The fascinating roots and gritty guts of what makes Georgia star Nick Chubb

CHUBBTOWN, Ga. – When you get to the delightfully Southern intersection of Booger Hollow and Chubb Road, take a right.

From there, drive about two miles of twisting, narrow, northwest Georgia back road. The graveyard will be on the right, the church up just a little ways on the left.

This is where you find the roots of the Nick Chubb story. Not the guts of the story, but the roots.

The sign at the entrance to the small, rustic cemetery lists the eight Chubb brothers who are buried there: John, George, Issac, Henry, Jacob, Nickolus, William and Thomas. They were the founders of Chubbtown, an unincorporated community that came into being sometime during the Civil War – "circa 1864," according to the sign. The remarkable thing about the Chubbs is that, by family lore, they were all free African-Americans. None were slaves. Yet they moved from the mid-Atlantic and settled in the belly of the Confederacy during the war, surrounded by slavery and racist ideology, and by all reports thrived.

They farmed, ran a sawmill, a grist mill, a post office, a general store, and a forge. In 1870 they built Chubb Chapel, which still stands. And as family members began to die, they were interred in the plot of land across the road from the church. Today there are a few dozen humble markers, plus other graves that appear to simply be marked by rocks. There are veterans of World War I, World War II and the Korean War there, and dates on the headstones stretch from the 1800s to the 2000s.

These are the ancestors of the star running back who came out of these remote hills near the Alabama line with his own athletic mythology, in addition to a remarkable familial backstory.

But as fascinating as the Georgia sophomore's lineage is, you have to detour from the roots – what's left of Chubbtown – and drive a few miles down the road to find the guts of Nick Chubb's story.

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The Chubbtown story has gotten some media traction this year. Nick's father, Henry – a direct descendant of the founding brothers – lives nearby in Cave Spring, Ga., and has enthusiastically recounted it.

But Nick's parents divorced when he was a pre-schooler, and he didn't spend much time in the Chubbtown area. According to many people who know Nick, he is closer with is his mother, Lavelle Chubb, who moved her three children (Nick is the middle child) from Cave Spring to her hometown of Cedartown 10 miles away.

And so on a rainy night I wound up eating Chick-fil-A with her in Hiram, a waystop on her two-hour nightly commute home to northwest Georgia from her job pre-certifying insurance for patients at a pain management clinic in Atlanta. Here you find the guts of the story.

Lavelle knew when she was pregnant with her children that they were going to be special – first Zachary, then Nick, then daughter Neidra.

"I'm not magical or nothing," she said, in a rural drawl. "But I had a parent's intuition."

Intuition is a powerful thing.

When Nick was 10 or 11, he broke his hand playing football. The injury made him even more determined to become a great player. So he wrote a letter, addressed to nobody.

"He said he was going to do something, and people from Cedartown were going to know who Nicholas Jamaal Chubb was," Lavelle recalled. "He said he wasn't going to just be a good athlete, he was going to be an intelligent black man. He's always been self-motivated. Very determined."

There was, for instance, the winter day when the family couldn't find him in their house. They looked outside and discovered Nick bundled up in a coat and a hoodie, with a rope around his waist and tied to a large tire, pulling it across the yard. He'd grown so frustrated by his inability to beat big brother Zach in foot races that he was concocting his own ways to improve his speed.

"That kid is different," Zach said of his younger brother. "He just has a different mentality than a lot of people."

There were the times when weather would force cancellation of a practice or game, and Lavelle would have to deal with the disappointment. She would call the coach of the team and put him on the phone to explain it to Nick, wearing his uniform and crestfallen to hear that there would be no competition that day.

When he showed up at Cedartown High – colors red and black, mascot the Bulldogs, a veritable Georgia breeding ground – the football staff already had an inkling of what it was getting from coaching Zach. But Nick had even a little more fire to go with even more talent.

He grew into something of a local legend. In addition to the family lore, there was the modern mythology that followed Chubb out of the hills that form the starting point of Appalachia.

At Cedartown. Nick became the athletic freak who won the shotput in the state high school track and field meet, while also qualifying in the 100- and 200-meter dash – an almost unheard-of combination of talents. He was the guy photographed leaping like a 228-pound Michael Jordan while loosening up for a sprint at a track meet. He was the small-town behemoth squatting 650 pounds, bench-pressing 400 and power-cleaning 395.

There were natural gifts, for sure. But there also was the desire that helped enhance those gifts.

