Shameka Wiggins surprised her son at his last home football game on Thursday night against the Bainbridge Bearcats.  

Last Thursday, during the Thomas County Central Middle School 8th Grade football team’s final game of the season against the Bainbridge Bearcats, a Thomasville native reunited with her son after three months apart. 

Shameka Wiggins, who has been stationed in San Antonio, Texas since 2018, said that she had started planning the surprise reunion for her son, Jaiden Wiggins, weeks in advance. 

“With the distance, I wasn’t able to attend any of his football games, so when he started playing he said, ‘Mom, this is my schedule,’ and I said ok and he’s been playing football since he was five years old,” she said. “I’ve never missed any of his games or his practices, so this was a really hard season so I said, you know what, we gotta at least make one of his games, we gotta at least try and make his last game.”

Speaking with the school, Wiggins let them know, alongside the coach for his team, what she was planning and to make sure it was all kept a surprise. 

Enlisted with the U.S. Air Force in 2000, Wiggins said that her son had moved from San Antonio to live with his grandparents in Thomasville to go to school there three months ago.

“So all the family got together and everybody was going to attend the game,” she said. “So, we booked flights, we got in yesterday morning and, from Atlanta, drove down and was able to make his final game, so that was, you know, a huge surprise for him. He had no idea that we were coming and I kept talking to him throughout the week.”

The reunion, she said, had both of them crying like babies.

“He cried like a baby,” Wiggins said. “It was an amazing experience, again, as a mother who, you know, hadn’t seen’t seen her child in a couple of months, I’m one of his biggest supporters, it was definitely a very sentimental moment for me. Just like Jaiden, I cried like a baby too!”

Walking out onto the field, she said, she could begin to feel the tears stream down her cheeks as she went to meet her son after months apart. 

“As I was walking on the field,” Wiggins said, “I could feel the tears as they started flowing, I couldn’t even hold it, keep it together.”

Flying back out to Texas on Sunday, Wiggins was thankful for the time that she had to spend with her son after so long.