FAYETTEVILLE — Katie Peek remembers like it was yesterday her oldest son insisting that he did not want to begin his freshman year at Gilmer (Texas) High School.
Jeff Traylor, who served as Arkansas’ running backs coach from 2018-19 and is now in his third season of a successful stint as head coach at Texas-San Antonio, had recently left Gilmer after a decade-and-a-half run as head coach to become a college assistant. Understandably, Landon Jackson, Peek’s son, wanted to weigh his options.
The summer ahead of his eighth-grade year, Jackson, who had lived in Gilmer for two years, opted to stay with his father, Larry, in Texarkana, Texas.