How a football star in UK’s backyard ended up signing with the Tennessee Volunteers
That a Kentucky linebacker and the Tennessee Volunteers would someday find each other, in hindsight, seems predestined.
The first vivid memory that Great Crossing High School star Kalib Perry and his parents, Labreece and Michelle, have of him on the football field occurred in Knoxville. He played for a local travel team in Georgetown — the Cowboys — that won a tournament as part of the “Battle in Rocky Top,” which bills itself as “the premier postseason youth football tournament in all of America.” He was a lineman at that point in his budding career.
“When he was 2 he was the size of a 5-year-old, so by the time he was 5, he was huge,” Michelle Perry said. “Football’s always been, hands down, his favorite thing.”
His lifelong love for the sport — and a 6-foot-4 frame with a 78-inch wingspan — manifested in more than a dozen scholarship offers from FBS programs. Then-Cincinnati assistant Marcus Freeman, recently named the head coach at Notre Dame, was the first to extend an offer to Perry.
The three-star recruit ultimately chose to take I-75 southward. When he signs with Tennessee on Wednesday, Perry will become the first in-state standout to join the Volunteers’ program as a scholarship player since Channing Fugate in 2010.
On his way there he’ll pass the University of Kentucky, which also recruited him. He and his family — Michelle is a registered nurse at UK — have gotten used to hearing “How could you?” from friends, fans and co-workers in the time since he committed in July. He struck up relationships with UT linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary and others on staff that were unrivaled by the nearest contenders for his commitment — Cincinnati, Purdue and the Wildcats. Going to a school with a strong engineering program was important — Purdue topped the list in that regard — but he also wanted to play in the Southeastern Conference. Tennessee checked that box and outranks Kentucky as an engineering destination, according to U.S. News and World Report. The decision wasn’t that hard, he said.
“I just thought they are going to set me up either way, if I have a chance to go pro or come out with a great engineering degree and become the best engineer that I can,” said Kalib, a straight-A student with a 4.3 GPA going into his final semester at Great Crossing. “ ... I just can’t wait to be there and start playing my part.”
Improvement
Great Crossing opened in the 2019-20 season, Kalib’s sophomore season. Thanks to an open-enrollment policy, he had the opportunity to continue attending Scott County — a longtime juggernaut in the state that, until 2019, was the only high school in Georgetown — or go to Great Crossing, the school for which he was technically districted. He chose the fledgling program.
The Warhawks in three seasons of play have not won a playoff game — a 21-19 heartbreaker to their rival Cardinals in the first round of this year’s Class 5A postseason was their closest breakthrough yet — but have improved their win-loss record every year. This year’s 8-3 finish was their first winning campaign; Kalib led Great Crossing with 85 tackles, 9.5 for a loss.
“He’s done everything plus more,” Warhawks head coach Ricky Bowling said. “He’s a Division I talent that’s going to be successful at whatever position you put him at.”
Perry doesn’t plan on enrolling early — he wants to experience his final semester of high school, which will include a final go-round with the Warhawks’ track-and-field team — but intends to spend as much time as possible in the weight room between now and when he gets on campus in the summer. He’s up to 215 pounds, 30 more than when he committed.
“Having to hit a 230-pound running back from some of these schools is going to take a toll,” he said with a laugh. “I gotta be ready.”
Some of the players he’ll tackle in the coming years will be some of the same one’s he’s tackled over the last three seasons at Great Crossing. UK last year signed receiver Dekel Crowdus out of Frederick Douglass in Lexington and is expected to sign another Douglass receiver, Dane Key, on Wednesday. The in-state recruiting class boasts nearly 20 players committed to FBS schools, four of them to UK.
Perry is the only other one who will play in the SEC out of high school. It might have been his destiny.
“I think when this whole deal first started he really wanted to go to Kentucky,” Bowling said. “But you know how it is. These kids get out of their hometowns and they see and experience these other campuses and it just feels good to get away.”
In Perry’s case, away to where it all started in his memory: good ol’ Rocky Top.
“Being in Neyland Stadium with 100,000 people or close to it,” Kalib said. “That’s kind of unreal to think about.”
