Tywon Christopher was in sixth grade, fresh out of the Thomasville YMCA pool, when he decided he was done with football.

It wasn't a slow unraveling. It was sudden and total; the kind of certainty only a sixth grader can summon with a straight face. He'd spent the day the way he spent every summer day that year -- by swimming, shooting hoops, and killing time before his older cousin, Jalen, came to haul him to practice. But as the afternoon wore down toward practice time, something in him just refused. He picked up the phone and called his mother.

"I don't feel like leaving today," he remembers deciding. "I'm going to just tell my mom I don't want to play football anymore."

He did.

"Mom, you don't have to tell Jalen to come pick me up," he told her. "I'm going to stop playing football."

Her answer came back before he'd finished the sentence, and it wasn't a negotiation.

"She said, 'You better not call my phone and tell me you want to stop playing football. You're going to play football,'" he recalls, laughing now at the memory. "'You’re too good to quit. You're going to keep playing football.'"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. 

And that was that.

He kept playing. He wouldn't understand for years that his mother had just made the single most important decision of his athletic life. Every tackle and trophy still to come traced back to a phone call she refused to let him finish.

"I always thank her for that," he says. "Had I stopped playing, I wouldn't be here today."

To leave the game of football as a talented athlete in Thomasville, Georgia, might be equivalent to Michael Jordan’s retirement to Chicagoland. Friday nights belong to the rivalry between Thomas County Central and Thomasville High, a game old enough to have its own nickname, “War of the Roses.” 

Football in Thomasville isn't a hobby so much as a language everyone is simply born speaking. Christopher started playing organized ball at 6, in the same YMCA as the boys he'd play with all the way through high school. 

"Everybody I knew, from the guys I was in Y-league with up until high school, we all knew each other from football," he says. "That brought the community together."

He was good enough, in fact, that by middle school he was the starting quarterback — the job every kid in a town like this is supposed to covet. Except one young Yellow Jacket.

"I always wanted to play defense. I could throw, and I liked it fine, but more than anything I wanted to be hitting somebody," he says. "The coaches wouldn't let me, though. I was the quarterback." 

The Flip of the Script

By the time Christopher matriculated to Thomas County Central High School, the program was no longer the power he'd grown up watching. Then a new coach, Justin Rogers, arrived and, in Christopher's words, "flipped the script." 

More important for him personally, Christopher met the new defensive coordinator.

"He said we got a lot of quarterbacks right now. We might put you in on defense," Christopher remembers.

Finally. He was home within his hometown.

"I didn't know what I was doing," he admits, laughing. "I was just happy to be out there, running around, playing defense, going to tackle people."

He wasn't just happy. He was good. By week three of his freshman year, he was starting at safety, and in his very first start recorded a pick-six. 

"After that, it was just like everything was going good," he said.

However, safety still felt one step removed from where he wanted to be. "My sophomore year, I liked tackling and hitting so much," he says, "I asked the coach could I play linebacker."

The coach said no, more or less.

Christopher was not the linebacker Owl fans recognize today. In 2021, he was maybe 170 pounds. They found middle-ground by moving Christopher to nickel.

In the hybrid linebacker-safety role, he had a foot in the door. Christopher took it, and kept pushing closer to the box, telling his coaches the same four words on repeat: I can do it.

His body eventually agreed. From 170 pounds as a freshman, he climbed to 185, then peaked at 197 as a senior, the weight arriving in step with his march toward the middle of the defense.

It all came together in 2023, his senior year, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in the GHSA 6A State Championship game. The Yellow Jackets prevailed to cap an undefeated season and Christopher was named the game's MVP after seven solo tackles, a TFL, and three pass breakups.

The Vision in the Journal

College football demanded a different body altogether. Playing linebacker in the box full-time meant lining up across from 300-pound linemen on every snap. He arrived at Kennesaw State around 210 pounds, climbed toward 220, and now has his sights set on 225 lbs.

