Prep stars get early jump

With his junior year of high school winding down, Matthew Stafford came up with a bold plan: Enroll early in college and get a jump on all those other prep football stars who didn’t.

There was only one stumbling block.

“My mom didn’t want me to at all,” Stafford recalled. “When I first told her, she was like, ‘No, you’re not leaving.’ ‘But I want to go,’ I told her. She was like, ‘No! You’re staying here.’ ”

Eventually, Stafford got his way. Mom relented, her son enrolled at Georgia in January, and just last week the freshman played brilliantly in a 37-15 upset of then-No. 5 Auburn.

He’s not alone, either. It seems more and more high school seniors are skipping out midway through their final year to enroll in college. Like Stafford, they figure it’s worth missing the senior prom for the chance to go through spring practice, get into a more advanced training program and simply begin learning the day-to-day routine of college before most of their classmates.

“I remember first coming in here,” Stafford said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how things go. Spring practice kind of gives you a good base of what practice is going to be like during the season, what kind of things we do around here. It makes it that much easier.”

It’s hard to argue with the results.

While Stafford has gone through an up-and-down freshman year, he’s already starting at the most prominent position on the field. He had a breakout performance in the win over Auburn, completing 14 of 20 passes for 219 yards, running seven times for 83 yards and accounting for two touchdowns.

Asher Allen was another early arrival in Georgia’s freshman class. He’s played in all 11 games as a second-string cornerback, showing promising skills in coverage and positioning himself to contend for a starting job in 2007. He’s added to his value by returning kickoffs and punts.

With that sort of track record, it’s not surprising that plenty of high school players are getting ready to tell mom and dad goodbye, then head off to college after the holidays.

Offensive guard Tanner Strickland actually began plotting his getaway nearly two years ago. He committed to the Bulldogs before his junior season at Berrien County High School in south Georgia, which gave him plenty of time to get his credits in order so he could leave early.

He’s already gotten his college acceptance letter and will begin his first classes on Jan. 8. More important to his football ambitions, he’ll have a chance to take part in spring practice on a team that will be in desperate need of depth at his position next fall.

“I was looking at playing time,” Strickland said. “Several coaches told me about other guys coming in early and how it increased my chances of not getting redshirted.”

Strickland’s parents backed his decision right from the start, though his mother is having a few second thoughts as she prepares to send her oldest child off to college at age 17, six months ahead of schedule.

“Tanner is pretty mature for his age,” Debbie Strickland said. “He felt like he was ready to go, so we’ve just been dealing with it. Now, the closer it gets, the harder it is. He’s my first and oldest child. He’s the first to leave. That makes it a little more difficult.”

Her voice trails off, the most telling sign of a mother’s struggle to come to grips with the inevitable cycle of life.

While Tanner is sure he’s making the right decision, he’s beginning to realize that some sacrifice is involved.

He’s got a girlfriend at Berrien, but he won’t be able to take her to the senior prom if it conflicts with his college schedule. He’s planning to return for graduation ceremonies in the spring, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to go on a senior trip with his soon-to-be former classmates.

“I’ve always lived right here,” he said in a telephone interview. “All these people, I’ve been in school with them my whole life. It’s going to be hard leaving early. But there’s some things you have to give up to do what you want to do. It’s time to move on.”

Strickland had enough time to double up on the classes he needed to graduate a semester early, while Stafford merely had to take an extra English class over the summer before his senior year. He considers that a small price to pay.

“If I had to take four summer school classes, I wouldn’t have done it,” the quarterback said. “I had gotten a lot of credits out of the way, which made it that much more appealing and easy for me.”

Stafford didn’t get to attend his prom, which was held on the same day as the G-day spring football game. But Georgia’s spring break coincided with his high school’s, allowing him to go on a trip to Mexico with his old classmates.

“For me, it was way worth it,” Stafford said.

Ditto for the colleges, who not only get someone who’s strong enough academically to graduate early from high school; by the time the new season rolls around, they have a player with far more experience than the normal freshman.

Spring practice is only part of it.

Strickland will jump into Georgia’s highly regimented weight program as soon as he steps on campus -- invaluable for a lineman who’s listed at 6-foot-4 and 315 pounds but will be matched against stronger, quicker players than he’s faced before.

For Stafford, the most valuable part of early enrollment was the extra time it gave him to learn the Georgia playbook, which is far more complicated in terms of checkoffs and formations than anything he ran at Highland Park High School in Dallas.

Then there’s the transition from high school to college that every freshman must endure. They all arrive with that wide-eyed look, a bit overwhelmed by such a jarring change in their lifestyle and a little too cocky for their own good. But those who come in January have largely gotten through that phase by the time the season rolls around.

This is especially true at Georgia, where the early arrivals have a chance to go through “mat drills” -- hellish sessions that mix agility training and bouts of wrestling -- with their new, older teammates.

“They come in with all these high expectations, and the first thing that happens is they get killed in mat drills,” said Tra Battle, a senior safety at Georgia. “After mat drills, they’re pretty much on the same level as everyone else.”

It’s a longer transition for the parents. Strickland’s father knows that things will change for good in January.

“When he leaves, he’s no longer a member of the household,” Chuck Strickland said. “He is, but he isn’t, you know what I mean? There are some reservations there, but not so much that we wanted to hold him back. This is a really good opportunity for him.”