Edison football standout Julius Gillick runs for his late friend

Julius Gillick was forced to sit out last week as Edison claimed a CIF Southern Section football championship, all over some dumb stuff, leaving it in teammates’ hands whether he’d again pull on the green jersey.

They got him through, rolling to a 35-21 victory over Simi Valley in the Division 3 final. The senior running back, a generational talent for the Chargers (10-4), will be back on the field this weekend as the CIF Southern California Regional playoffs kick off. Another triumph, he’ll be back again a week later in the state championship game.

This means everything to Gillick, but the rewards that winning brings are just a piece of that. Most important is the opportunity, at least one more time, to honor “one of the best dudes you’d ever meet.”

Gillick has barreled through or sprinted past foes for 2,112 yards — just 156 off Kerwin Bell’s 45-year-old single-season school record — and 32 touchdowns this year wearing a No. 9 jersey with Amarr Murphy-Paine’s name across the back, where Gillick’s would go. “Forever” and “Amarr” are etched on the black strips under his eyes, and every play begins with a nod to the tattoo on his left arm.

It reminds him of home and how things used to be.

Edison High senior Julius Gillick, right, pictured with his late friend Amarr Murphy-Paine from Seattle. Murphy-Paine was gunned down in front of his high school last June while trying to break up a fight.

(Courtesy of Julius Gillick )

“He was real special energy, him and [his father, Arron] — I call him uncle — they just bring this joy to every situation,” said Gillick, who met Murphy-Paine when they were 12, bonded over music a couple of years later, and were more or less inseparable until Gillick’s family, escaping rising violence in inner-city Seattle, moved last year to Huntington Beach. “He was someone that was always there, and there’s not a lot of people like that. Unconditionally, just a really, really good dude.”

The aspiring rapper and junior football player at Garfield High School was shot to death last June while trying to break up a fight in the campus parking lot. Gillick received the news from friends, while at school, almost in real time. It was, he said, “the worst pain I ever felt in my life.”

Gillick switched from No. 18, in which he rushed for 1,596 yards and 15 touchdowns as a junior, to Murphy-Paine’s No. 9 and entered this season on a mission.

“Amarr always had this this phrase: ‘They can’t mess with us. They’ll never be able to be us,’ ” Gillick said. “It wasn’t egotistical. It wasn’t cocky. It wasn’t anything other than just confidence, where every situation he would be in, he would know he was the best at it. And that confidence is something that I feel I lacked until he passed away. And then when he did, he kind of bestowed that onto me, somehow.

“I don’t think I’m a cocky person. I’m aware that there are people that can do things that I can’t. I’m grateful for what I have, but I feel that nobody can can mess with me. I’ve been given a confidence that I never had, that I always recognized in him. So every single time I run the ball, it’s with him in my mind.”

The charismatic Gillick, whom star linebacker Matt Lopez calls “literally the heart of our team,” has run it down opponents’ throats all season, topping 200 yards five times and 300 once, the attacking yin to Edison’s lockdown defense’s yang. He is the school’s career rushing leader.

“He’s special,” head coach Jeff Grady said. “He’s got a great combination of skills —good feet, he’s big, he’s physical, he’s got good burst, he’s downhill — and he uses them all.”

Edison running back Julius Gillick, center, with his parents, displaying the name of his late friend Amarr Murphy-Paine on the back of his jersey.

(Courtesy of Julius Gillick)

Gillick, who this week decommitted from Montana, describes himself, as a back, as “someone that gets stuff done.”

“I’m not the fastest. I’m not the strongest. I’m not the toughest,” he said. “I’m really not anything. I just feel capable. And that I want it more than most people. ... I think unique is the best word, because you can go a lot of places and you can find someone maybe that’s better, but you can’t find anybody like me.”

His teammates discovered that once he opened up to them.

“I got here and I didn’t really feel like talking or making any friends,” he said. “I didn’t really want to leave Seattle. I was kind of forced out of my city. I was not safe — if I had stayed, I probably wouldn’t be here telling this story — and I was like, ‘I’m here for football. I’m going to do my thing. I’m going to be a good teammate and I’m going to get out of here,’ you know? And I ended up meeting some some great people and found some friends that I’m sure I’ll keep the rest of my life.”

Lopez said that Gillick is a character, one of of the funniest guys on the team.

“He doesn’t really have a filter, and that’s kind of what makes him unique,” Lopez said.

Said receiver and defensive back Jacob Martin: “He lightens up the room every time he walks in, and he brings the team up with him. Anytime were at practice and we need someone to lean on, we’re going to go to Julius for that.”

Edison running back Julius Gillick (9) has 2,112 rushing yards and 32 touchdowns this season.

(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

Gillick was suspended from the Division 3 final after his ejection from the semifinal win over Vista Murrieta for two unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties.

“It hurt really bad, to be honest with you,” said Gillick, who was flagged for spinning the ball in the end zone after one of his six touchdowns and entering the field, to celebrate with a teammate, without his helmet. “But at the end of the day, we got a victory, so all that really matters is the ring I got.”

Along with a few lessons.

“[I learned that] my actions really do have consequences, and I need to pay more attention to stuff,” he said. “It was a humbling experience, knowing that because of what I do, who I am, people pay more attention to my actions, and I really need to be a better example. I need to follow the rules more, show a lot more class, because people watch, people see, people take note. And I need to be the best person I can be, both on and off the field.”

Gillick returns Saturday night against San Diego Section Division I champion Granite Hills (11-2) at Huntington Beach High. Win that, and the Chargers head to the CIF State 1-AA Bowl, against Fresno Central (11-2) or San Francisco’s St. Ignatius (10-2), Dec. 14 at Saddleback College.

Murphy-Paine will be alongside him.

He always is.

“I still find ways to talk to Amarr,” Gillick said. “You could scope through my messages, I’ve got about 700, 800 unanswered texts on his phone right now. I still try to keep him updated, you know? It’s not going to get a response, but I message him every day. I tell him I love him all the time.”