"It caught us all by surprise. You looked at her and you could’ve sworn nothing was wrong with her. I had just made by way back from fall break. Coach Burns was looking for me after lifts and dad was in Coach Young’s office, the defensive coordinator who recruited me. All the coaches were sitting in the room with my dad and my sister’s godfather, who I call my uncle. Everybody was quiet. Nobody was saying anything. Some coaches were not even looking at me. I thought I did something wrong. I thought I was about to leave Stetson because when I first got here, I almost got kicked out because of financial reasons so I thought it was about that.

My dad took me to the balcony and he starts giving me a spiel about life, telling me how there are things I can’t control and how we have to face them as men and understand that some things happen for a reason. His exact words were ‘I can’t sugarcoat this anymore, your grandmother died of a heart attack on Tuesday.’ It was Thursday when I found out. I felt like I lost a lot of my sanity, my peace, my happiness. I felt like I lost a lot. I wanted it to be a lie.

My grandmother was a second mother to me. After my little league games, I can still remember telling my grandmother how I would be able to take care of her the way she was taking care of my parents, my little sisters, and me. To find out she was gone, a lot was taken out of me. It has taken a lot of time to slowly build back. I will never recover from that. I will never be the same. I do my best though because that’s what she wanted. I will cry sometimes and ask why she’s not here no more, why she’s not in the stands watching me play because I wanted to do all of this for my parents and her.

I can’t even count how many times I was bullied me for the dreams that I had because I was undersized, how many times people counted me out, how many times I was told I was too small, too slow, not big enough. How much of an effect it had on me. She would always tell me ‘you don’t ever have to worry about that, I promise you. You are going to end up being the best and everyone is going to realize it, but it will be too late when they do.’ I used to think, ‘What is she talking about?’ Now, I wish she was here so I could just thank her for all that.”