MACON, Ga. — You never know where your athletic journey will take you. Even when things go wrong, you can still bounce back. One former Central Charger is learning that.
Central Football is coming off one of their best seasons in program history. The team won their first state playoff game since the 1970's and a lot of that was thanks to linebacker Walter Hawthorne.
"A lot of people didn't think very highly of Central and then we just started beating people and people were like, 'Central starting to win now.' And that's when things started popping off," Hawthorne said.
Popping off meaning a slew of college offers. In February, Hawthorne signed to play college football at Army West Point, but not long after things went south.
"Some things happened with admissions and basically I was just going to go to another school and retry because I wasn't going to sit out a whole year of football," Hawthorne said.
Hawthorne is headed to West Georgia where he plans to play for the Wolves. He said he's not focusing on what went wrong, but instead on what he can make go right.
"I never thought it was a bad thing, what happened with Army, because you can make it from anywhere, playing from anywhere, he said.
Finding Hawthorne a new home wasn't hard, according to Central Football Head Coach Joaquin Sample.
"It's easy to recruit a kid like Walter because he's a 3.8 GPA kid, he works hard. He's a monster here in the weight room," Sample said. "Soon as the Army thing went down, I started to question the people that I had relationships with, people that I felt comfortable with him going to and West Georgia was very, very, interested from the jump."
Now Walt is preparing for the next step with a little help from Coach Sample and the Chargers. He's excited to turn some heads in Carrollton.
"I'm pretty excited to go ahead and get started, be the new guy. It's like being a freshman all over again and just prove to people that I could play." Hawthorne said.
Hawthorne plans to report to campus in August.
He plans to study exercise science to be an athletic trainer for a high school after graduation.