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University of Tennessee at Chattanooga seniors hoping to end with a win

By: John Frierson
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William Giles

William Giles and Mitchell Meadows arrived on campus five years ago. Brent Hayes and Joseph Pitman joined them a year later. Since then, the four have been practically inseparable.

“We do everything together,” said Hayes, a fullback and the only Chattanooga native in the bunch. “We’re best friends, we all hang out and we always have a good time together.”

Their University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football careers will end — along with those of 10 other seniors and coach Rodney Allison — Saturday at Finley Stadium when UTC (1-10, 0-7) hosts Samford (5-5, 3-4) in the season finale for both Southern Conference teams. It will be a bittersweet moment, Giles said, when he walks off the field for the last time.

Giles and Meadows both redshirted their first years, so their playing careers began with Hayes’ and Pitman’s in the 2005 season, when UTC went 6-5. The Mocs have totaled six wins the past three seasons.

“You could argue that we haven’t done as well as anybody would really hope for in their four or five years, but if you take it all as a whole, it’s been a great experience and I don’t think I’d trade it for the world,” said Giles, an offensive lineman who graduated last spring and is hoping for a chance to play in the NFL. “I think the most important thing would be the friends and the close relationships that you come out of here with.”

Giles, Pitman and Meadows live together, along with former center Garrett Windham, who decided not to play his senior year. Windham and junior quarterback Tony Pastore, who lives with Hayes, are part of the tight-knit group as well.

It’s a fun group and a merciless one in teasing one another. Nobody gets it much worse than anyone else, and nobody gets away with anything.

“Most of it is inside jokes. When we’re around people, it’s inside jokes all the time, like most friends do,” Hayes said, laughing. “There’s just so much funny stuff that happens, and I’m really going to miss these guys.”

Hayes and Pastore will soon be moving in with Windham, so after Saturday’s game Pastore will be the only football player in the house. And he’s well aware of the fact that when offseason workouts begin, he’ll be getting up at the crack of dawn and his former teammates will have the luxury of sleeping for a few more hours.

“I told Brent I’m going to keep two pots in my room, and every morning I wake up early I’m going to bang them as I walk out, and as I arrive I’m going to bang them again to wake him up,” Pastore said, smiling at the thought.

Giles and Meadows make up half the fifth-year seniors on the roster, while Hayes and Pitman are two of the four four-year seniors. As recently as this summer Pitman, a tight end, was hoping to have another year of eligibility after playing in the first two games of his freshman season and sitting out the rest, but his request for a fifth year was denied in July.

Pitman said now he’s glad to be finishing when he is, especially since the Mocs will have a new coach next season.

“I’m kind of ready to move on,” he said. “I want to be a coach and I’m ready to start pursuing that. Also, it would be tough to go into your last year and have to completely learn a new system. I’d feel bad, like I was losing my loyalty to Coach Allison, if I played for somebody else.”

Meadows, a linebacker and long snapper who might be described as the quiet one in the group, said he’ll miss being around his friends all the time more than anything. And he hopes they can go out on a high note Saturday with a win over Samford.

“That would be amazing,” he said. “That would be the best thing that could happen. That would pretty much just wipe out all the things that have happened in the past and be the perfect way to end things.”

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