Before he gripped a football for the first time, you could often find young Quinshon Judkins with a piece of maple wood beneath his feet with four wheels attached.

The freshman running back's first passion was skateboarding, a rather unique sport to gravitate to for a kid who grew up in Montgomery, Alabama -- in the heart of SEC country in a football-crazed state -- but Judkins says that was what he dreamed of becoming from the first time he rode one at five years old.

Judkins doesn't exactly remember how it started. He just recalls he and his childhood best friend finding a skateboard one day, trying it out and becoming hooked.

Fourteen years later, Judkins is one of the best running backs in college football. He's catalyzed an Ole Miss offense that ranks third in the country in rush yards per game (267), behind only two service academies who run the triple-option offense.

HIs talents will be on full display Saturday as No. 11 Ole Miss hosts No. 10 Alabama at 2:30 p.m. on CBS.

Judkins' 1,036 yards rushing and 13 rushing touchdowns are the most in program history by a freshman. He broke that pair of records in nine games. He's run for the eighth-most yards in the country, has scored the third most touchdowns and was recently nominated as a semi-finalist for the Shaun Alexander Most Outstanding Freshman Award.

Judkins possesses a rare blend of speed and power. He has naturally great vision, and the speed at which he can change direction or make a cut -- and then return to running north-and-south -- is rare. He also arrived at college with a body prepared for the rigors of SEC football, which is somewhat uncommon for true freshmen. If you ask Judkins, he'll tell you that his creativity and patience are his two strongest skills.

"Being a running back, I like how you can make guys miss." Judkins said. "You can develop your own play by doing the small things. It's the little things that people may not realize that make a huge difference when it comes to being a good running back. Leaning toward one side of the offensive line to get the defensive end leaning to set up the cut back, and being patient enough to time it right. You can be really creative in how you approach things."

Both of those traits are what pulled him toward skateboarding at a young age.

"When learning how to ride a skateboard, you have to have balance and a lot of patience. You don't land tricks immediately. You have to be patient and continue to work," Judkins said. "Landing one single trick can take days, weeks or months of practice. Patience is huge. It's the same way in football. It takes more than one try to score a touchdown and the little things matter a lot. I learned a lot from skateboarding. More of it transferred over to help me learn football and how to be a good running back than you might think."

Judkins is sharp. His mother is an attorney and his father owns and operates several businesses. He took Advanced-Placement classes from the ninth grade until graduation -- which made becoming an early enrollee at Ole Miss last winter a formality more than a challenge. He's got a knack for tackling most challenges in front of him. When he commits to something, he usually becomes pretty good at it. Judkins eventually got sponsored by a local skateboard shop in Montgomery and made highlight reels for small companies.

"I love the swagger skateboarders have," Judkins said. "I love their swagger when they land a trick. I love that other people enjoy it when you land a trick. I didn't really think much about it. We just really had a lot of fun skateboarding."

Quinshon Judkins is a client of The Grove Collective, an exclusive NIL program created to support and elevate Ole Miss student-athletes.

Judkins eventually hung up the helmet and elbow pads in favor of a facemask and shoulder pads at 14 when he realized that he might have a future in football. He doesn't ride anymore. The risk of injury is too great. Tweaking an ankle while attempting a new trick would be a tough one to explain to Ole Miss Lane Kiffin and the coaching staff, but he still owns multiple skateboards and took one final ride last December before heading off to college.

Judkins’ path to Ole Miss and his journey to this point in his football life is hardly a typical one, even if it began that way. He began playing football at the age of 7. He was initially a quarterback, but realized -- in his words -- he "couldn't throw very well," and was eventually moved to running back.

In 2016, just before his 7th grade year, Judkins moved 20 minutes southeast of Montgomery to Pike Road, which has a population of a little less than 10,000. Pike Road was a new school system originally planned in 2010. In 2015, its first school opened. It was a K-8th school.

That same year, the school system announced that it had purchased a building nearby and 26 surrounding acres and planned to turn it into a high school set to open in 2017, which it did when it welcomed 480 7th-thru-10th graders that fall -- Judkins being one of them.

The town population grew much more rapidly than the school system's ability to purchase or build new buildings. Overcrowding became an issue. In June of 2018, the Pike Road School System purchased what was previously Georgia Washington Middle School and turned it into its high school building that housed grades 8-12.

Next came sports.

Patrick Browning knew what he was up against when he accepted the job to become Pike Road's first high school football coach. He remembers meeting Judkins for the first time in spring 2016. Browning was standing in the middle of a makeshift outdoor weight room he and the coaching staff built to have some semblance of a strength program.

The school campus at that time, previously an elementary school, was not originally designed to accommodate everything needed to be a high school with varsity athletics, therefore there was no room for a typical high school weight room.

