Beating the odds: Blytheville star lineman signs with Coffeyville

What shows true character is how a person reacts after a bad situation, are they going to continue to go down that road or are they going to make a change in their life?

Blytheville Chickasaw senior defensive lineman Gerome Spiller was forced to sit out his junior year due to off the field troubles.

As a 16-year-old, he had been accused of being part of the slaying of Richard Wilkins, Jr. in Williams Park in 2017. Charges were ultimately nole prossed in the case, after witnesses were “no longer cooperating law enforcement or the prosecurtor’s office,” according to the court order.

Though Spiller wasn’t allowed to play football, according to Chickasaws head coach Ben Fisher, he was still at games and practice cheering the Chicks on and coaching them. Wednesday, Spiller signed his national letter of intent to play football for Coffeyville Community College in Coffeyville, Kansas.

“What really drove me there is my siblings. I’ve been through a lot, so I had to get right for myself and so I took the easy way out and that’s football. That is what I am good at,” Spiller explained. “They got a nice facility over there. They got a good sports deal and then they gave me a full ride and I wanted to start my first year and I’m going to get to play and that’s what I wanted.”

Spiller credits the Chickasaws coaching staff and Fisher’s wife, Courtney, for keeping him out of trouble since his junior year.

“They taught me a lot,” Spiller said. “They taught me how to respect myself in a lot of different ways. I got in trouble. So, they kept me out of the way. I thank his wife [Courtney Fisher] for being here for me and him too and the rest of the coaching staff.”

Fisher also addressed the off the field troubles and said the way he handled the situation shows what type of person Spiller is.

“He hit on it. He knew he messed up,” Fisher said. “The thing that I liked is the year that he had to sit out he was still coming to practice. He was still coming to games. Even though he didn’t get to dress out his junior year, he was still apart of the team and kept the sidelines going. He kept everybody’s spirit up. He was helping coach the younger guys. That’s when I knew he was something special. Everybody knew he could play football, but doing that kind of thing… Well, it would have been easy for him to say, ‘ I know I’m in trouble, they’re not going to let me play football and I’m just going to do whatever I want to.’ But he didn’t. That says a lot about the type of young man that he is.”

Coffeyville is one of the top junior college in the nation and Fisher believes that they will help Spiller reach the next level.

“Coffeyville, I think what he was trying to say is it is one of the top junior colleges as far as getting kids to Division I or FCS schools or FBS schools,” said Fisher. “So, that’s the big thing. I firmly believe he is a Division I talent and they’ll get him even better and get him where he needs to be. It’s a little bit different of an environment at Coffeyville than it is here and I think that will help him just do even better than he would somewhere else.”

Spiller has been selected to play in the All-Star football game in June in Conway and was also named to the All-Courier team, 5A-East Defensive Player of the Year, All-State and All-Conference. Fisher said that Coffeyville is getting a good kid that works hard.

Fisher said, “They’re getting a good kid that works hard. He is going to try hard and do his best. He’s going to come to work everyday and do what he has to do to play. To me, they are probably getting one of the top, well, I haven’t seen everyone in the state play, but I’d put Gerome in the top 5 defensive, not linemen but just defensive players in the state of Arkansas. He is as quick and as fast as most of the running backs and the quarterbacks that we faced this year, but the difference is he is 290, almost 300 pounds and those guys aren’t.

Fisher continued, “The one game that we didn’t have him you could tell made a huge difference in the ball game. So he is a difference maker, a playmaker and a game-changer. I think he also hit on it, they lost all of their defensive linemen at Coffeyville and they had Gerome as number one on the board and so they wanted him, they got who they want and I couldn’t be more happy for him.”