The Arizona Wildcats had just completed their final on-campus practice before the season opener against Hawai'i when Thomas Reid took a knee in the team's normal post-practice scrum.
 
Coach Kevin Sumlin and his Chief of Staff, Dennis Polian, always address the team and go over various items before the team disperses. Polian sometimes reads off a few names of players that he needs to visit with after practice.
 
As Reid leaned on his knee and listened, he heard Polian mention that he'd like to speak to him to follow-up on something.
 
"I was sitting there, and I heard my name, and I was just thinking, 'did I not do something I was supposed to?'" Reid remembered. "There were a whole bunch of thoughts going through my head. Everything kind of froze."
 
Reid walked over to Polian, where he certainly wasn't in any trouble. Instead, Reid, a walk-on who was preparing to enter his fourth year with the program, had earned a scholarship.
 
"It felt great," Reid said. "It was everything I was working for. Once I realized I had accomplished it, and it was something I earned, it just felt amazing. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders."
 
Reid's parents were already on a flight to Hawai'i to watch their son play. So Thomas had to send his parents a text message, which he later found out from other parents on the plane that they received and let out scream of excitement upon receipt.
 
For Reid, the scholarship was the end of a chapter in some sorts. The athletic wide receiver, who earned honorable mention All-Pac-12 honors in 2018 as a special teams ace, didn't start playing football until seventh grade. The son of a military chef, Reid was born in Virginia, before moving to Kansas, then back to Virginia and finally to Hawai'i for high school.
 
At the end of his junior year of high school, Reid had a pair of scholarship offers to Division I schools, but both programs then experienced coaching changes and Reid suddenly went from two offers to zero. He began applying to universities that interested in him in hopes he could walk-on and join the program.

Reid was accepted to Arizona and chose to move to Tucson, where he walked on with the Wildcats. He earned the attention of the coaching staff and his teammates with his special teams ability and saw the field quickly, especially for a walk-on.

"I knew that was my way to get on the field," Reid said. "I wanted to be on the field, and everything is about effort and I'm always going to work hard to get there. When I first started playing special teams, I knew it would be my way to travel and get on the field."
 
Off the field, Reid is finishing his degree in psychology. He said his dream job would be to be a sports psychologist, because of his own experiences in high school.
 
"I feel like sports psychology is something that's overlooked a lot," Reid said. "I really want to get into that. I dealt with depression in high school, and I want to help other people that go through the same thing and help with anxiety and depression.
 
"I want to make sure no one feels alone. That's the passion behind what I want to do."