FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Myrtle Beach, S.C., is a place people visit. At any given time, the town will host roughly 78,000 tourists; the other 27,000 or so are its full-time residents.

So when one of its own finds success in a faraway place -- for example, quarterbacking a once-proud Indiana football program's return to college football's biggest stage -- people take notice.

Teammates point to Notre Dame QB Everett Golson's improved communication as the biggest gain he's made this season. AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Everett Golson will lead Notre Dame against Alabama in the Discover BCS National Championship. The game will be played Monday, six days after the dawn of a new year but momentous enough to warrant another holiday, nonetheless.

Jan. 7 is Golson's day in his hometown of Myrtle Beach.

Officially.

On the day after Christmas, while attending the Beach Ball Classic, an annual prep basketball tournament, the signal-caller of the nation's No. 1 team was handed a plaque by Mayor John Rhodes that proclaimed Monday as Everett Golson Day.

"Just real low-key, nicest kid ever," said Hugh T. Wallace, Golson's mentor and the former assistant principal of Myrtle Beach High. "Comes home, visits his family and gets back on the plane to fly back. Just a neat, unassuming kid."

Sit down with Golson for an hour, and football will rarely, if ever, come up, friends and teammates say. If one wished to find him during lunch period in high school, he could usually be found alone near a backstage auditorium playing the piano, according to those who taught him at Myrtle Beach.

"He's the same old Everett that we all know and love, and I don't think anything can change that," said Lynn Auman, his former orchestra teacher.

His older brother Edwin is a self-taught musician who started his own choir as a teenager, throwing concerts at the high school. He has recorded gospel albums since.