Georgia's offensive lineman Amarius Mims (65) gets injured during the first half in an NCAA football game at Sanford Stadium, Saturday, September 16, 2023, in Athens. Georgia won 24 - 14 over South Carolina. (Hyosub Shin / Hyosub.Shin@ajc.com)
Devon’s Journey: Gales takes unique path after tragic injury
JEFFERSON, Ga. —
Devon Gales wasn’t even supposed to be on the field for that fateful play.
He was a backup on the kickoff return team, lingering at the other end of the Southern University bench when one of the coaches shouted: “Hey, Devon, get out there!”
To this day, Gales still isn’t sure what happened to the teammate who was supposed to be in on the play.
“I remember everything,” he says now, and that includes the size of the Georgia players his overmatched team was facing that late September day in 2015. “These dudes are huge,” he recalls thinking, a diminutive receiver trotting onto a gridiron of giants.
After a hearty cackle — and Gales, amazingly enough, is rarely far from a smile or a laugh these days — he breaks down the play that put him in a wheelchair with a spinal cord injury.
But we’ll get back to that in a moment.
Turns out, Gales’ journey would take a few more unexpected twists and turns to arrive at where he is today.
He was essentially adopted by the Georgia fan base, which embraced his family and helped raise money and material to build a large, accessible home in Jefferson, a northeast Georgia town not far from the school’s Athens campus.
Then, after finally deciding to resume his college studies, Gales was accepted into Georgia ahead of the fall semester in 2021.
It’s been a slow, tedious process, with a roughly six-year hiatus between classes, but the 29-year-old hopes to graduate in about 18 months with a degree in communications. His goal is to become a motivational speaker, to share his story with those who might be in a similar situation and need to know that most things are still possible.
“It’s strange, but at the same time, I love it,” Gales said, unleashing another big grin when asked about attending the school that was on the other side of the line that awful day. “To be able to come from a different team and get so much love, and then to start going to school at U-G-A.”
Then, he added, a tinge of amazement in his voice, “I’m gonna graduate from U-G-A.”
Gales points to the tattoos he got not long before his last game. One is a “G” — for his last name, but it now works well for his new school — while the other depicts a pack of bulldogs, which he had as pets growing up but also fits nicely with where he is now.
“It’s so crazy,” Gales said. “There’s a reason for all this.”
There must be, even though it still seems so random.
During that kickoff return, Gales was assigned to block the first potential tackler who came his way. No problem there.
Then, he was supposed to clear out Georgia kicker Marshall Morgan lingering on the back end of the play, just to make sure he wasn’t in position to tackle the returner if the Jaguars happened to break one.
That’s when things went horribly wrong.
Spotting No. 13 in the red and black, Gales ran full speed in Morgan’s direction and, just before the high-speed collision, did what the coaches had told him never to do.
