Florida early enrollee safety Kamari Wilson has never been one to shy away from competition. In fact, he embraces it and uses it as fuel. He’s wanted to be the very best at everything he’s done since he was a little kid.
He grew up in an athletic family. His brother, T.J. Wilson, played football at Brevard College, a Division 3 program in North Carolina. His sister, Taneria Wilson, played professional basketball in Romania for a year. His half-brother, Terrance, played college basketball.
Despite being the youngest of the bunch, Kamari always tried to outperform his siblings, which required a lot of hard work and dedication from an early age.
“You would see them out there lifting weights in the garage, and him – it was even before he started playing football – 5 years old, he’s out there trying to lift weights in the garage alongside them,” his mother, Sherry Wilson, said. “They really played a huge part in his passion for football and sports.”
Kamari started playing football competitively when he was 8. It didn’t take long for Sherry to learn that he possessed special talent.
There was one Saturday where both she and her husband had to work, which meant that she had to drop Kamari off at the football field by himself.
As could be expected, Sherry was a little concerned for her son’s safety at first.
As it turned out, the only people who needed to worry were the parents of opposing quarterbacks.
“I handed him over to the coach, and this was like the first year that he played, and I said, ‘Please take care of my baby. He don’t know about football. Don’t let him get hurt,’” she said. “We joke about it today because the very next year, they were calling him the quarterback crusher because he would sack the quarterback on almost every play. He really excelled from that first year to that second year. He learned everything, and, going to the next year, they never took him off the field, and he played every position.”
Wilson quickly caught the attention of college coaches once he started high school at Westwood Academy in Fort Pierce.
Florida gave him his first scholarship offer during April of his freshman year. Jamar Chaney, who’s from Fort Pierce, was an assistant director of player personnel for the Gators at the time. Billy Napier has rehired him as a defensive analyst, a move that played a huge role in the Gators eventually reeling him in.
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That Florida offer created a domino effect. By the end of Wilson’s sophomore year, he held offers from Miami, Penn State, Georgia, Auburn, Oklahoma, Florida State, Texas A&M, Alabama, Oregon, LSU and others.
He had a monster sophomore season for the Panthers, recording 114 tackles and five interceptions. He also played some on offense and scored a total of five touchdowns. He also competed on the varsity basketball and track teams.
After his sophomore year, Sherry wanted Kamari to attend a school that would be a better fit for him academically. She felt that Westwood was “too noisy.”
Meanwhile, Kamari wanted to go somewhere where he could compete with the best and against the best on the football field.
The prestigious IMG Academy in Bradenton ended up providing him with the best of both worlds.
IMG Academy is a boarding school that was founded in 1999 exclusively for high school students that aspire to play college sports. Since they first fielded a football team in 2013, they’ve produced more than 200 college football players.
They had seven graduates selected in the 2021 NFL Draft, and their 12 alumni on NFL rosters to begin the 2021 season were more than any other high school. The two teams that played for the national championship a few weeks ago, Georgia and Alabama, had a combined 11 IMG graduates on their rosters.
Their coaching staff is filled with former NFL players and coaches, and they play a national schedule against some of the other top teams. They usually have several games on television every year.
Having Power Five-caliber coaches and facilities to work with certainly helps promising athletes develop, but choosing to play at IMG also comes with a risk.
It’s not like your typical public school where an athlete like Wilson is pretty much guaranteed to be on the field for as many snaps as they want to be. At IMG, they have a highly competitive depth chart. If you don’t play well, the coaches will bench you and put in another future five-star prospect. Because of this, you can actually hurt your chances of playing major college football if you don’t perform at a high level.
That possibility never spooked Wilson one bit. That type of competitive environment was exactly what he was looking for.
“Whatever he does, he’s going to try to be the best at it,” his mom said. “He’s not going to let anybody down. He’s not going to let the fans down; he’s not going to let the coaches down. He’s going to be the hardest-working guy on that field.”
Wilson focused solely on playing safety during his two years at IMG. He was a starter both years and was named a Junior All-American second-team selection by MaxPreps. As a senior, he was selected to play in the Under Armour All-American Game. He finished his career as a four-star recruit and ranked as the 43rd-best player in the country by the 247Sports Composite.
IMG defensive coordinator Cris Dishman, who played 14 seasons in the NFL and has seven years of major college and NFL coaching experience, said that Wilson’s rare combination of coverage skills and physicality is what makes him so valuable.
At 6-foot and 201 pounds, he’s built like a cornerback and runs like one. However, he can also play close to the line of scrimmage and stop the run like a linebacker. There aren’t any obvious situations that the Gators will need to take him off of the field for; he has the skillset to do it all.
“His quick-twitch muscles of seeing stuff and going and getting it, his good ball skills, playing the ball in the air, recognizing that once he spots the ball that the ball is really his and not the receiver’s, and he can play down in the box,” Dishman said. “If you go into any type of nickel or dime package, he could be your ’backer down in the box. He’s very physical and also with great ball skills, and it’s very rare to see guys that have both like that.”
He said that IMG’s final game of 2021, a loss to St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, encapsulated the type of player that Wilson is.
“I put him down as our nickel player; he made a play,” he said. “I had put him at safety; he made a play. I put him at corner, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Every position I put him at that last game, he made a play to try to help us win the football game. He’s very versatile.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on him, but he has the skillset and knowledge of Ed Reed and Troy Polamalu of him playing almost every position back there.”
