done quick. (Smart) was trying to create a game atmosphere in practice and it definitely kept us on our toes.”

Taking the good with the bad 

Over the past four years, these two friends from Whitfield County were a part of many big games. Georgia posted a record of 36-16 during their tenure, but never made it to the SEC Championship game. Rowland recalled one of his favorite memories being a trip to Missouri in 2014. Star running back Todd Gurley had just been suspended by the NCAA for accepting money in return for autographed memorabilia. Confidence among the Georgia fans and national pundits was low. The Bulldogs responded with a 34-0 victory led by a sensational performance by then-freshman Nick Chubb.

Ledford cited one of his favorite memories as the 2016 win over North Carolina in the Georgia Dome in the Chick-fil-a Kickoff Classic. Since Georgia never won an SEC East division title during his career, that was the only game the Bulldogs played in the Georgia Dome. The opportunity to play in the state’s iconic stadium before it is demolished later this year was a special memory, made better by Georgia’s 33-24 comeback win.

Unfortunately, they were also with the team for some tough losses. Each recalled losing to Georgia Tech at home in 2014 and 2016, Auburn’s game-winning touchdown on a tipped pass and the defeat to Tennessee on a last second hail Mary last year as some of the lowest moments. Even though they weren’t on the field, Rowland said each player, coach, manager or trainer felt the losses. 

“Everyone works so hard during the week, so the heartbreaking losses affect you,” Rowland said. “Whether it’s the hail Mary against Tennessee or the tipped pass against Auburn, games like that where you think the team should have won, it’s disappointing. And sometimes those things can domino into each other. As managers, we just tried to stay focused and do the best we could to keep working and getting the players what they needed. Luckily, we got to go to some pretty good bowl games and had some really good years while we were there.”

Being a part of the big wins, feeling the pain of tough losses, building relationships with some of the best athletes in the world, those are some of the perks and drawbacks to being a student manager. But Rowland emphasized the opportunity to be part of something so big, so beloved by so many, and to learn from some of the most successful people as the biggest benefits. Those are the things which both will take away as they know look to begin their careers.

“We were given the opportunity to work with an organization that allowed us to be part of one of the biggest businesses in the nation,” Rowland said. “It’s a great sport and it’s fun to be part of the team, but it’s also an opportunity to work under some tremendously successful people. That’s a pretty cool experience. We worked hard throughout the week to get things prepared. We had to learn to adapt to different things. Hopefully we laid the ground work for the next group and the people that come after us leads to success for those guys.”

Rowland now works in sales for The Andersen Company after graduating from UGA in May with a degree in marketing. Ledford has one final semester to complete his degree in Agribusiness, with a focus in turf management. He currently does not plan to return as a student manager in 2017.