Former Georgia High School Teammates Making Things Happen in Swamp for Gators
Receiver Bailey Stockton caught his first touchdown for the Florida Gators from a familiar face from his childhood.
The touchdown came with 6:28 left in the first quarter Saturday. Florida quarterback Aaron Philo ran a play-action fake and found Stockton crossing in front of him for the 12-yard score to extend Florida’s lead against Florida Atlantic to 14-0 en route to the 66-21 win.
While both suited up for Georgia Tech the previous two seasons, the pair never found the end zone, but their history extends beyond the college gridiron.
The Saturday touchdown was the first Philo threw to Stockton since high school, where Stockton was a senior and Philo was a junior at Prince Avenue Christian, about 58.8 miles away from where the pair would play at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
The two met in the sixth grade. In their final year together in high school, Stockton caught 83 passes for 1,425 yards and 23 touchdowns. He was rated as a three-star prospect by 247Sports, committing to Georgia Tech in early 2023.
Stockton saw limited action in his first year with the Yellow Jackets, appearing in two games without recording a stat.
Philo soon followed Stockton, committing to Georgia Tech after a senior season in which he broke the Georgia high school career passing yards record at 13,922, a mark previously held by Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence at 13,902.
Philo appeared in five games in his freshman year, throwing for 565 yards and a touchdown.
One of those games was against North Carolina State, where Philo and Stockton connected for the first time since high school on a 5-yard completion.
After that year, they both played one more season at Georgia Tech, in which Philo and Stockton’s connection to offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner proved stronger than their 58.8-mile ties to Georgia Tech.
Once Faulkner accepted the Florida job last December, Philo and Stockton soon followed, both committing to the Gators within a day of each other in January.
Saturday’s TD was a full-circle moment, stretching from Bogart, Georgia, to scoring in front of a crowd of more than 90,000 at The Swamp.
“Coming off the field, he [Philo] was like, ‘We came a long way from Bogart,’” Stockton said.
Category: College Football, Feature Sports News, Football, Gators Football, University of Florida
