This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting shares the recruiting decision with 4-star OT prospect Juan Gaston Jr. out of Westlake High School in Atlanta. He ranks as the nation’s No. 16 OT and the No. 164 overall prospect for 2025 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 14 IOL and at No. 187 overall.
If you missed the Juan Gaston commitment on Friday night, consider this your rain check. The 4-star OT dramatically chose UGA.
Check it out below.
As of publication, that video has drawn more than 21,000 views on YouTube.
That’s a top-shelf viral metric as far as UGA commitment videos go. The reason why is that Gaston pulled out all the stops for top-shelf intrigue.
The best part was it was a case of a 5-star introvert (Gaston) pulling off a moment almost by himself that a 5-star extrovert [or any drama or musical theatre student] would applaud.
“I wanted to be different,” Gaston said.
It was. Gaston turned himself into a near 6-foot-8 living Matryoshka doll to become the 22nd member of the Georgia class late Friday night. Just like those famed Russian nesting dolls, there was a surprise as each layer was revealed.
We offered up a play-by-play of all the moments in the orginal commitment story. This, as they say in show business, is the story behind the curtain.
“Each jacket that I take off, the team is out,” Gaston said at the beginning of the event while wearing some UGA gear.
“So the first team out is Georgia,” he said.
It was an early attention grabber. The majority of the predictions of the UGA and national recruiting media had him leaning UGA. When he came out like that, everyone came down from the stands and started taking pictures of his attire before the ceremony began.
That was the first of many things we’d never seen in a commitment ceremony.
Gaston wound up eventually reversing his field and picking the Dawgs.
The best part was that it was all orchestrated by Gaston. The son of the former Georgia Tech basketball player usually takes MONTHS to have an in-depth conversation with new coaches on the Westlake staff.
DawgNation has interviewed Gaston about 10 times over the last three years. It remains a coaching point for the football staff to coax him to show more personality in interviews.
“Elaborate Juan,” someone will say while walking by a one-on-one session. “Elaborate.”
He’s gotten better. Gaston now provides answers with word counts that consistently reach double-digits when he’s feeling it.
I’m told Georgia’s Kirby Smart has even hit him with a “give me 10 words” request when Juan visits Athens.
That is the personality who put on a ceremony with more wardrobe changes per minute than a Taylor Swift concert.
“One in a lifetime experience,” he said. “That’s it.”
Did he notice the crowd going crazy?
“I kind of knew they would go crazy,” he said. “A little trick here and there.”
That’s the first big reason DawgNation will remember that ceremony for a long time.
We’ve got nine other quick-hit ones that follow below.
- Gaston only let two people know about his plans: It was the ultimate commitment day trickeration. He let his two teammates, Sekou Peters and Deanthony Bateman, in on the act. Those two were the ones who brought the Oregon and UGA hats out to him at the moment. His parents didn’t know. His mother Phenix admits that she had an “inkling” that he might choose UGA, but it was never discussed with any relevance. When he had the South Carolina gear on as the last school standing, his two parents looked at one another in stunned disbelief. “So we are going to South Carolina,” his father whispered to him during the moment. To which his son replied “Nah” to that question. Gaston said he also never let the UGA staff in on his choice either.
- Why his fellow “Fat Boys” deserved those roles Gaston’s family shared a story about a unique bond between Bateman, Gaston and Peters. She called them “The Fat Boys” growing up and those two played a key role in helping bring Gaston out of his shell. When he’s around those on the team he’s comfortable with, he’s more like a jokester than an introvert. “Nobody knew besides my two friends,” he said.
- He figured out his choice at 2 AM on his commitment day: It just came to him while playing the new college football video game with Bateman and Peters. He wasn’t even playing with UGA, but with Penn State. He was taking on Clemson. “I really just rolled out of bed and chose a school,” Gaston would say afterward. Gaston said he also planned his elaborate ceremony scheme early that morning.
- Pay close attention to the wardrobe changes: Gaston made his decision look like a meeting between the typical commitment ceremony and some Las Vegas theatre. He turned himself into a human Russian nesting doll by placing the team gear of his four finalists on top of his workout compression shirt. Needless to say, the nearly 6-foot-8 and 350-plus pounder needed to make sure all of those fits were at least 3XL or larger for his “take it off and they are out” theme. “He just kept saying ‘Bring the shirts’ and I put them in the washing machine,” his mother said. “We didn’t even buy new shirts. Let me be very clear.”
- Unique timing: Gaston came straight off the practice field for the event. Westlake was on the practice field until just minutes before the scheduled 7 p.m. start time for the ceremony. There was no shower or elaborate steps needed to get ready. He just needed his mother, Phenix Gaston, to bring him all those hoodies and sweatshirts and hats to him at the school.
- He came out in a UGA windbreaker which proved to be quite the troll: Or was it some WWE Vince McMahon-level sports entertainment? When event host Alex Benson saw him at the jump and cautioned him about giving away the finale in the opening credits, he told the Born to Compete founder “I’ve got this” and not to worry.
- He had fun at the end of a trying week: The decision weighed on him. Oregon was a closer second than most might think here. When he was around the team this week and started to get some questions, he couldn’t deal with it and had to walk away on at least one occasion. It proved to be that stressful for him.
- Nothing special about his props: The famed commitment moment “hat science” wouldn’t even work here. The shirts and hoodies were part of his collection over the years. He ordered the two hats used in his ceremony off of Amazon.com and they arrived the day before the big moment.
- Some unique symmetry: The first college visit he ever took was with Benson many years ago at the start of his high school career. It was in the spring before his first season of high school. What school was it? It was Georgia.
“It was definitely Broadway,” his mother Phenix Gaston said on Friday night. “Very dramatic and I let him own it. You give your children the information and you let them make educated choices. I don’t think any of the schools were a bad option for him so we let him have it. We didn’t pressure him to kind of tell us what the school [of his choice] was. I had an inkling of what it was but I wasn’t 100 percent sure so today we are proud Bulldog family members.”
His offensive line coach Reggie Wimberly summed up the moment shortly after the choice was Georgia. Finally.
“I told Juan all week that today I just wanted to see him smile and be a happy 17-year-old kid,” Wimberly said. Because that’s what he is. He’s happy. He’s smiling. He’s engaged and he’s being a 17-year-old kid. It’s been a real burden on him really. Just being honest.”
Most might not know that Gaston changed his phone number to help offset the deluge of calls from coaches and recruiting media.
Gaston is a young senior given his immense size. He won’t turn 18 until December. That means he will be 17 years old next fall when he takes Dooley Field for the first time as a Georgia Bulldog.
That covers the how, but how about the why here? Why did he roll with UGA early Friday morning? He said it was a strong sense of familiarity.
Gaston told DawgNation that it felt like he knew “half the team” at UGA and he would be able to fit in without much effort.
“It just came down to who I was closer with and what I have with the players on the team and some of the coaches,” he said.
SENTELL’S INTEL
(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)
