Antonio Callaway, a cut above the rest

One cut, a massive block and 90,527 thousand fans rose to their feet. Antonio Callaway was off and running before most of those in the stands even knew who he was.

Also on her feet, in the sea of Orange and Blue, one fan knew from her seats in the south end zone, her son wasn’t running to the end zone; he was running right to her and she wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“I wasn’t shocked. When he ran that touchdown back against Tennessee he was running right to me,” Sabrina Callaway told Gator Country. “His stepdad was in the stands crying and everybody was looking at me.”

The oldest of five siblings and Sabrina’s only son, Antonio was raised by a single mother in a rough area of Miami. Despite his surroundings, Sabrina never had a problem with Antonio growing up, other than his picky eating habits that led her to cutting the crusts off of all of his sandwiches, a task that Jim McElwain has gladly taken over now that Callaway is in Gainesville.

Callaway was a good student who was self-motivated. He never had a disciplinary problem in middle school or high school and always made sure to bring home good grades. Callaway also took an immediate interest to football, which, in Miami, is a way of life, a proving ground for young boys and young men. Sabrina recalls a three-year-old boy carrying around a football with him wherever he went, and as he grew older, showed a natural ability for the game early on playing on a 65-pound Pop Warner team.

Like Florida is this year, every team Antonio has been a winning team.

“All the teams he ever played on won a championship. When we were at Florida City, we went to Richmond. They won a championship. He went back to Florida City again and won two more championships,” Sabrina said. “Everywhere he went, they won. We went to Booker T. and they won a championship. It was just in him. I just felt like he was just a special kid and football is meant for him.”

Antonio grew up a Florida Gators fan. He idolized Percy Harvin, watched every game and modeled his own game after the Gator Great. When it came time for his senior season at Booker T. Washington, Callaway was just waiting for the right time to pull the trigger but a turbulent season in Gainesville got the coaching staff canned and the new staff had work to do. Callaway was very close with his area recruiter, former Gators defensive backs coach Travaris Robinson, but Robinson joined Will Muschamp at Auburn and Callaway was left with unfamiliar faces at his dream school.

Once a frontrunner, Florida fell behind Alabama, Miami and West Virginia as National Signing Day approached. Callaway had a visit planned to Tuscaloosa just before Signing Day, but McElwain and the Florida coaching staff turned up the heat and got Callaway to instead visit them in Gainesville. That’s when Callaway knew he would be in Orange and Blue the following season. His mother, however, knew where her boy would go all along.

“[Florida] may have got in late but that was one of his favorite schools,” she said. “I think he was gonna pick Florida regardless if they got in late or not. He liked Florida at an early age.”

Callaway believed in Jim McElwain and the direction Florida was headed. He signed on the dotted line and became part of McElwain’s first recruiting class in Gainesville, but the wait to get his college career took a dark turn.

On the night of March 27, two boys ages 16 and 10 were murdered in what is an unmistakable tragedy, but an unfortunate reality in the area where Callaway calls home. The 16-year-old boy — Richard Hallman — was Florida quarterback Treon Harris’ cousin and a new, close friend and teammate of Callaway’s at Booker T. Washington. Hallman was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in the 2000 block of Northwest 18th in Allapattah.

Callaway was always the star of any team that he played on, but Sabrina recalls him having a big heart, eating lunch with kids who weren’t as popular, taking an interest in younger kids and trying to show them that they could get out of the neighborhood if they walked a straight line. Antonio had befriended Richard Hallman just a year before the shooting.

“With Richard, he felt like he could help him. He used to bring him from Miami to my house down south [in Homestead] to keep him out of trouble,” Sabrina said. “He would go to school to Booker T. and then go back down south to keep him out of trouble and away from Overtown. He was trying to help him change up, go to school.

“That’s what Antonio liked to do.”

Hallman’s abrupt and senseless death hit Callaway hard. What if he had been with Richard Hallman that night? Would they have been on that street? Could he have done anything to help? Something that would have changed the cruel fate that led a teenage boy’s life to end before it had even began?

In the middle of spring practice, Treon Harris left to be with his family following the shooting. That’s where Harris and Callaway started to bond. Despite growing up in the same neighborhoods, playing in the same Pop Warner leagues and knowing some of the same people, Harris and Callaway weren’t really close. They knew of each other, sure, but you wouldn’t have considered the two close.

“When Richard passed away, that’s when Treon and him got close,” Sabrina said. Antonio and Treon knew each other but that really got them closer when the little cousin passed away.”

It was a hard pill for both young men to swallow and Callaway has honored Hallman on Twitter, changing his Twitter handle to “@RIPBobby_G.”

It also reminded Callaway of his cousin John Brown, a former receiver for Pittsburgh State and now an Arizona Cardinal. Brown’s brother James Walker was shot as an innocent bystander in a nightclub brawl in Miami.

Callaway never needed outside motivation to work, but the death of a close friend made him realize how precious life was and how quickly it all can end. He knew that when he got to Gainesville he had something to prove.

“He actually comes in on his own to watch film and learn techniques,” Florida Gators receivers coach Kerry Dixon said. “You’re starting to see that start to show up. I’m really excited about him and his future.”

That is a work ethic that was instilled in Callaway early on when his stepfather Jamie Lane took him out to run routes, catch passes and get work in before and after regular practices. The temptations of being on his own in college and having the

freedom to come and go as he pleases haven’t affected him. Callaway is still the same kid who would eat lunch with the less popular kids on the team. He’s still the kid who will ask for a key to the weight room so he can get in there by himself after hours. He’ll ask teammates to go and run routes. That work ethic caught his teammates attention, and Callaway’s personality has endeared him to everyone in the locker room.

“It’s fun to see what that guy does and just the way he goes about what he does too,” senior tight end Jake McGee said. “He’s a guy that loves football and loves his team. He’s fun to be around and has a good energy that he gives off to the guys.”

Callaway has started every game for the Florida Gators this season — his mother would have told you to expect that — but it wasn’t until the Tennessee game where he really made an impact. Callaway’s five catches (a career-high) for 112 yards and that miraculous touchdown scamper that left the voice of the Florida Gators Mick Hubert, unable to utter anything other than, “He’s going to score! He’s going to score!” really introduced him to Gator Nation.

Since that game, Callaway has supplanted Demarcus Robinson as the Gators’ go-to offensive threat. He became the first Florida Gators freshman to have two 100-yard receiving games in his first season since Reidel Anthony. His back-to-back 100-yard games against LSU and Georgia made him the first freshman to have three such games in a season.

Callaway ranks seventh nationally with a 22 yard-per-catch average — a number leads all freshmen in the nation. He’s been electric on special teams, returning a punt for a touchdown against LSU and is third in the SEC returning punts (13.69 per return).

“We knew there was something special in this kid when we started recruiting him,” McElwain said of Callaway. “I think he’s proven that, and yet, he still hasn’t scratched the surface.”

Callaway’s play has surprised everyone who didn’t know him as that three-year old kid walking around the house with a football and the people that didn’t see him win at three different high schools. To the people in Miami, Callaway is just AD (a shortened version of his first name, Antonio and middle name, Devaun). They knew he was special — a cut above the rest — kind of like how Callaway likes his sandwiches.

“If I could get him to eat his crust on his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” McElwain joked. “I’m working on that. But maybe there’s something to that. … That might be the way to go. We might be the messed up ones, right?”