Inside The Chart: Rebuilt

Rebuilt: Time and again, Trelain Maddox had to undergo the painstaking task of rebuilding himself. Now healthy (and a team captain), he’s ready to carve out a bigger role in the Georgia Tech backfield.

Inside The Chart | By Andy Demetra (The Voice of the Yellow Jackets)

Construction has always fascinated Trelain Maddox.

A childhood filled with Legos and Minecraft eventually led to Maddox taking a construction class in the ninth and 10th grades, where he earned his OSHA-10 safety certification (a fact he proudly notes in his online bio). During the 2020 pandemic, he took up woodworking at his family’s home in Stone Mountain, Ga., a hobby that has since evolved into a full-blown side business. Among his projects over the years, Maddox has built a gaming desk for his room; a trophy case for his parents’ house; and wooden cutouts for children’s birthday parties.

“That’s where I really found my passion outside of football,” he said. “I always liked building growing up. Doing it with real materials and stuff, I really fell in love with it.”

That passion now guides his studies at Georgia Tech, where the junior is majoring in business administration with a minor in architecture. Usually the two interests stay separate, though during construction of the Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center, he admits that distraction occasionally took hold.

“Sometimes I was a little too fascinated looking when it was first being made. Maybe at practice or something, just looking in the corner, watching what they were doing up there,” he laughed.

Maddox not only has interest in construction projects, but experience in them – namely, the long, arduous process of rebuilding his body to get back on the field. After several severe injuries derailed the start of his career, the 6-foot-2, 225-pound running back –once described by head coach Brent Key as “everything you want in a college football player” – has begun to show the kind of rugged, multifaceted playmaking he can provide to the Georgia Tech offense. He offered his best glimpse yet on Sept. 26, rushing for 40 yards and a touchdown while adding another four receptions for 48 yards and a score in the Yellow Jackets’ ACC opener against Stanford.

Trelain Maddox – 2026	Rush-Yds.-TD	Rec.-Yds.-TD
Games 1-3	9-38-0	3-31-0
vs. Stanford	6-40-1	4-48-1

“It just shows that I’m more versatile than what I had done in the first three games. I was blocking [more] and doing other things. I’m not shying away from any of those roles. I still want to block. I want to catch. I want to run. But it just shows that I’m versatile and I can do everything,” he said.

That production has now started to match up with Maddox’s leadership, which he has also demonstrated in droves. In August, Key named him one of his four permanent team captains alongside kicker Aidan Birr, linebacker Kyle Efford and defensive end Jordan Walker. He awarded him the honor for “what he’s overcome, what he’s gone through, (and) what he did on the field throughout spring and preseason.”

Maddox admits he was caught off guard when Key called him up after a preseason practice and delivered the news in front of his teammates. Weeks later, though, he remains low-key about the title.

“The ‘C’ doesn’t really change anything. You’ve still got to come in every day and work hard and lead the same way you’ve been leading. I look at it more as just a logo,” he said.

A logo, perhaps, but also a testament to his determination – and the example Key believes he sets for the rest of the locker room. Maddox committed to Georgia Tech in June of 2023 out of Parkview High School in Lilburn; he transferred there following three years at Buford High, where as a junior he backed up future Georgia Tech teammate Justice Haynes. Expectations soared after Maddox averaged 11 yards per carry through the first five games of his senior season.

He tore his ACL in the following game. Maddox had also torn his ACL as a freshman.

Key talked to him the morning after. “He told me, ‘Coach, don’t count me out.’ I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to play next year, and I’m going to help us win,’” Key recalled on his radio show last year.

Despite the conversation, Maddox still worried that Georgia Tech wouldn’t bother with a running back coming off two ACL surgeries. Recruiting can be fickle, especially for players with an injury history. He was grateful when Tech’s coaches assured him that they would honor his scholarship, and he enrolled a semester early to jumpstart his rehab with Tech’s sports medicine staff. He fulfilled his vow to Key and returned by the Yellow Jackets’ mid-September game against VMI.

“I called him in my office to tell him he was going in in the second series,” Key remembered that week. “I told him, ‘I remember when you called me and told me that,’ and he got the biggest smile on his face. It was kind of an emotional time.” Maddox responded by rushing for 53 yards and a touchdown in Tech’s 59-7 win over the Keydets.

The following week against Louisville, he fractured his leg and missed the rest of the season.

Asked if he began to have doubts about his career, if one long-term injury after another had sapped his willpower, Maddox didn’t waver. He understood the patience and meticulousness it takes to complete a construction project. He applied those same traits to his own rehab.

“It does go hand in hand, making sure everything is stable. If one thing is weak or not properly put back together, then the rest is going to fail,” he noted.

Rushing attempts were sporadic in 2025 (11 in 13 games), though Maddox earned one of Tech’s coveted “Hammer” helmet stickers for being a starter on all four core special teams units. With production up for grabs in the Spring, he gained another admirer in new running backs coach Jimmy Smith.

“Whatever you give him, he handles it, and you can give him more,” Smith said in the preseason. “Tre embraces any opportunity he gets to do anything.”

Those qualities earned him a captaincy in August, and they’re now earning Maddox a growing role in the Georgia Tech offense, where his highlights will continue to draw cheers from his wife of a year-and-a-half, Katherine. They first met in that construction class his sophomore year of high school, proving you can find both love and OSHA certification in the same place.

After a slow start, the Yellow Jackets know they have a rebuilding job ahead of them, which begins Saturday with a matchup against No. 23 Duke at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (3:30 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network). During the bye week, Maddox said, “We focused on just being competitive, making sure we’re competing and having energy on the sideline, taking every rep like it’s a game rep and translating practice into the game.”

The Jackets will try to follow their resilient, rebuilt captain, who will be on the job himself Saturday, ready to go to work.

Full Steam Ahead

Full Steam Ahead is a $500 million fundraising initiative to achieve Georgia Tech athletics’ goal of competing for championships at the highest level in the next era of intercollegiate athletics. The initiative will fund transformative projects for Tech athletics, including renovations of Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (the historic home of Georgia Tech football), the Zelnak Basketball Center (the practice and training facility for Tech basketball) and O’Keefe Gymnasium (the venerable home of Yellow Jackets volleyball), as well as additional projects and initiatives to further advance Georgia Tech athletics through program wide-operational support. All members of the Georgia Tech community are invited to visit atfund.org/FullSteamAhead for full details and renderings of the renovation projects, as well as to learn about opportunities to contribute online. 

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