Boaz Stanley hoping to take next step as team leader

For all the talent South Carolina lost to the NFL Draft last month, the Gamecocks also lost something far more difficult to replace than raw ability: leadership.

This time last year, transfer linebacker Demetrius Knight was starting to emerge as someone who would ultimately show elite leadership skills. Knight and several other transfers joined a program that had multiple returning veterans who were already ingrained as team leaders.

Head coach Shane Beamer recently admitted at the Florence Welcome Home Tour stop that he hasn’t seen any newcomers completely grab hold to key leadership roles on the team yet, but he has seen signs of those things emerging.

“I think Boaz Stanley on the offensive line has those qualities — I do,” Beamer said. “I was telling Boaz, last year — and even when Spencer (Rattler) came in — it’s kind of like you go through January, February, you’re trying to get acclimated as a new guy.

“You go through spring practice, you’re trying to figure out how practice works, how we do things. And then you have a little bit of a break in May and then when you come back for summer school, you’re more established and you can kind of take the bull by the horn.”

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Like the guys before him, Stanley just went through that exact process, arriving on campus as a natural leader but trying to find his way in a new place and program with new teammates, which is something he and Beamer talked about in his spring exit interview with the head coach.

“One thing I said is that you can’t really come into a new place and start trying to just hold everybody accountable,” Stanley said in a recent Gamecock Club Hour interview on 107.5 The Game. “You’ve got to kind of like lead by example and that’s something I’ve really been focused on during winter and during spring ball. I think that’s the first step you have to take as a transfer. You’ve got to try to earn everybody’s trust.”

Stanley, an Athens, Ga. native, who played right tackle and center at Troy before joining the Gamecocks, had an excellent spring on the field, leading Beamer to say after the spring game that he’s the current leader in the race to be the team’s starting center.

Stanley has not only talked with Beamer about his future role on the team but has started having discussions with his fellow offensive line teammates about how they can all work to build better chemistry together this summer.

“That’s the main thing that we’ve kind of seen during spring ball is we’ve just got to build chemistry between whoever is playing and that’s only going to come with more time spent together, just going out to eat together or getting more work in outside of when we’re working as a team,” he said. “That’s the main things we’ve got to work on is spending more time together, becoming even better friends than we are now, I think that will really take our game to the next level on the field.”

South Carolina had success last season bringing in older, more mature players via the portal and then empowering them to take on leadership roles.

Beamer is hoping to see the same in the coming months for the 2025 squad.

“I think that’s what Spencer did in a lot of ways,” Beamer said. “That’s what D Knight and a lot of those guys did. I think there are multiple guys that have those qualities, and we need them.

“Nick Sharpe on the offensive line, I know he was banged up, but I think he’s that kind of guy. Boaz, certainly playing center, there’s a natural leadership element to that position that’s important. I’m sure there’s a lot of em, but those would be two, particularly on offense, that come to mind.”

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