Lane DeGregory: PAHOKEE — On the day he thought would change everything, Fred left home early while his siblings, nieces and nephews slept. He skipped breakfast, not even a Pop-Tart. His stomach was tight with excitement.
As he waited outside for his ride to school, a slate sky blanketed the black muck behind him. Ahead, the sun climbed above the clouds, casting a golden glow across the projects.
Dontrell “Fred” Johnson, 19, pulled the flip phone from his shorts: 7:28 a.m. Then he shouldered his flowered backpack, which was stuffed with hope.
All year, college football coaches had been sending him letters telling him how much they wanted him. Wake Forest, Youngstown State and Mars Hill. Schools he had never heard of, in states he had never seen.
Like most of his teammates in Pahokee, a tiny, impoverished town on Lake Okeechobee, Fred had never flown in a plane, had barely been out of Florida. He had spent his life between two water towers, in 5 square miles surrounded by sugar cane — and shadows of players who had come before him. Guys from Pahokee High whom he watched on TV, playing for the Detroit Lions, Baltimore Ravens, Atlanta Falcons.
Football is the story Pahokee loves to tell about itself. The team won five state championships in six years, from 2003-08, and in the past half-century has produced 25 professional players. This year five former Blue Devils are in the NFL, the second most from any high school in the country.
Fred was one of five Pahokee seniors being scouted in 2013; all the guys had played together since elementary school. On the square of grass in Fred’s subsidized-housing circle, they had learned to pass, hit and run plays. And every winter, when workers burned the cane fields, the boys chased rabbits that dashed from the flames. Catch a cottontail, the old men said, and you can cut it at an NFL draft combine.
But first, the boys had to play in college.
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