EchoBlog

IOWA CITY, Iowa — To say Iowa Western defensive tackle Terio Thompson came from nowhere to sign a Big Ten football scholarship from Iowa diminishes the value of the cliche.

Thompson grew up in Dubuque, which is at the Iowa-Wisconsin line about 80 miles northeast of Iowa City. His high school, Dubuque Hempstead, competes in the same league as Iowa City’s public schools in one of the state’s largest conferences. Yet Thompson was as obscure a football player as one can be, even in a sparsely populated state with two major universities and few major-college prospects.

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“There’s coaches at Iowa — and he’s from Dubuque — and they didn’t know about him coming out,” Iowa Western coach Scott Strohmeier said. “That’s how really under the radar he was.”

There are reasons Thompson (6 feet 3, 290 pounds) was beyond overlooked, and some were on him. He wasn’t all in on football early in his high school career and didn’t like playing defensive tackle because of the double-teams. Thompson struggled academically and failed a spring class as a sophomore, which cost him five games his junior year. Upon his return, he suffered a concussion and was withheld from competition so he quit.

Only a coaching change and prompting from his friends caused him to reconsider playing football in his senior year at Hempstead.

“My new head coach (Jeff Hoerner), who was my school adviser, he convinced some of the teammates I was playing with freshman and sophomore year to convince me to come back,” Thompson said. “They were doing that, and it ended up being the best decision of my life.”

Thompson’s final season coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant college coaches could not watch him compete in person. He finished with 37 tackles, including seven for loss. Thompson helped his team reach the playoffs, but he lacked the grades, resume and postseason accolades that attract attention. But he enjoyed the sport and wanted to evaluate his collegiate options.

“My name started going around, but my GPA was bad,” Thompson said. “Coaches couldn’t offer me. But I knew I wanted to go play. Coach Hoerner did a really good job of putting my name out to jucos.”

Iowa has multiple junior-college programs that routinely produce Division I talent, but none is better than Iowa Western. Strohmeier and his staff have built a national powerhouse oozing with enough talent that he routinely redshirts players so they can get in a year’s worth of academic work without costing them eligibility at a Division I program.

#AGTG I’m a All-America (2nd Team)🏴‍☠️🏆 pic.twitter.com/fiHfYqmUnc

— 𝕋𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕠5️⃣4 (@ThompsonAnterio) December 20, 2022

In Thompson’s case, he redshirted his first year but entered the program with commitment. Division I coaches routinely watched practice and had their eyes on everyone, including those not playing Saturdays. Thompson took it to heart.

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“In high school, I wasn’t the best student academically and as a person,” Thompson said. “I was in the hallway, skipping classes, I wasn’t really a role model. I came to Iowa Western knowing that this is my last chance. and I’ve got to make the best of it. So, when he redshirted me, I knew it wasn’t one of those years where, ‘I’m redshirting, and I’m not playing with the team so I’m just slacking.’ I put my head down. I went to the gym every day. I did my homework. I went to class. I started out the year great with a 3.5 GPA. I knew I was growing up.”

Thompson gained weight, became more physical and grew into one of Iowa Western’s best line-of-scrimmage players in 2021 even as a redshirt. He started to get noticed by visiting coaches just from how he practiced.

“He came in with the mindset of, ‘Hey, football and school.’ And that’s what he did,” Strohmeier said. “He probably could have played for us last fall. I mean, he was good enough. But we had so many guys, and we felt a redshirt (was needed). And sometimes being able to be three-for-three is beneficial, and so that’s kind of why we did that.

“Anterio was not what people would say a juco kid. But the stigma sometimes that comes with junior-college kids. He never had any issues off the field. He was picked to be a RA in the suites this year. He ended up turning it down because it was going to affect some fall camp. So, he’s like, ‘I need the money but at the same time, I can’t let it affect me playing football.’”

Bulked up by nearly 40 pounds, Thompson put together a great fall 2022 campaign. He finished with 32 tackles, including 10 for loss and six sacks, and the Reivers won the NJCAA championship with a 31-0 win against Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College on Dec. 14. Thompson was named a second-team All-American and ranked as the No. 4 junior-college defensive tackle prospect — and ninth overall — in the 247Sports Composite.

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Early in the fall, Thompson collected offers from Nebraska, Kansas, NC State, Washington State and Illinois. But there was only one program for which he wanted to play and one assistant coach with whom he connected best. It was at Iowa for defensive line coach Kelvin Bell.

“At the time we didn’t really have a true need inside so we kind of just kept him on the back burner,” Iowa recruiting director Tyler Barnes said. “But coach Bell did a great job with that relationship the whole way through, and he wanted to be here more than anywhere else. He was waiting on us.

“KB told me that, and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. We’re going to offer him and he’s going to take visits.’”

I’m In Yo City!!!!!🐤🖤 pic.twitter.com/ULeCYWJRxS

— 𝕋𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕠5️⃣4 (@ThompsonAnterio) December 16, 2022

Bell frequently traveled to Iowa Western — which is located about 250 miles west of Iowa City — and built a relationship with Thompson. They frequently texted, and an offer finally came after the Hawkeyes’ bye week in October. At the stroke of midnight Oct. 29, his 20th birthday, Thompson committed to Iowa.

“I already had my trust in him,” Thompson said of Bell. “He was one of the first showing an interest. I knew I wanted to go to Iowa; I was just waiting for an opportunity.”

“Sure enough, we offered him, and three days later he commits,” Barnes said. “He’s a great kid. He was 287 pounds this weekend; he looks like he’s 250. You like that when you’re bigger than what you look like.”

Thompson’s path to Iowa is similar to one taken by Daviyon Nixon, who was the Big Ten’s defensive player of the year and a unanimous first-team All-American in 2020. Nixon signed with Iowa in 2017, but the NCAA ruled him academically ineligible, and he played that fall at Iowa Western. Iowa appealed the ruling, and Nixon was allowed to enroll in January 2018. Nixon redshirted that year, played as a rotational defensive tackle in 2019 and became the nation’s most dominant defensive tackle in 2020.

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“They’re both really pretty athletic for their size. I think that’s some of the similarities,” Strohmeier said. “They’re strong. They came in with kind of different stories. Daviyon was a Division I commit, and Terio was unheard of. So Daviyon had all the spotlight right away, and Anterio had to earn it all and he did.

“To have the amount of offers that he picked up with, before he even played a snap for us, shows how dominant he was in spring practice.”

Almost a scary parallel took place on Thompson’s official visit two days after winning the NJCAA title. Thompson wears No. 54 — just like Nixon — and the posed photos show an uncanny likeness, especially in the way both defenders filled out their uniforms.

“He has a big personality like Daviyon, too,” Barnes said. “It’s actually kind of scary talking to him, looking at him in the jersey over there, like, ‘Holy moley, is this Daviyon or Anterio?’”

“I talked to coach Bell about it,” Thompson said. “I want to be my own person; I was thinking about changing numbers. But I wore 54 during my high school career. I wore it during juco. And it was like there’s no point in switching.”

After passing two winter term classes, Thompson will enroll at Iowa in January with an Associate of Arts degree and three years of eligibility remaining. He’s already stood tall in the way he has grown up. Now, it’s time to reap the benefits of his hard work.

(Photo courtesy of HawkeyeSports.com)

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