Everyone loves a good Homecoming game. For Michael Leadmon, B ’14, this year’s was extra special.
Leadmon, who goes by the callsign “Iron Mike,” and three of his fellow U.S. Air National Guard airmen, performed the fly-over at Williams-Brice Stadium prior to South Carolina’s upset win over then-number 10 Texas A&M. To top it off, Leadmon got to run out on the field with the team, lead the “Go Gamecocks” chant in the stadium, and be honored in front of the crowd.
“It was a dream of mine to come back to South Carolina and do the fly-over,” says Leadmon. “Being welcomed back to the school in a way that made me feel like I was a contributor was too cool. It truly felt like a homecoming, so that was an appropriate game to fly over.”
Leadmon says when he was deployed in the Spring, he and some buddies saw a request from South Carolina come in for the flyover and they jumped at the opportunity.
“There is a website on which NCAA, NFL, and sometimes MLB teams will request flyover support from any Department of Defense branch,” he says. “We were trying to focus on something positive while deployed, and promptly accepted that request from USC as soon as we saw it come through.”
The fly-over itself was memorable, but Leadmon pointed out that they were flying in a tight formation at high speeds, so he took what he estimated as “two-tenths of a second” to glance down over his alma mater’s stadium.
“It was awesome to see Williams-Brice Stadium in all its glory from up there,” says Leadmon. “In the moment, you don’t get to see or hear much from the air, but the fun really began when we went back to the stadium after landing.”
