MoxVlog

BLACKSBURG, Va. — The commute from Andrews, a small town tucked away in the western mountains of North Carolina, to Rabun Gap-Nacoochee, a private boarding school in northeast Georgia, is not for the faint of heart. But for a year plus half a semester, that’s what Tucker Holloway did.

He’d wake up at 5 a.m. and hit the road by 5:30. Seven-tenths of a mile from home, he’d lose phone service as he navigated a winding two-lane road that went up and over the Nantahala Mountains, a drive that gets a bit sketchy in the winter. An hour and 20 minutes later he’d arrive at school, where he’d lift for an hour before grabbing a shower.

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Then it was a full day of classes before football practice or whatever sport was in season during the afternoon, followed by that 80-minute drive back over the mountain. Once home around 8 p.m., he’d catch up on a couple of hours of homework, hitting the pillow around 11:30 p.m. to get some sleep before doing it all again the next morning.

On top of all that, he played football games on Friday nights and worked on Saturdays, doing mowing, leaf-blowing, chainsaw work and weeding on a couple of properties.

“I mean, he’s a special dude,” his father, Brody Holloway, said.

Virginia Tech fans are starting to see that lately, with the true freshman receiver’s hard work finally getting some payoff in the punt return game. Holloway, a lanky 6-foot-2, 182-pounder, set the Hokies’ single-game mark with 188 return yards against Georgia Tech, breaking a record set in 1994 by Antonio Freeman.

Holloway’s day was highlighted by a 90-yard return for a touchdown just before halftime. He dodged the gunners with a sidestep, got past the second wave and cut to the sideline before running away from Georgia Tech’s players.

Tucker Holloway takes it to the house with a 90-yard PUNT RETURN TD!@HokiesFB pic.twitter.com/SXCTwJ3VaV

— ACC Digital Network (@theACCDN) November 5, 2022

Tech’s punt return team had struggled all year, but Holloway more than quintupled the unit’s production in one afternoon on the job, his confidence boosted the previous week against NC State when he assumed the role after a pregame discussion with receivers coach Fontel Mines.

“He was like, ‘Hey man, the bar is a low bar right now,’” Holloway said. “‘You don’t have anything really that you need to go out there and prove. Just do your job. Do the thing you’re coached to do.’ And that was just protect the ball and get it to our offense. And that kind of helped me.”

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Saturday’s effort earned Holloway ACC special teams player of the week honors. He celebrated by shouting out all 10 of the other players on the punt return unit who helped clear the way.

These are my brothers who blocked for me this past weekend on Punt Return. WE set a record.
Elijah Howard
Jalen Stroman
Keyshawn Burgos
Keshon Artis
Jaden Keller
Jalen Holston
Connor Blumrick
Jayden McDonald
Ny’Quee Hawkins
Tink Boyd

— Tucker Holloway (@TuckerHolloway1) November 7, 2022

“When I talk about maturity, the kid gets it,” said head coach Brent Pry, whose 2-7 Hokies travel to 6-3 Duke on Saturday. “He’s just got a great support system back home, and he’s an unselfish player.”

Of course, Holloway’s recent success also brings up a dilemma: Should the Hokies still try to redshirt him? He’s played in three games, taking over the starting punt returner duties the past two after getting in for five late-game snaps at receiver against Wofford in September. The Hokies say he’ll play Saturday at Duke, then they’ll map out the plan for the rest of the season. It might come down to if he’ll see meaningful snaps at receiver rather than just fielding punts.

“(Pry’s) message to me is the decision is you and your family’s to make,” Holloway said. “But then at the same time, as a player, I want the coaches to be a part of that decision. … As a competitor, naturally I want to play football.”

If there’s a player Pry should have some comfort in making that decision, it’s Holloway, who’s mature for his age, with a great support system, part of a big, faithful family that’s enjoyed every second of his college career.

In 1997, Holloway’s parents founded Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a camp for kids in Andrews featuring white-water rafting and rope and challenge courses. They have about 12,000 teenagers come through each year, with Brody serving as a camp pastor.

