Reggie Gilliam's first football recruiting story began, strangely enough, at a grocery store.

Gilliam was just nine years old when a local youth football coach spotted him at Kroger with his mother. The coach apparently was impressed by the then-already 120-pound youngster.

"He saw me and suggested I try out for the team," said Gilliam. "I decided to do it. Now football is something I can't imagine being without."

Football quickly became a passion for Gilliam, as he eventually found a niche as a bruising running back, from his youth football days all the way through high school. But unlike that very first encounter at age nine, he mostly went unnoticed by college coaches.

"I started my recruitment process late. Coming out of high school, I didn't have many schools looking at me," said Gilliam. "Toledo reached out around the third game into my senior season. It was the first school to reach out to me, and I decided to visit. I just fell in love with the place immediately, and decided to come to Toledo as a walk-on."

Gilliam enrolled at Toledo in 2015, but did not officially join the team until his second semester. A short time later, he was told he was no longer a running back, that he would now be playing tight end. "I had never played tight end before, so I knew it was going to be challenging," said Gilliam.

Gilliam was more than up to the test. He played in just one game as a freshman but slowly worked his way into the starting lineup as a junior. Last season, he earned second-team All-MAC honors at tight end and became a force on special teams, leading the country with four blocked punts. His off-the-field resume was equally impressive, as he earned MAC Medal of Excellence and Academic All-MAC honors, and was a nominee for Academic All-America. This season, he is a candidate for four national honors:  the Mackey Award (nation's top tight end), the Campbell Trophy (nation's top scholar-athlete), the Burlsworth Award (nation's top player who began his career as a walk-on) and the Jason Witten Collegiate Man of the Year Award.

If Gilliam seems like an old-fashioned kind of football player, then it's only appropriate that Head Coach Jason Candle used an "old-school" analogy to praise his tight end

"Reggie is like a flip phone," coach Candle. "It's reliable and it does its job every single day to the best of its ability. It's not flashy. Reggie is the epitome of a selfless human being. He is a product of great parenting. I think that his parents have raised that young man to be great for every opportunity that he has. No player in our program's history, at least my time being here, has embraced his role and done it at such a high level."

"He is probably the physically toughest kid I've ever been around," added special teams and tight ends coach Robby Discher. "He's also one of the hardest-playing guys I've ever seen. Honestly, he's just one of the best people I've ever been around. He makes the coaches look really good."

Gilliam credits his work ethic, in part, to his upbringing. His father, Reginald, is a master sergeant in the U.S. Army, and his mother is a district administrator for the U.S. Department of Transportation. They never stopped pushing him and never let him quit anything.

"Growing up, my dad was always on me about everything," said Gilliam. "All of the little things had to be perfect. If you started something, then you had to finish it. He was really tough on me, and I think that is what made me who I am today.

"The way I look at it is, I don't want to let myself or anybody else down," continued Gilliam. "I keep going until the job is done right because I don't want someone to think 'I can't count on that guy' or 'I don't think he is going to be able to handle this.' If we are on the field and I have the running back behind me, I want him to know that I have his block and he doesn't have to worry about it."

Gilliam's reliability, hard work and selfless attitude was rewarded when he received a full athletic scholarship nearly two years ago. He remembers it very vividly.

"January 11^th, 2018, first day back after the Dollar General Bowl," Gilliam recalled. "It was my beginning-of-the-year meeting with Coach Candle, and he told me I had a full scholarship. I called my mom and said, 'Where's dad, get him in room!' My mom was so excited she was in tears. My dad said, 'See, all that all hard work paid off.'"

Since then, Gilliam has not let up. On the field, he went on to have his best season as Rocket. Off the field, he received his bachelor's degree last May, and is currently working on his master's degree in liberal arts. As for his plans after football, it should come as no surprise that Gilliam is leaning toward an out-of-the-spotlight career.

"I want to have a job in marketing somewhere," he said. "I feel like promoting and advertising would be something really fun to do. I see how these businesses have people on social media, I'd like to think that I'd have a lot of fun with that. Promoting others is something I think I've been pretty good at."

- Kaitlyn Layman, Toledo athletic communications intern