Coach: Tremble's Leadership Is Obvious
Long before Matt Helmerich saw Tommy Tremble on the football field, the new head football coach at Johns Creek High School in Johns Creek, Ga., identified the 2018 tight end’s leadership qualities.
“I’ve only been here for two months,” Helmerich explains. “He’s been a phenomenal member of our football team. He was the first student-athlete I put on our Leadership Council for our team.
“Dealing with him on a daily basis, he’s been the hardest worker in the weight room. He carries himself great in the hallways, lunch room. He’s getting it done in the classroom. He’s been phenomenal for me.”
Tremble’s recruitment has exploded in the last couple months and he has dozens of offers from programs like Notre Dame, Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Miss, South Carolina, West Virginia, Vanderbilt along with Ivy League programs like Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton.
“Obviously, he’s blown up quite a bit,” Helmerich says. “When I got here, he had zero offers and now I think he has 25 or 26. He’s really blown up the last couple months.
“Part of that has to do with him growing physically. Now he’s up to 6-4, 225. He wasn’t quite that big last year. He had a great showing at the Nike Opening and ran a good time with a ridiculous vertical jump and did great in the one-on-ones. He’s a freaky athlete, so I’m looking forward to seeing him in our new offense that we’re installing.”
Tremble played some tight end and some outside linebacker last season, but Helmerich expects him to blossom as a featured part of Johns Creek’s new offensive attack.
“He’s got an extremely high ceiling,” his coach says. “I think he was just learning the position a little bit last year...Now that he’s found his niche so to speak as a tight end, he’s just going to blossom. You see some things on film you just can’t coach with body control and catching the ball and some open-field stuff.
“Once he gets in our system and we coach him up a little bit, I think he’s going to be phenomenal.”
Tremble will play opposite Zach Williams, who has more than a dozen offers of his own.
“We’re blessed with probably the best tight end duo in the United States,” Helmerich says. “We might split out Zach a little bit more and play Tommy a little bit more on the inside.”
Helmerich is grateful to walk into a program with Tremble and Williams as its leaders.
“There’s an old coaching saying, ‘When your best players are your hardest workers, you should have a pretty good team,’” he says. “That’s the case with us between him and Zach. Those guys are getting after it every day in the weight room. When your best players are your hardest workers and leaders, it makes it easier for the rest of the team to follow.”
It also helps that Tremble is so humble about all of the attention that has come his way.
“That’s one of the cool things to see, he gets so excited,” his coach says. “He’s been appreciative to each coach who has looked at him and taken the time to recruit him and reach out. He’s a very humble kid. It hasn’t gone to his head and I’ve seen it over the years where it could.”
Helmerich is from Indiana and says he and Tremble, whose father played at Georgia, did a kind of “happy dance” when the offer from the Irish came.
“His parents really push academics and make sure he stays on top of academics,” his coach says. “They had him touring a couple Ivy League schools on spring break. When you’re talking about the Notre Dames, the Dukes and Vanderbilts of the world, you’re talking about some of the better academic institutions in the nation.
“Obviously, he’s got ties to UGA with his dad going there and it being the homestate school, but he’s pretty open right now. Obviously, a good combination of academics and athletics is a good thing.”