South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer completed its offensive technical team on Sunday with the hiring of Justin Stepp as your wide receivers trainer. Stepp, who was born in Columbia, had previously been in Arkansas as the program’s wide receivers trainer since 2018.
Graduated from Pelion High School and Furman University, Stepp started his coaching career in the state of Palmetto. He was a wide receiver and strength and conditioning trainer at Fort Mill High School in 2007 before entering college.
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He spent a season (2008) serving as a North Greenville wide receiver trainer and recruiting coordinator. He then spent three seasons at Clemson as a graduate assistant in the attack. For the past nine seasons, he has been strictly a wide receiver coach; first for Appalachian State (2012-14), then SMU (2015-17) and Arkansas (2018-20).
Stepp was the primary recruiter for Arkansas’s 2021 Class best rated signatory, the four-star Ketron Jackson receiver (Royse City, Texas / Royse City). The same can be said of the four-star athlete Raheim Sanders (Rockledge, Florida / Rockledge). According to his all-time commits page on 247Sports.com, Stepp was the top recruiter for five four-star candidates.
During Stepp’s career as a wide receivers coach, he taught three different players who combined for four seasons of receiving 1,000 yards.
He did not produce a 1,000-yard receiver in Arkansas, but five players combined in six seasons over 400 yards and 26 touchdowns in three seasons. Treylon Burks, a four-star wide receiver of the Class of 2019, had 29 receptions for 475 yards as a freshman in 2019 and led the team at the reception in 2020 with 51 receptions for 820 yards and seven touchdowns.
Courtland Sutton and Trey Quinn at SMU were 2018 selections from the NFL Draft. Sutton, a Denver Broncos runoff pick, recorded a career receiving totals of 3,152 yards and 31 touchdowns in 189 receptions over four seasons at SMU.
Over the first two seasons of Stepp at the Appalachian State, he coached three players who won five distinctions from the All-Southern Conference, including the All-American Sean Price, who set the NCAA Division I FCS freshman records with 81 receptions and 1,196 yards received in 2012.
Stepp returns to his hometown to train Gamecocks wide receivers, a group that fought hard in 2020. Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo could not count on any wide receiver other than senior Shi Smith, who led the team with 57 receptions for 633 yards and four touchdowns. Smith, who is in the Top 10 in the program history for receptions and receiving yards, will not return in 2021, having already declared that he will enter the NFL’s 2021 Draft.
The next best receiver, in terms of statistics, was the junior Jalen Brooks, who was not released to play until the fifth game of the season due to a transfer feature. Brooks had just 11 receptions for 100 yards in six games. Other wide receivers on the 2020 list are junior redshirt Chad Terrell, junior Josh Vannsecond year red shirt Dakereon Joyner, second year Xavier Legette and freshmen Rico Powers, Ger-Carl Caldwell and Mike Wyman.
Redshirt senior Randrecous Davis and junior redshirt OrTre Smith are receivers who have chosen to leave for the 2020 season.
The 2021 subscription class includes a three-star wide receiver O’Mega Blake (Rock Hill, SC / South Pointe) and wide receiver three stars Sam Reynolds (Alabaster, Ala./Thompson). The program also acquired Ahmarean Brown from the NCAA transfer portal. The 5-foot-10, 170-pound receiver will qualify as a second year in 2021. He has played 20 games with Georgia Tech in the past two years, with 33 receptions for 619 yards (18.8 average) and eight touchdowns.
Stepp joins an offensive technical team from Gamecocks led by the offensive coordinator and defender coach Mike Bobo. The other coach hired from the 2020 team was the running back coach Des Kitchings. Former quarterback Gamecocks Erik Kimrey was hired to train hard tips and Will be friend goes from Knoxville and Tennessee to Columbia and South Carolina football to coach the offensive line.