But the bigger transformation might have been mental: a habit borrowed from his uncle, Nathaniel, known to everyone as Uncle Junebug. On his uncle's advice, Christopher bought a journal that became a compass. Every day, he writes down what's happening in his life and what he wants to happen next.

"I write my goals down, manifest them," he says. "I know when my mind is set on something, I'm going to do it."

In the middle of last season, KSU was on the precipice of history. The Owls were one win away from clinching bowl eligibility for the first time ever with a home victory against UTEP. Christopher was preparing for his first game as a starter and wrote his goals: 12-plus tackles, a forced fumble, an interception, a win.

He got three of the four. Twelve tackles. A forced fumble. The win and one thing he didn’t plan for – the Conference USA Defensive Player of the Week.

"I didn't get the pick, unfortunately," he says, then catches himself. "But the next week at New Mexico State - I did catch a pick. So I got that one back."

Ready When Called

The breakout didn't start with his name atop the depth chart. Christopher opened the season third string, learning behind veteran Garland Benyard, and admits it could have rattled him. It didn't, partly because of something his position coach, William Paruta, kept telling him: "It's a long season. We're going to need everybody. It doesn't matter what it looks like in the beginning, because you never know what could happen."

He found out how true that was in the season opener at Wake Forest. Benyard went down. So did another linebacker, Jaden Kelly. Christopher found himself in the game for a crucial fourth-quarter drive he hadn't planned on playing. "I knew right then I had to stay locked in the whole season," he says, "because you never know what's going to happen."

Mid-October at FIU, the moment came again - except this time - it was more serious. Benyard, a five-year starter, went down with a season-ending injury during the game. 

As the stakes of each week rose, so did Christopher. Come the Conference USA championship game against Jax State, the moment wasn’t too big. He'd been in this kind of pressure before. The state title at Mercedes-Benz Stadium had taught him how to keep his pulse down when the stakes climbed. "I've been here before," he says of playing in big college games now. "I know what it is to play in the championship game. So I just stay level-headed and play my game."

There was no surprise this time. Christopher had been preparing as if he were the starter for weeks, studying film, learning the game plan alongside the very player whose job he'd eventually replace. The two had roomed together during fall camp, and Benyard, rather than treating him like a threat, had become his mentor. "Anytime I would need some help with something, I would go to him and ask him," Christopher says. "He would always help me out."

When Benyard went down, his message to the freshman taking his spot was short. "He was just like, 'You know you’re ready. Go out there and do what you do.'"

He did. Seven tackles against FIU, including a fourth-down stop in Owl territory that swung momentum. The next week, in his first career start, came the 12-tackle, forced-fumble performance against UTEP with the exact stat line he'd already written into his journal.

As the stakes of each week rose, so did Christopher. Come the Conference USA championship game against Jax State, the moment wasn’t too big. He'd been in this kind of pressure before. The state title at Mercedes-Benz Stadium had taught him how to keep his pulse down when the stakes climbed. "I've been here before," he says of playing in big college games now. "I know what it is to play in the championship game. So I just stay level-headed and play my game."

His line? Six solo tackles, a quarterback hit, and another ring.

He hasn't written down his goals for next season yet. The journal is waiting; he's waiting for fall camp, for the right moment to put pen to page.

"I have a vision," he said, something quieter and more deliberate creeping into his voice. "But I haven't really wrote it down yet. I'm going to soon, though."

The vision itself, at least, he can already say out loud: "To win a championship. Make everybody better, win a championship."

You can call mom and tell her that.

The Champions Fund
The Champions Fund is a newly created, 100% tax deductible, philanthropic opportunity to contribute strategic revenue to Kennesaw State Athletics, with the goal of strengthening our ability to recruit and retain top-tier talent in this new era of collegiate athletics. Contributions to the Champions Fund will help aid in funding student-athlete recruitment and retention, as well as helping the Owls provide competitive excellence through investments in coaching, travel and facilities. The fund will also give an elevated student-athlete experience, including enhanced academic, nutrition, wellness and leadership programs. Donate to the Champions Fund here and help us support our Kennesaw State Owls.