Dominant Dragon
Versatile Gibson shines in athletics and academics
(Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series highlighting the finalists for NewsTimes Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The finalists will be honored and the winner announced at the News-Times ScholarAthlete Awards Banquet on May 31.)
Junction City’s Terrell Gibson is a man of many talents.
On the gridiron, he is Junction City’s tackling machine.
On the hardwood, Gibson helped fuel the Dragons’ run to the state semifinals.
In the weight room, he is a member of a squad that recently captured a second straight state championship.
But while Gibson’s athletic accomplishments are numerous, he also shines in the classroom, sporting a 3.80 grade-point average.
His drive for academic excellence has been guided by his mother, who didn’t go to college after graduating from high school.
“It’s my mama for sure,” Gibson said. “She started off with my sister in 2010 when she graduated and it carried on to me.”
Gibson, who will continue his football career at Arkansas State as a preferred walk-on, wants to major in kinesiology and become either a physical trainer or go into occupational therapy.
The reason for his career choice dates back to volunteering at the Special Olympics earlier this year in Magnolia.
“I worked with one girl who had cerebral palsy, but the way she talked to me, it made me want to work with people like that again, so I really looked into that field then,” Gibson said.
On the football field, Gibson spent much of his time wreaking havoc in opposing backfields. Off the field, Gibson’s boundless energy and easygoing nature have endeared him to teammates and staff at Junction City.
But kids hold a soft spot in Gibson’s heart, and that helped point him toward his career choice.
“Yes, and I really like to do fitness stuff, too,” Gibson said. “So I can have a way to either do that, and if I don’t want to do that, I can do something physical-wise and help other kids with training. We have a trainer at the school now, and I could do that with a kinesiology degree.”
Working in the community is
nothing new for Gibson.
In addition to athletics, Gibson is a member of five clubs, and seeing other people happy puts a smile on his face.
“I like seeing happy faces on everybody else’s face,” Gibson said. “When everybody else is happy, it makes me happy.
“With the men of character, we work a lot with the fifth and sixth-graders, and they really look up to us. It warms my heart to see that they look up to me.”
With his numerous commitments, finding time to do homework was difficult at times.
“Football isn’t very hard because you only play once a week, but when it gets to basketball season, it gets pretty hard,” Gibson said.
“I have to stay up a little bit later and study a little bit longer.”
With Junction City contending for state titles in several sports year in and year out, success is expected, and Gibson said that the Dragons’ upperclassmen have taken on the role of guiding the younger players.
“We talk to the younger kids to challenge them,” Gibson said.
“The young men that were above us, they challenged us with all the rings that they had, so we really tried to keep it going for coach (Steven) Jones.”
After David Carpenter retired at the conclusion of the 2016 season, Steven Jones took over and guided the Dragons to the 3A state finals.
For Gibson, Jones’ high-tempo offense and affinity to go for it on fourth down made things rather interesting for the defense at times.
“It was crazy because he was so energetic,” Gibson said.
“He really challenged us by going for it on fourth down. It was fun to do. It was my first time in that type of system. I would be coming off of offense, and sometimes I would be like, ‘Dang, he shouldn’t have went,’ but the only time I said that is when we wouldn’t get it. When we got it, I was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about coach Jones.’ That’s kind of how it was.”
But for all of the success the Dragons had last year, getting to that point with all of the offseason work during summer conditioning drills was tough.
“It really was,” Gibson said. “We did a lot of conditioning last year. You could tell that it hurt us a lot.
“When we were doing it, you could see the weaknesses, and we would say a lot of stuff that we didn’t mean, but we got through it, and we were glad that he did it because after the first couple of games, it was like, ‘Yeah, this can work.’ When he first came in, everybody was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We want to win, because that’s our system.
“When we got through, we were like, ‘Yeah, coach Jones did a great job.’ I know he’s going to continue to do a great job.”
With his days of leading Junction City’s defense now behind him, Gibson said he wasn’t sure how his career would be portrayed.
“I don’t even know, honestly,” Gibson said. “They won’t remember me on the basketball court, but with football, it’s different. I had people come up to me like I was in the NFL or something. I really take pride in that.”