It’s pretty hard to be as good as he is and practically go unnoticed but that’s what’s happened to Atlanta’s K.J. Wallace. Who is he? Well, he’s only the best kid you have probably never heard of but that is changing dramatically this summer. Wallace is a 5’10 in the 7th grade and weighs in at an astounding 162 pounds of solid mass. Those are high school measureables by most accounts and he’s got a high school game to accompany his frame. Just ask Derrick Tatum’s pupils Jamyest Williams and DeAngelo Gibbs (former youth stars from the GFL National Championship team) who as talented DBs saw Wallace’s talent first hand.
‘He’s the best we’ve seen,’ Derrick Tatum said of Elite Talent Football Academy. And he would know, he trains some of the best youth and high school talent in the Atlanta area.
Want to know more about Wallace?
Here’s the rundown.
Wallace is 4.76 hand time in the 40 yard dash, runs an eye popping 4.32 3-cone drill and gets it done in the classroom also as a honor roll student at one of Atlanta’s best private institutions, The Lovett School. At Lovett, Wallace has played on the 8th grade team since he was in 6th grade when his father says he was still the second fastest kid on the team, even though he was so young.
That is perhaps one of the reasons Wallace is so under the radar. He’s been a very good player behind kids he was a full year younger than. Last year he ran behind GFL 8th grade All-Star running back Noland Edmonds who played at the Lovett School. As an 8th grader, Edmonds was the man on offense and Wallace was along side him at wide receiver.
“He’s the best reciver I’ve ever seen,” said coach Kenyatta Watson of the Grayson Rams, formerly the Gwinnett Chargers. Coach Watson took particular note of K.J.’s talents this past weekend at Atlanta’s FBU camp where his star 2019 quarterback Jkori Jones was also in attendance.
“Great routes, nice frame,” Watson insisted as he spoke to Football Hotbed about K.J. Wallace’s talent.
Wallace played for the GFL 7th grade All-Star team that lost to the eventual FBU National Championship team from South Florida. They played in Gwinnett’s Buford Complex and lost 31-6 to the talented team from Miami-Dade and Broward County. In that game, KJ Wallace was the 6 points. He broke a 63-yard touchdown for the game’s only score for his GFL team and broke seven tackles to do it.
“If KJ played in his own grade, he would be outstanding. He still had seven touchdowns last year. An Atlanta area High School coach told K.J. that based just on his route running, he would have started as a rising 7th grader in 6A Football in Georgia,” said his dad, Kayle Wallace.
And it showed. Last week at the Atlanta FBU camp, Wallace shined. It’s strange to think a kid so talented can be so far under the radar but that’s what’s happened. He’s fast, physical and has great technique as just a 7th grader.
“That’s the only reason you haven’t heard of him,” says his father of his youth and playing with older kids.
Wallace scored nine touchdowns on jet sweeps with 10 touches during the FBU National Championship tournament last December.
He will be prominently featured in the Football Hotbed Atlanta Area Hot 50 List due out this weekend and will be attending the Football Hotbed All-American Combine at Westlake High School on June 7th.
In the meantime, he’s spending the rest of the summer introducing himself to the world as now he’s finally playing 8th grade football as a true 8th grader. A talent truly worthy of keeping an eye on.
It’s a Hotbed World.
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