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Being a Granger means everything to Jamarion Wilkerson. The LaGrange High graduate poured his heart and soul into the school over the last four years and it shows. There was rarely a second of downtime for Wilkerson. He ran the student sections for football, baseball and basketball, chorus, service club, and a year of foreign language club along with other clubs and extracurriculars at LaGrange

“I can talk to anybody, anytime, anywhere,” Wilkerson said with a laugh. “I just like talking, going out and I feel comfortable reaching out to people. I can’t sit still and rest. I have to always be doing something.”

Wilkerson has a positive outlook and a keen ability to motivate others. The energy he brings to anything he does is infectious and no extracurricular meant as much to Wilkerson as his role with the golf program.

It is hard to quantify just how valuable he has been to LaGrange High golf. One man who fully understands the impact he had on the program is head coach Ben Thrasher.

“I can’t express just how valuable he was to our program, he was like an extension of our coaching staff,” Thrasher said. “He is so valuable to our program and our staff from helping us logistically with running errands and helping us with our fundraising and talking to the people in the community. He was kind of like our graduate assistant but as a student. I honestly have no idea how we are going to replace him next year.”

There was always a deep-seated love of sports in Wilkerson. It is a passion that fully blossomed when he got to the high school ranks and is a part of his life he does not plan to give up any time soon. 

“I want to stay involved with sports whether that is doing sports law or becoming an agent or working for a team,” Wilkerson said. “I’ve always loved the business side of sports. I’m thinking of trying to work with Ole Miss golf too.”

Wilkerson took pride in everything Granger. As the leader of the football student section “The Blue Crew” and the basketball student section “Mark’s Maniacs” (affectionately named after the boys basketball head coach Mark Veal), Wilkerson helped grow how many students were in the stands for those sports. Still, it was his influence on the baseball student section that was most glaring. He, alongside some fellow Grangers, believed that not enough students were making it out to the baseball field. They sought to remedy that with the introduction of Donnie’s Disciples which saw the student section’s numbers increase dramatically.

“I love to be involved with anything LaGrange,” he said. “There was not enough students at the games and the team was doing really well, so we were looking at ways to get more people to the games.”

It was not just a one-off or a gesture just for home games. Wilkerson always found a way to support his Grangers. That included driving all the way to Wayne County for a baseball doubleheader on a Wednesday and then having to turn around and be at the area golf tournament in LaGrange the next day. It was exhausting, but Wilkerson would have it no other way.

“It was crazy because I got back to LaGrange, got my car and went straight to the golf course to help out there,” Wilkerson said. “I was so tired that we had to rotate who was driving on the way back.

“It was a four-hour trip, but we got a hotel and lived it up. I wouldn’t do it differently.”

Go Grangers will be in Wilkerson’s lexicon forever, but now he is adding Hotty Toddy to his commonly used verbiage. He will be attending the University of Mississippi starting in the fall. 

“I love LaGrange and it will be that way forever, it’s been my whole life,” Wilkerson said. “I want to go somewhere new and try some new experiences now.”