Taye Gatewood fell in love with football the first time he put on a pair of shoulder pads. He wasn’t yet 6 years old.

“I was probably 6, or maybe even in kindergarten,” he said. “I just fell in love with the game. When I was 4 or 5 we moved up here from Conway. It was a whole new beginning. My dad (Roy) had to get a new job, and my mom (Tesa) had to get a new job. It just took off from there.”

Things would progress, too, except for the times Gatewood’s Evans Boys Club football teams met up with those stacked teams from Stephens.

Or was it Jeffries?

“The most stacked teams were those guys from Stephens and Jeffries,” Gatewood said. “They had guys like Tyrese (Solomon), Deedee (Smith), Jaylin (Coleman), Jordyn (Jackson), Darin (Davenport); they were already together and I was over at Evans.”

“He’s been around it, it’s his third year in the system, so he’s kind of like a coach out there on the field,” Southside quarterbacks coach Justin Key said. “The thing about Taye is he’s a great kid, and he’s a quiet kid, but he has taken on more of a leadership role this year to coach the other kids up.”

“I love their vibe; they give out great feedback, especially when we’re doing good — they’ll let you know we’re doing it right,” Gatewood said of the Mavericks’ coaching staff. “They keep pushing me to be the best person I can be, on and off the field. They’ve given me life lesson and told me how to keep my head right and keep moving forward.”

Adjustments

Gatewood hasn’t put up the video-game type of numbers he did as a junior, when he passed for 2,773 yards and 26 touchdowns.

But Gatewood, who threw three touchdowns and ran for a third in Friday’s 49-16 win over Little Rock Central, has learned to flow with the changes thrown his way by opposing defenses.


Last season, the Mavericks were a pass-first and ask questions later type of team.

This season, with the emergence of running back Ricardo Savoy, the Mavericks have three conference wins for the first time in three years.

“We’re trying to find new ways to attack defenses,” Gatewood said. “Last year, we had a bunch of games where we just had to air it out and we made big plays. But this year, everybody’s (opponents) dropping back into coverage and we’ve had to run the ball a little bit more. I’ve run the ball a little bit more, Tyrese is getting the ball on the option a little bit more.

“We have to use other ways to beat defenses.”

Hard pays off

Gatewood was a brisk 11-of-14 for 193 yards and three scores, two of them to Solomon, in the team’s most recent win.

“All this hard work is finally paying off,” he said. “Coming up early in the mornings, then staying after practice on hot days, and just putting in all this work.”


Gatewood’s work ethic has spilled over to his teammates, too.

“I’m getting these guys up here on extra days, asking them if they’ll come to get this work in, too, has been big,” he said. “I’m kind of not surprised. I kind of thought I could put up these numbers.”

“You have to pull things out of him sometimes to get him to talk,” Key said. “I don’t think he’ll ever be the guy that doesn’t stop talking on the field.

“But if he needs to get on somebody, he’ll get on them.”

Gatewood’s teams may not have had the best players, but they had No. 5 as their quarterback.

And Gatewood, even as a 9-year-old, wasn’t easy to tackle.

“He was so much bigger than all of us,” remembers Coleman, Southside’s star-studded defensive back. “Every time we hit him, he would just drag us. We always had to come up with a game plan for him.”

In the end, a number of those Jeffries and Stephens players, Coleman included, followed Gatewood to Chaffin, then to Southside.


Soft-spoken but direct, Gatewood couldn’t imagine life without his Mavericks’ teammates.

“They mean everything to me,” he said. “I’ve been playing with a lot of these guys since junior high, and even elementary school. To me, they’re like my brothers. We spend time off the field as well.”

Coleman and Gatewood were Bonneville Elementary School classmates.

“Every time we talked at school, it was about football,” Coleman said. “We loved each other at school, but in the games we both wanted to win.”

Coach on field

Gatewood is still as quiet as he was at Bonneville. But his presence on the football field is like an extension of the Mavericks’ experienced coaching staff.

Gatewood, 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, has passed for 1,579 yards and 19 touchdowns this season.


He has 45 career touchdown passes and has racked up 4,338 career passing yards, and the durable quarterback also has 32 rushing touchdowns.

More importantly, he makes those around him better.