Browning and the staff built outdoor power, bench and squat racks. They stored the weights in a shed. Kids lifted during P.E. class. One day, as kids interested in playing on the football team trickled into the weight room area, up came a 13-year-old Judkins.

"I remember thinking he had a pretty naturally strong physique for his age," Browning said. "We knew we might have something here."

Browning was facing an uphill battle. How exactly do you start a football program from scratch? How do you generate interest among the kids? Even more difficult, how do you get them to stick around when there were sure to be a slew of losses and tough days ahead?

"I sort of brainwashed them," Browning quipped. "I told them as 7th and 8th graders, if they stuck it out, we were going to win a state championship. I believed it, but it is another thing to actually do it. But I promised them and made them believe that

"I sort of brainwashed myself into believing it, too."

The first year, Browning and his upstart Pike Road group played a middle school schedule. The next fall, they played a junior varsity schedule. They improbably put together back-to-back undefeated seasons, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. Things seemed way ahead of schedule, thanks in no small part to their crafty tailback Judkins.

“I remember in my first junior varsity game in 8th grade, I had five touchdowns," Judkins recalled. " I remember thinking that most of our opponents are all older than me and I am still having success. That is when I thought, 'Okay, maybe I am pretty good at this.'"

Then, in the fall of 2018, the toughest challenge awaited as the Patriots embarked on their first season of high school football. Browning estimates having 40-something kids in that first season, mostly consisting of 9th and 10th graders with a small junior class and no seniors. Two weeks before their first game, the team spent a couple of days moving their practice facility to the new school campus. In this uphill battle, everything was new.

Pike Road started the season 5-0 but lost five of its next six games, finishing 6-5 in its inaugural season.

"The hardest thing to do as a coach is build a culture," Browning said. "If you don't practice a certain way and carry yourself a certain way and have a certain level of discipline, you are not going to have long-term success. That first loss was a tough pill to swallow for us. We went 1-4 with in those final five games a bunch of 14 and 15-year-old kids. But we were instilling a culture of winning. We installed a system of accountability and really made a difference in how hard we hit the weight room and how hard we practiced."

For Judkins, that year required patience. Physically, he wasn't quite ready for the rigors of high school football at 14 going on 15 years old. In a normal setting, Judkins would've played junior varsity only as he prepared for his 10th grade season, but that simply wasn't an option. Pike Road didn't have enough bodies. Judkins played sparingly in nine games, only totaling 19 carries. Success had come easy up until that point, and that season frustrated him.

"That jump to facing seniors as a ninth grader, his body may not have been fully ready yet. He would get frustrated with me, but he just wasn't quite ready yet. But he stuck it out and became one of the best running backs to ever come through the state of Alabama," Browning said.

Browning was acutely aware of Judkins' potential. He also knew what kind of kid he was -- a smart, loyal and hardworking leader by example. Judkins' character embodied the ethos of those 40-something kids that came together as seventh graders in a ragtag, outdoor weight room and bought into becoming a better version of themselves from day one.

"I did not want to look back and regret having let him slack off and not reach his potential," Browning said. "I was hard on him throughout, and it wasn't always easy. He didn't always like it, but he responded well to it and he turned into what he is today."

Much like mastering a new trick on a skateboard, Judkins kept at it, kept practicing, kept lifting and kept trying. He ran for 1,131 yards with 16 touchdowns and averaged 10.6 yards per carry his 10th grade year as the Patriots went 10-0 in the regular season and made it to the second round of the Alabama 3A playoffs.

In a COVID-riddled fall of 2020, Judkins' junior season, Pike Road made the jump from 3-A to 5-A. The Patriots went 10-0 in the regular season again, but lost in the first round of the playoffs. Judkins ran for 1,482 yards and 25 touchdowns. In its first three seasons of high school football, Pike Road amassed a 27-7 record.

There may have been something to that unwavering sense of belief that bordered on being brainwashed after all. A coach and team that had been together since seventh grade -- literally from day one of its inception -- had one last thing to accomplish: winning a state championship. And they had one final crack at doing it in their senior year.

The Patriots accomplished just that, and left no doubt on their path to doing so. Pike Road went 14-0 in 2021. The Patriots averaged 46.4 points per game. They won every game by double digits. They outscored their opponents 650-142, shut out six opponents and capped it off with a 51-14 victory in the state championship game. Judkins ran for 1,534 yards with 26 touchdowns that year.

The team doused Browning in a Gatorade bath as the final seconds ticked off the clock. "You deserve it Coach," they shouted as hugs were exchanged and fireworks popped off above Protective Stadium -- the home of the UAB Blazers.

"We went on a run of dominance that no one had seen happen that fast in the state," Browning said. "It's all because those kids believed it to be possible, going all the way back to that first day in that weight room we built. It's pretty amazing, looking back on it. It's even more amazing to actually do it. It was so surreal once it actually happened."

