Stone Furrey’s path to South Carolina came with a built-in complication: his father coaches the Gamecocks’ wide receivers.
That connection made the dream obvious to everyone else, and it made the recruiting process harder for the Class of 2026 receiver. Stone said other schools routinely assumed he was bound for Columbia and backed off.
“So many other colleges would come up to me or tell my dad,” Stone said, “‘We’re not gonna offer your son,’ or ‘We’re not gonna offer you because we just think you’re gonna go to South Carolina.’ So it was a hard recruiting process for me.”
Still, he kept waiting for the right call. And it had to come the right way, too.
Mike Furrey did not want to be the one offering his son a scholarship. That message needed to come from Shane Beamer.
There were “rumblings,” Mike said, that Stone might earn an offer after impressing at South Carolina’s 7-on-7 camp last summer. But even after Stone transferred from Chapin to Dutch Fork for his senior year and posted 38 catches for 688 yards on a state championship team, nothing was guaranteed.
A few days after Dutch Fork won the state title, Beamer finally called. Stone stepped outside to take it.
“(He) told me I have a spot on the football team,” Stone said. “My eyes kind of lit up because it’s a dream. Not even just to be able to play here, but also play for my dad.”
Inside, his mother, Koren, watched him laugh with tears in his eyes. She’s been around enough coaching families to know those moments are usually life-changing, but this one hit differently because it was her son on the other end of the phone.
“You don’t realize until you see it through your son - gosh, that really is special,” Koren said. “When Shane Beamer’s name pops up on your phone, you know, that’s a big deal.”
Mike said he had no advance warning that the offer was coming. He also said he wasn’t always sure what direction Stone wanted to take, careful not to force football on his children just because he played seven years in the NFL.
But eventually it became clear that Stone wanted the whole experience - the program, the coaching, and the chance to be around his father every day.
“This is what he wanted,” Mike said. “He wanted to be coached by us ... and be coached by Coach Beamer.
And wanted to be around Dad and wanted to be coached by Dad. So it became a pretty cool moment once we realized all that.”
Stone made it official soon after, announcing his commitment on Jan. 7, one day before enrolling for the spring semester at South Carolina. At 5-foot-10 and 181 pounds, he enters a wide receiver room that already includes seven first- and second-year players.
Standing out will take work. But Stone has already spent a year at Dutch Fork and grown up with a coach’s expectations at home, so the adjustment hasn’t caught him off guard.
Mike has also been blunt with him from the start.
“I mean,” Koren said, “it was real clear, ‘This is a weakness. This is a strength.
This is what you have to work really hard at.’ .... But Stone, like Mike - you can’t see a kid’s heart, right?
I always felt like (with Mike), that’s what kept him playing as long as he did. He loved it.
He works hard. He’s smart.
He knew where everyone was supposed to be, not just himself.”
That kind of film-room upbringing has been part of the Furrey family for years. When Mike was grinding through the XFL and Arena Football League before making the St. Louis Rams roster in 2003 and playing in the NFL until 2010, Koren would sit with him for hours using flash cards or a dry-erase board to work through playbooks.
Now there’s a glass top over a wooden table in the Furrey home, and it’s become the family’s latest chalkboard. Stone used it heavily when he transferred schools and had to learn a new offense fast. Even now, though he lives in a dorm, he still comes home and brings the playbook to his mom.
The balance has gotten trickier as Stone gets older, especially when “sometimes Stone gets Dad and not Mike or Coach.”
“This summer,” she added, “we really tried to be Dad.”
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