"Everywhere Nick goes, whatever Nick does, it's the best he can do," Cedartown High School coach Scott Hendrix said. "You never get halfway from Nick. It's such a blessing to have dealt with a kid that talented who has that kind of work ethic."

Self-motivation, determination and work ethic – those things would certainly qualify as family heirlooms passed down from the Chubbtown side of the family. But those traits are taught with twice the force when coming from both sides. Nick's mother Lavelle grew up the same way.

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Brenda Weaver worked the third shift six days a week at a textile mill not far from Cedartown, making blue jeans. She was a single mother, trying to provide for two children.

"I didn't understand her being tired," Lavelle said of her mom. "I didn't know why she didn't want to do things with us."

Brenda had played basketball and threw the javelin in track. Lavelle did both sports as well, but said "low self-esteem" held her back. She was intimidated by competition.

"I just didn't think that highly of myself," she said. "Not now. Now I'm like, all them people who intimidated me, I don't know why. Those people weren't as cool as I thought they were, they weren't as smart as I thought they were. You live and you learn."

Lavelle lived and learned to parent a little differently than her mother did. She sometimes worked two jobs – always something in the medical field, and sometimes a part-time position at a fast-food restaurant or the local hospital – but she interacted with her kids.

"I would rent a movie, buy board games, go to the skating rink, whatever," she said. "I never skated, because I was the head of the household and I couldn't have a broken bone. But I'd take them.

"Growing up we didn't go on family vacations, but I took my kids on vacations: Florida, Gulf Shores, Myrtle Beach. My kids love water. I don't. I don't even like sand. But I stuck it out for them."

Her kids took note. They know that she drove the same car from the time they were little until they were in high school. They know that almost all the fun purchases – the stuff beyond the bare necessities – went to them.

"Watching her sacrifice for us, that inspired me," Nick said. "She always made sure we had what we needed."

The sacrifices haven't just been paycheck-to-paycheck. They've encompassed major life goals.

Lavelle would like to finish college – she's about a year away from getting a human resources degree online. She would like to one day write books or screen plays (subject matter undisclosed, for now). But today, she remains a working woman with a singular focus: taking care of her kids.

She has drawn her lines – no video games during the week for most of the time the kids were growing up – but she also listened. That was another departure from her upbringing, when Brenda Weaver was the voice of authority. Period. There wasn't any room for debate. Lavelle has been less autocratic with her kids.

"We'd have a monthly meeting," she said. "Everybody gets to say how they feel about anything – didn't mean I was going to change it, but they could say what they wanted. You can say anything you want negative, but you have to come back at the end with something positive. Then we'd say we love each other, and we'd end it with a prayer."

Prayer is big with Lavelle. There was always Bible study on Wednesdays, and always church on Sundays – but nothing else.

"On Saturday I would cook meals for the whole week," she said. "I would iron 20 outfits for the whole week. On Sundays, after we get out of church, we don't do nothing. To this day, Nick likes to rest on Sundays. He may have a meeting or a little workout, but after that he will rest. We prepare our minds for the whole week."

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At Chick-fil-A, Lavelle Chubb is preparing her mind for Saturday. That's when Alabama comes between the hedges.

It is a huge game for both teams. The Crimson Tide is an underdog for the first time in a record 72 games, and a loss would push them to the brink of elimination in the College Football Playoff race. For Georgia, this could be the breakthrough victory the program has been seeking since roughly forever – or perhaps since Herschel Walker was on campus in the early 1980s.

It also is a matchup of two of the best running backs in America: Alabama sledgehammer Derrick Henry against Nick Chubb. They're both physical specimens who hold the keys to their respective offenses. Henry will not have it easy against the Georgia defense, but Chubb is running against what is generally considered the best front seven in America.

Zach Chubb will be in Sanford Stadium, eagerly to see his brother perform. Lavelle Chubb wants no part of it.

"I'll be at home with a pillow over my face," she said. "It's going to be too much. I'm not afraid he's going to get hurt – it's just the unknown."

Lavelle has gotten over her penchant for "fussing" at officials and coaches, but she still isn't exactly a cool customer at games. When you have invested as much as she has in her kids, it's impossible to be a dispassionate observer as their lives – and in Nick's case, future livelihood – play out front of you.

Nick Chubb can earn a little more renown for his remarkable family tree Saturday. The roots of his story are in Chubbtown, but the guts of it will be sitting on a couch elsewhere in northwest Georgia, with a pillow over her face, praying that her determined boy can win the day again.

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