Sermon was ‘Superman-ish’
Trey Sermon put up some impressive numbers in high school — even with a broken back.
NORMAN — Trey Sermon felt the helmet of the safety slam into his lower back.
The hit, coming just seconds removed from his leaping touchdown catch off a slant route, didn’t jar the football loose, but it did knock the future Oklahoma running back’s plans askew for nearly a year.
Now, two years later after his freak injury, Sermon is back on track just four games through his first season as a Sooner.
But how did he get to Norman from that moment on the football field in Georgia?
In many ways, that hit is a major part of his journey.
It was painful, of course, but in that moment, Sermon felt like he just had a deep bruise.
That play ended the first half of Sprayberry High School’s second game of the year. He didn’t know it then, but it would also eventually end Sermon’s junior season.
At first, he didn’t come off the field.
When he came back out for the second half, Sermon added 100 yards and a touchdown to his total.
As a precaution, he had X-rays done on his back afterward. When they didn’t reveal any substantial injury, Sermon shrugged it off.
The next time he stepped out on the field, he racked up almost 200 yards and two more touchdowns.
But his back didn’t feel any better, so he went for another round of scans.
This time, the tests showed something else: a cracked L5 vertebrae.
There was no way to know for certain, but it appeared that helmet-toback hit caused a stress fracture, and the next game likely caused that stress fracture to chip off just above his tailbone.
“I didn’t want to come off the field,” Sermon said. “I didn’t want to stop
playing because I have so much love for the game.”
His junior season was over, but not before he put up an impressive stat line through three games: 454 rushing yards, 111 receiving yards, seven touchdowns and one broken back.
“It was almost Superman-ish,” said Billy Shackelford, Sermon’s high school coach.
Even with such a limited sample size, letters from dozens of college football programs stuffed the Sermons’ mailbox — including a couple postmarked from Oklahoma.
The official offer came from the Sooners just weeks after Sermon’s season ended. Lincoln Riley knew about the back injury and the shortened junior season, but he wasn’t worried.
“He was dominant as a sophomore,” Riley said. “We recruit a little bit of everywhere — but it’s not like we spend a ton of time in that Atlanta area. But just we loved him on tape. He’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
By that point, Sermon had 22 offers from other Division I programs, including one from Georgia.
As a Marietta, Georgia, native, Sermon was supposed to be a near-lock for the Bulldogs.
And yet, when the spring rolled around, he ventured out of SEC country for a visit to Norman. That’s when he knew he was destined to be a Sooner.
“It was definitely the running back situation,” Sermon said of what swayed him from Georgia to OU. “I know they had a bunch of great running backs in the past and really just talking to all of them and the coaching staff.”
So after finishing a monster senior season with 1,227 yards, 16 touchdowns and 278 receiving yards, Sermon brought his power-running style to Norman as an early enrollee.
His collegiate career is just getting started, but the 6-foot, 222-pound freshman is already breaking onto the scene.
Through four games, Sermon is averaging 6.6 yards per carry with three touchdowns — including two in the fourth quarter of OU’s win against Baylor a week ago.
It’s a far cry from that football field in Georgia where he broke his back two years ago.
“He’s a guy that when the lights come on he turns into a different guy,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said after Sermon put up 62 yards on 17 carries against Ohio State. “I think guys that can show up in big games like that, it’s a special talent.”