For a while, it looked like Wilson would be using those skills to haunt the Gators over Halloween weekend for the next 3-4 years. He was considered a Georgia lean for a long time within recruiting circles, but that narrative changed quickly once Napier got to town.
Napier made a surprise visit to IMG shortly after arriving in Gainesville. During their meeting, Wilson told Napier that he needed to meet his mom before they went any further. So, Napier made another unannounced visit, this time to a Sam’s Club to meet Sherry at work.
“Kamari told him ‘You’ve got to go see the boss,’ and he took that time out to come,” she said. “I just thought it was special. He rerouted his plans. It wasn’t planned, and he came out to meet me, spent almost an hour there with me talking about the family and his plan and his vision and where he comes from. I thought it was special.”
Napier’s visits came at the perfect time, too.
“He had been praying, and Napier showed up,” his mom said. “He didn’t know Napier was coming to see him. Napier showed up to see him, and he thought that was a sign. He thought that was a sign. They come out of nowhere. He took the time to go see him. He came to see me. We’re really faith-based, and he really believed that might’ve been a sign from God.”
Napier impressed Wilson and his mom so much that they decided to use their final official visit at UF. Sherry said that they had to turn down opportunities to visit three other schools to make it happen.
While things certainly seemed to be trending in the right direction for Florida at this point, his recruitment was still a long way from being over. He was nervous and unsure of what he wanted to do on the night before signing day. His mom offered him some advice before he fell asleep.
“His biggest thing was he wanted to make everybody happy,” she said. “He’s like, ‘Ma, I wish I can make everybody happy.’ I’m like, ‘Baby, you can’t make everybody happy. This is a decision you’ve got to make. This is going to be a lifelong decision that you make on the school that you choose.’
“I said, ‘You just need to pray about it, continue to pray,’ and, the night before signing day, I told him ‘I need you to pray hard tonight.’ And I said, ‘When you wake up, whatever’s on your heart, whatever God lays on your heart, that’s what you’re going with.’”
A lot of the signing day hat ceremonies on ESPN are nothing more than manufactured drama. In most cases, the recruit has been linked to a particular school for weeks or even months. The coaches involved may have been notified of a player’s intentions several weeks in advance.
That wasn’t the case with Wilson. His announcement was every bit as dramatic as it looked. Sherry said that he didn’t make his final decision until shortly before they went on the air.
When he picked up the Gators hat and announced that he would be coming to UF, Napier had scored a major victory over Georgia coach Kirby Smart in just a couple of weeks on the job.
𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐦.
@Kamariwilson1 | #ChosenFew22 🐊 pic.twitter.com/KctZlj51On
— Florida Gators Football (@GatorsFB) December 15, 2021
Ultimately, the fact that Florida was the first school to offer him and his belief in Napier’s vision for the program put the Gators over the top. He wants to win a national championship and make it to the NFL, and he feels that UF gives him the best chance to accomplish those things.
“I felt sincerity about [Napier],” Sherry Wilson said. “We felt peace. We weighed the options. Florida gave him his first offer. That means Florida and Jamar Chaney were the first ones to believe in him to give him that chance. Between that and then being close to home, a lot of fans here of Kamari, he inspired a lot of kids, and, to give them that chance to even come and watch him play, I think that played a big part.”
It also helped that Napier hired Corey Raymond away from LSU. Raymond coached seven First Team All-Americans and 14 NFL Draft picks in 10 years at his alma mater. He served as the lead recruiter for highly rated IMG defensive backs Eli Ricks, Saivion Smith and Grant Delpit.
Though Raymond will primarily work with the cornerbacks at Florida, that kind of track record was very appealing to Wilson. Dishman also offered a ringing endorsement of Raymond.
“His ability to relate to the players,” Dishman said. “Coaching is – people try to put all the X’s and O’s in it – but if you don’t have the players that can do the X’s and O’s and you can’t relate to them, then it’s going to be hard coaching them. Corey’s a relatable person. He can relate to a person like Kamari.
“I think Corey is one of the best DB coaches in the country. Corey’s going to get him right.”
Wilson has enrolled at UF and is going through the early stages of the offseason strength and conditioning program. With his skillset and the Gators’ lack of proven depth behind returning starters Trey Dean and Rashad Torrence, he figures to see the field in the fall. At the very minimum, his speed and physicality should make him an excellent member of the kickoff and punt coverage teams.
Napier is excited about Wilson’s future.
“I want to compliment Kamari on his family,” he said on signing day. “I think he’s got incredible people around him, his mom and dad, his grandmother, his mentor. Just really good people, values-based. They’ve raised an exceptional young man who’s got a good foundation. He knows right and wrong. He’s certainly talented. I think we all understand that he’s a good football player, but he’s got great charisma, great personality. He’s a leader. He’s got great presence about him. I think he’ll bring a lot to our team.
“I think that this fan base, this alumni group, this is the type of guy that you rally around here that chose the University of Florida, decided to stay in this state and a guy that I think is going to go about it the right way and represent this place the way it should be represented.”
Dishman wasn’t afraid of making a bold prediction about Wilson. He said that he will be drafted in the top-10 at a minimum in three years.
He also thinks that some major hardware could be in store for Wilson. IMG took its team to Canton, Ohio, to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame. While there, they took a picture of the Jim Thorpe Award, which goes to the top defensive back in college football.
“I challenged all those guys that ‘Look, in the next three or four years of your career, one of you guys or two of you guys needs to win this Thorpe Award,’” Dishman said. “So, he wants to be the best of the best.”
If history is an indication, Kamari Wilson will do just that. He’s been dominating the competition at every step along the way.