Clad in a tan sweatshirt, jeans and a cap with some AirPods popped in, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin sat alone in the bleachers on that December night as he watched Judkins and Pike Road do the unthinkable just four years before that season.

Kiffin believed he had identified an elite back and wanted to ensure he sealed the deal on a player that has ultimately altered the trajectory of his team's season just 10 short months later, keeping Ole Miss in pursuit of an SEC West division title as the calendar turns to November.

“I don’t usually say that I’m surprised about any of these guys because we have high expectations,” said Kiffin earlier this season. “I knew he was special. We knew he was physical but his vision is really unique.”

The photo of Kiffin in the stands has become somewhat symbolic of what he knew was possible in signing Judkins. And the freshman phenom's path to Ole Miss, instead of nearby SEC West foe and in-state school, Auburn, was largely forged through Judkins loyalty, creativity and that unwavering sense of belief.

"Being from Alabama, you hear about Auburn and Alabama. You don't really know what to expect from the out of state schools that recruit you. Visiting Oxford is what really changed things for me. It was a great experience to get there, see the campus life. It was a really joyful environment and I loved the people," Judkins said. "I knew Coach Kiffin and this staff were building something special here. They just know how to win. It is that simple, and I wanted to be a part of that."

Ole Miss made the three-star Judkins a priority more so than any other suitor, and did so early on in the process. He felt wanted. He was sold on being an every-down back that is used all over the field, with a chance to make an impact immediately. By nature, high school recruiting largely consists of unkept promises, unrealistic declarations and delusions of grandeur.

Coaches will say anything to get a player to sign the dotted line on his letter of intent. After that happens, it matters very little whether or not all of those promises and selling points come to fruition. More often than not, they become just that -- unrealistic and therefore unkept. Judkins sensed something more honest and genuine about the plan and vision Ole Miss sold. He bought into it and thought it to be possible, much like he did as a seventh grader in an outdoor weight room listening to Browning promise a state championship.

Judkins remained loyal in his commitment to Ole Miss, despite late pushes from Auburn and other suitors. That loyalty has paid off, as it would be nearly impossible to argue that plan and vision hasn't come to fruition. Judkins is a bonafide superstar in the sport, and it's all happened in less than nine months. Judkins turned 19 on the same night he carried the football 34 times for 205 yards and a touchdown as he willed a banged-up Ole Miss team to a victory on the road at Texas A&M.

None of this is surprising to the man who has seen this journey take flight from the time Judkins was 13 years old.

"Am I surprised that he is playing this early? Absolutely not," Browning said. "You have to understand, he has been built for this since seventh grade. He expects to win every time he puts on his helmet. Belief is a powerful thing. It has to be organic and it has to be real. He truly believes that when he steps on a field, his team is going to win. Quinshon believes that he is going to will his team to a win. That's all he has done ever since he stepped on a football field is win."

Judkins was a pillar of the culture Pike Road built from scratch. The journey wasn't without its hiccups, bumps in the road and moments of frustration.

He thought about throwing in the towel when he played sparingly as a freshman, but elected to stick with it. Judkins remained patient and continued to forge onward until he improved himself into more of a complete running back. After he got through that season and became a better version of himself. From there, his creativity and unique vision shined as he became one of the top prospects in Alabama, on his way to becoming a difference maker in the SEC as a true freshman.

"Quinshon is such a terrific kid. He was raised by great parents and he does the right thing, even when it isn't easy,” Browing said. "Not all kids want to do things the right way. Not all kids want to attack the weight room and practice field every day. Not all kids want to go to class.

"When they get up to college and they aren't ready yet, they might want to party and slack off. I guarantee Quinshon isn't doing that. He is laser focused on being the best running back he can be for Ole Miss. He is laser focused on making the best grades possible. He is laser focused on being the best in the weight room and practicing hard every day.

"Some kids have to be trained to do that. Quinshon doesn't have to be trained to do that. He's been doing it for years. Quinshon isn't a freshman in his mind. He is just a freshman on paper."

As Judkins blossoms into a collegiate star, he's helping fuel his team's ascent to the precipice of potentially putting together back-to-back 10-win regular seasons for the first time in school history -- and he's no stranger to making history.

That unique blend of power, speed and remarkable sense of vision, makes it look like everything comes easy for him. But that doesn't mean the journey hasn't been long and taxing. It has required patience and perseverance. He's had to get back on that proverbial skateboard a lot, and continue trying until it becomes more natural -- until he perfects that next trick or skill.

Above all else, Judkins sets a high bar for himself to jump over. He's never really known any other way of doing things, and has forced himself to have an unwavering sense of belief I that whatever goal he sets is possible, even if it seems far-fetched.

"I expect to be SEC Freshman of the Year," Judkins said in August. "I set the bar high, but I really believe I can accomplish it."