South Georgia football hotbed turns Russian football novice into FBS recruit

Four years ago, Artem Korchagin was lying in a hospital bed in Moscow, unsure of what was happening to him.

At age 13, he was fighting off an allergic infection that had begun attacking his body. Surrounded by doctors and uncertainty, the world outside his hospital room was shifting, too.

His father, an industrial engineer, had just received word from his company that he was being transferred — not to another Russian city, but more than 5,000 miles away, to a small town in Georgia. Not the country, but the state.

Shortly after, Korchagin was out of the hospital, healthy again, and a year later, moving to the football hotbed of Thomasville.

“I felt great,” Korchagin said, remembering when he first heard the news. “At first, I was like, ‘Nah, he’s just saying it to make me feel better.’”