Late in the first quarter of Athens’ 2016 home opener, with no success yielded by the run game at that point, Warren High School coach Tim Carver decided to call a long pass play.
The pass traveled about 40 yards through the hot, humid air. It looked accurate, and could have gone for a touchdown. Instead, it got batted down by the only player on the field wearing soccer cleats, Athens cornerback Nate Gribble.
“We quit after two years,” coach Ryan Adams said about giving Gribble a hard time for his footwear. “Being a senior, now he’s a captain, we’ve dropped the shoes.”
As a freshman, Gribble earned a varsity letter in soccer, indicating a bright future with the sport. But after a falling out with his coach, Gribble reconsidered his athletic future the following summer.
“It was very complicated through the summer with soccer,” Gribble said. “My parents supported me and they said, ‘It’s gotta be your decision at the end of the day, and you’ve gotta be happy with it.’ ”
Gribble decided to leave the Bulldogs soccer team and began playing football as a kicker during his sophomore year. He said his relationship with the coach, along with the camaraderie of the team and the aspect of brotherhood, were the deciding factors in joining the team.
Deciding on football as a new sport was not an unforeseen outcome –– it's not uncommon for high school soccer players to kick for their football team. Not only that, but from Adams knew Gribble well from his time as a middle school gym teacher.
“I loved him as a gym teacher,” Gribble said. “I think that friendship carried forward to high school, and I really wanted to be one of his players.”
Adams said he would constantly encourage Gribble in middle school to join the football team, even if only as a kicker. Gribble’s eventual expanded role on the team, however, was not evident from the start.
“To be quite honest, I was 100 percent thinking that he was coming on to the team to kick,” Adams said. “I didn’t think he was gonna walk away from soccer.”
Adams, who had always been impressed by Gribble’s athleticism, had an idea.
“When he walked away from soccer completely, then I knew he was an athletic kid and I wasn’t about to let him get off that easy and just kick the ball,” Adams said.
So, Gribble began practicing at cornerback. It was a tough transition, but Gribble said his friends on the team were instrumental in helping and supporting him through the learning curve. Gribble’s junior year, he stepped on the field at a position other than kicker for the first time.
He impressed his coaches quickly, and, as Adams said, “The rest is history."
Gribble made 12 total tackles –– nine solo –– and was credited with two passes defended in 2015. The kicker made an impact on the game defensively while also having converted 80 percent of his extra points.
Even as Gribble rose above some of his teammates on the depth chart, he still had their support. They proved it by voting Gribble as the team’s defensive captain for this season.
“They know that it doesn’t really matter,” Adams said. “We’re gonna go with whoever I put in there that’s earned the right to play.”
By going from a kicker to a cornerback that also kicks, Gribble has made Bulldog fans reconsider their image of the typical kicker.
“When guys ask me what I play and I tell them both kicker and DB, they do question it,” Gribble said. “But then they come out and see how I play. I think I’m smashing (the kicker stereotype).”
