SPIRE Summer 2019

“I was like, ‘Antonio, we got a house,’” Freeman told SN. “He was like, ‘I don’t care what it looks like, yes, yes, we got a house, and it’s right across the street.’ “’I won’t be late for school no more.’” The house was an immediate relief for Freeman and her family, she said, but she can’t discount the role Fort Mill High School played in helping support her son. “I believe his coaches were able to see that we were trying to make it work and they were willing to assist him in every possible way they could. Fort Mill was so great,” Freeman said. “They were a great school. I think that was part of the journey that was supposed to be. It didn’t happen by chance. It was ordained for us to be there.” With that support, Dawkins was able to perform better in the classroom. His stops at previous schools (Fort Mill was the sixth high school he attended) still affected his overall GPA, but by all accounts, he became an excellent student. When Dawkins first arrived at Fort Mill, he was mistaken for a sophomore because of his size - “He was a little guy,” Susi said - but one-and-a-half years and 30 pounds of muscle later, he’d become one of Fort Mill’s best playmakers. Three times he earned defensive player of the week honors as a senior, putting up four interceptions and eight passes defensed. Those efforts didn’t go unnoticed. Dawkins remembers how, at first, he refused to get his hopes up he could attend college. He also remembers the moment that fantasy became tangible. He came home one day, well after he’d played his final snap at Fort Mill, to see a large package from Chowan University on his doorstep. He and best friend Tee Muhammad took it inside and saw for themselves: A scholarship offer. They cried tears of joy. And when Freeman found out, she cried too. “It was as if we had won the lottery,” Freeman said. The offers started rolling in: from Limestone College, Ave Maria University, Newberry College, Mercer and Campbell, among others. Football, which was once a distraction for Dawkins, was now a means of escape. But he had another milestone to accomplish first. “For me, graduating high school, for my family I was happy,” Dawkins said. “As far as And football player.

for me, what was going through my head was, ‘I was supposed to do that. This is a part of the journey.’” The next step saw Dawkins attend Division III Bethany College, a small liberal arts school in West Virginia, to start his collegiate football career in 2014. Two years later, feeling he’d accomplished all he could there, he transferred to Division I N.C. Central. But the setting in Durham, North Carolina, was too familiar and offered too many distractions and chances to get in trouble. Through a coach’s recommendation, he transferred to play for NAIA school Bluefield College. In the rural setting of Bluefield, Virginia, Dawkins was able to maintain focus on school. While there, he lived in an on-campus, three-bedroom apartment - a far cry from the locker room where he once laid his head. He made the Dean’s List every semester (something he’d accomplished at Bethany and N.C. Central, too). Dawkins, who at one point wondered where his next meal might come from, could choose when and what he wanted to eat (because he hopes to play professionally, it was and still is usually a medley of salmon, sweet potatoes, brown rice and spinach). On the football field, the same tenacity Dawkins showed at Fort Mill helped him become a standout for the Rams, who boasted one of the NAIA’s best pass defenses in 2017 with him in the secondary. In two seasons, he compiled 55 tackles, 17 passes defensed, two interceptions (one returned for touchdown), three fumble recoveries and two forced fumbles. His magnetic personality, competitive nature and hard work drew people to him. But, much like at Fort Mill, he kept the circumstances of his upbringing a secret. “I did not know about his upbringing until an article came out this past summer on him and I could not believe what he had been through because you would not have known that now,” Bluefield coach Dewey Lusk told SN. “Not that he doesn’t want you to know, but he’s not going around wearing that on his sleeve either.” With Dawkins’ story now out in the open, he hopes to serve as an inspiration for kids going through similarly difficult circumstances, to show “you don’t have to become what you’re seeing or your environment.” That’s the decision Dawkins faced back at Fort Mill: “Sink or swim.” He now openly admits he

nearly made the wrong choice.

“I really didn’t see a future in too much of nothing,” Dawkins said. “I felt like everything was failing. “Six-plus years later, Dawkins is no longer homeless. He’s engaged. He’s a college graduate. He eventually wants use his education to start a marketing firm,

Antonio Dawkins on the field for Bluefield (Christian Simpson/ Sporting News).

appropriately enough, to create exposure for small businesses. Regardless of what his future holds, those who know him best have nothing but confidence in him. How could they not, after seeing what he has overcome? “He is going to do well. No matter what he gets into, he is going to be fine,” Susi said. “I hate to say having all that adversity made him what he is today, but he made the right decisions. You can’t say that about a lot of guys that would be in his situation.”Said Freeman: “He has such a drive, such a desire to succeed, that I don’t see him failing. ... He is going to be great either way.” Dawkins has options going forward. He aspires to play football professionally - it’s gotten him this far - and he knows the inherent difficulty in attempting that feat. But then, he has faced tougher obstacles. This is merely the next one. “I know I’m going to have to work 10 times harder than anybody,” Dawkins said. “That’s all I have ever had to do in my life.” Written by: Zac Al-Khateeb Reprinted with permission from Sporting News.

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