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Tucker has five siblings, the three youngest adopted — a brother and sister from northern Uganda and another younger brother locally from Andrews. His older sister is married and does humanitarian, missionary-type work in South Sudan.

“We’re such big character people as far as what we try and teach our kids,” Brody said.

From a young age, Tucker Holloway had a lot of responsibility. Brody had Tucker operating a chainsaw (under supervision) when he was 12. The Holloways’ camp sits on 150 acres, so there’s a lot of grass to mow. Tucker ran a crew in charge of it when he was 13, handling those big zero-turn mowers.

Andrews, in a way, shaped him.

“Little town, small town, western North Carolina, but there’s something about Andrews that it built me in a way that’s kind of like the mindset of just small town, hard-nosed, we work hard, we do our job,” Tucker said. “You don’t complain, you just do what you do. And there’s a sense of class to what we do as far as people and on the field. My parents taught me to treat people right, and the town of Andrews did, too. It’s just a cool community. I kind of learned to love a smaller community, and that just kind of built me into the man I am today.”

“He’s always been super self-motivated and worked hard,” Brody said.

That was true in athletics, too. He played varsity basketball as a freshman at Andrews High and was a do-it-all football player, the quarterback of a triple-option offense. He went out for track as a sophomore, learning to triple jump by watching the proper steps and form on YouTube videos. He won a state championship in the event in his first season.

After three years of high school, he made the move to Rabun Gap-Nacoochee, which has been flush with Power 5 talent recently, reclassifying so he could spend two years there working solely at receiver.

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He picked that up quickly, too, his recruiting taking off after a good showing at an Under Armour camp the spring of his junior year, when he ran a laser-timed 4.50 in the 40-yard dash. He went to a camp at Auburn and ran a hand-timed 4.39. They asked him to do it again to see if it was a fluke. He beat it by a hundredth of a second.

“And it blew up after that,” Brody said.

Florida State, Auburn, South Carolina, Clemson and North Carolina were among the schools who checked in on him. So did Virginia Tech, which eventually landed his commitment in July 2021. Whether he’d actually sign with the Hokies came into question a few months later after Justin Fuente was fired. The Holloways had a history with Pry, who coached Brody’s brother Brandon, a defensive end, at Western Carolina in the late ’90s.

The problem was, Virginia Tech didn’t have an offensive coordinator or receivers coach in place. Tyler Bowen wouldn’t be hired as OC until his season with the Jacksonville Jaguars was over. And Mines was the last coach to join the staff in the middle of January. Signing day was a month before that.

Plus, other schools were driving pretty hard to the hoop. Vanderbilt made a strong push to sign him, and newly hired Georgia Southern coach Clay Helton made Holloway a priority in the offensive shift he had planned. Holloway was on the phone with coaches for all three schools close to nine hours the day before he signed, a mentally and emotionally draining finish to his recruitment.

“We were in our ceremony and I told my coach like 30 seconds before he announced it, I was like, ‘I’m going to Tech,’” Holloway said. “I did take a leap of faith because I didn’t know the wide receivers coach, I didn’t know who the offensive coordinator was. So just trusting (Pry), but also the biggest thing was I really thought through that question of, ‘Where would you go if it wasn’t for football?’ Vandy just didn’t feel like home for me. Virginia Tech was that place. I felt like when I was here, it felt like the right place for me to grow as a person and a player.”

A little less than a year since arriving as an early enrollee, he knows he made the right choice. Snaps have been limited — just 18 all year, with five at receiver and 13 the past two weeks at punt return — though Holloway came into the season knowing it’d be a process. He needed to gain weight (he has, about 15 pounds) and develop as a receiver. His early goals were to get some playing time and make the travel roster, two things he’s accomplished.

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With this kind of start to his career, the future seems bright.

“He’s one of those guys I consider a culture driver in this program,” Pry said, “and is going to be very important to what we do moving forward.”

(Top photo courtesy of Virginia Tech Athletics)

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