Hilton Head in the bright lights Monday in College Football Playoff championship

Hilton Head Island is on a roll headed into the College Football Playoff national championship game Monday night.

It’s not us, literally. It is one of us.

Islander Jaylen Sneed will be wearing No. 3 for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish as they take on the highly-favored Ohio State Buckeyes in Atlanta.

Two of the junior linebacker’s five starts this season have come in playoff games. He set the tone against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl with a two-yard tackle for loss on the first play.

In the semifinal game against Penn State in the Orange Bowl, it was Sneed who hurried the pass that led to a Notre Dame interception with 33 seconds left – and the opening to win the game on a field goal.

Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a long, long way from Barker Field, where Sneed started this journey as a skinny, 6-year-old nose guard for the Hilton Head Gators.

But if you look closer, a lot of Barker Field — and Hilton Head as a whole — will be at the Benz, wearing No. 3.

One could see Hilton Head Hospital, where Sneed was born, and the Island Recreation Center, where he was in the Discovery Club preschool. And Hilton Head Elementary School, where he was in the first class of the Chinese Dual Language Immersion Program that has led to his minor in Chinese at Notre Dame. And Central Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church, where Pastor Louis Johnson expects of lot of his youth, introducing them to Toastmasters and having them perform before a crowd by running a service once a month.

And Hilton Head Island High School, where Sneed grew under coach B.J. Payne into a “generational” athlete with freakish abilities, and became South Carolina’s Mr. Football in 2021.

And Hilton Head Island Middle School, and the Boys & Girls Club, and the Hilton Head Hornets AAU basketball program, and the Fast Lane Track Club that took him to a national meet where he placed third in the shot put at age 9.

And Palmetto Electric Cooperative, where the driving force in his young life, single-mom Chanta Ellison, is a customer service representative. “People say I did a great job, he’s so polite and smart,” she said. “No, WE did a great job.”

THE COACH

Sneed was a late-bloomer.

In the summer going into the 10th grade, he grew 6 inches. But Hilton Head Island High Seahawks head football coach BJ Payne noticed Sneed’s “raw athletic talent” when he was in fourth grade, playing with the Gators, where his first coach was Maurice Williams. Sneed was fast and quick and had long arms.

By the time Sneed got to “The Nest” where the Seahawks play, “his explosive, physical prowess on the field was just different,” Payne said. “He plays the game violently.”

He’s fast, violent and versatile, and carries the nickname of “Nuke” Sneed. In ninth grade, Sneed played junior varsity for three games, then moved to the varsity, where over time he’d play eight different positions.

And about that time, Payne sat down with Sneed and his mom to tell them Sneed’s future would include big opportunity if he’d seize it, and their world was about to get invaded by college coaches.

Payne may have had Monday’s game in mind when he told them, “Just so you know, this is the path where you’re going to end up.”

Payne promotes players like we haven’t seen around here until he moved to Hilton Head from Ohio in 2012. In his total of 19 years as a head coach, more than 150 of his players have gone on to play in college.

He takes them on two-week tours to introduce them to schools well out of the region: Penn State, Pitt, West Virginia, Ohio State, Louisville, Michigan.

Five other Seahawks are now playing in college: Gaston Moore at Tennessee, Chris Marable at Wake Forest, Sam Summa at UCLA, Shaikh Thompson at East Carolina and Cole Demarzo at Wyoming.

“A lot of wins happen within a program that don’t show up on the scoreboard,” Payne said. Islander Poona Ford went on to the Texas Longhorns and now plays defensive tackle for the Los Angeles Chargers.

“Poona and Jaylen are marquee guys,” Payne said, “but they all know that no matter what, if you put in the work, and as long as you persevere, you can make it.”

Payne is a father of five who was once under the bright lights himself as a WWE wrestler with his “Payne Killer” signature move.

“In today’s world, coaches and teachers are with children more hours in the day than their parents have a chance to be,” Payne said. “My players have seen me laugh, they’ve seen me cry. They’ve seen me being a husband, they’ve seen me being a dad.”

And they’ve seen the stars he’s brought to the island for his All-American Football Camp each May for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Trevor Lawrence, Ezekiel Elliott, Christian Wilkins and J.K. Dobbins have come. And receiver Emeka Egbuka who will be wearing No. 2 for Ohio State Monday night. And Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love, and defensive back Christian Gray, who made the interception against Penn State as Sneed creamed the quarterback. Payne said it is his calling to motivate high school football players to see a wider world of opportunity, and hopefully become responsible adults down the road.

“I think every person in every profession comes to find their ‘why’ in life,” he said. “That has become my ‘why.’”

THE MOM

Sneed played on a Seahawks basketball team that made it to state championship game.

But he got benched once — by his mom. She insisted he could not play until he pulled up his grades. “In our house, grades come first,” she said. Her daughter, Chynna Sneed, graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina last May.

And today, she’s seeing football as a free college education worth $80,000 a year. “I can’t emphasize enough the great job she did as a single mom raising Jaylen,” Payne said. “She made sure he stayed out of trouble. He’s ultra-respectful. Academics are a priority. He’s so mature for his age because accountability was there.”

Sneed’s mom said she was all-in on whatever her children wanted to pursue. That included hauling Jaylen to a football camp in Columbia – driving up and back on both Saturday and Sunday because they could not afford to spend the night.

And Jaylen Sneed had to be all-in on his own. When the coach said he needed to work on his hips, his mom got him a ladder and cones and Sneed worked out three times a day with them in 45-minute sessions – all on his own.

Ellison said she cannot stress enough the importance of children getting involved in a church.

She said a host of men stepped up to guide, mentor and correct Sneed, whose father, Jerrold Sneed, lives in Florida.

Alex Brown, Palmer Simmons, Leon Bush, Derick Blackshear were among the men who “were in Jaylen’s life, who taught Jaylen lessons, who would come at the drop of a hat to talk to this boy,” Ellison said. “People need to know how important they are and the value they have in other children’s lives.”

Coach Payne still talks to Sneed every day on the phone. And Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman has been close to Sneed since he offered him a college scholarship when Sneed was a ninth grader and Freeman was defensive coordinator at the University of Cincinnati. That relationship won out when 40 scholarship offers came, and when on the first day college coaches could contact Sneed his phone blew up and midnight. “He came in my bedroom and said, ‘Mama, something is wrong with this phone,” Ellison said.

She calls her son the product of a village.

“Hilton Head is a village of its own, and we don’t appreciate that,” she said. A lot of “villages” will be on the field Monday night. Ours will be the Gullah Irishman speaking Chinese, and wearing No. 3.

David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published January 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.