((HT: AJC))
Doug Roberson got a cool assignment the other day. It's one of those stories that always yields a good feature or two- open tryouts for something working from the ground up: the Georgia State football program.
"His wife has asked. His closest friends have asked. Even his coach has asked him if he is sure.
Each time, Kenyatta Ashley has said yes, he’s sure he wants the pain and even the potential humiliation that come when an old man tries out for a new football team.
Of course, he’s really not wired to answer no. Four years as a Marine taught him that. Until Monday that is, after the first day of Georgia State’s open tryouts were over ((Head Coach Bill Curry pictured, thanks GSU Athletics)).
For a few seconds, Ashley stopped and consider it: “Am I sure I want to do this?”
Why would a 35-year-old man, a former corporal in the Corps, a decorated police officer now retired, want to try out for Georgia State’s new football team? His calves were burning. His thighs were sore. His stomach was tight. And he still had to drive back across town, where he coaches a football team of 8-year-olds. He did not have to dwell on the question long.
“Of course, I do.”
So, there was Ashley again on Wednesday, working out in empty Hallford Stadium in Clarkston, doing agility drills with 40 younger men, some with a few full seconds on him in the 40-yard dash, not to mention a few inches on him in the waistline. At stake: one of the few scholarships that coach Bill Curry is going to award to walk-ons, or at least another invitation to come back in August and try out again.
“I figure I’ve got nothing to lose,” Ashley said. ” I’ve done so many other things in life, to be only 35.”
After five years with the Alabama Department of Corrections, Ashley, his wife, Melissa, and son, Keyeion, moved to Decatur from Birmingham in 2002, when he joined the DeKalb County Police Department.
“I saw police as an extension of the Corps,” Ashley said.
He was promoted and served in several specialized units, until Ashley’s left hand was wrenched one night trying to arrest someone who, as he puts it, didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t think much of it at the time, until it happened again two years later. A trip to the hospital revealed the damage was serious. A piece of metal was surgically inserted to stabilize the hand and lower arm, but it left him unable to bend the hand backward. Nor could he pull magazines out of his belt. In 2007, he was forced to retire.
He enrolled at Chattahoochee Tech last year and began taking classes in criminal justice when he first heard about GSU’s fledgling football team. A workout fiend, Ashley (5 foot 9 and 205 pounds) was in the gym when a friend suggested he try out. His left hand still allows him to catch and carry the ball. Ashley downloaded the questionnaire and sent it in.
Two weeks later, George Pugh, the recruiting coordinator and defensive backs coach for Georgia State, called to invite him to come out. So, there stood Ashley Wednesday, the metaphor for Georgia State’s new football team: a man and a school trying to fulfill new dreams.
Ashley played high school ball at Carver in Montgomery, a defensive back adept enough to be recruited by Elizabeth City (N.C.) State. Pugh says that fundamentally, Ashley is not so far off from the younger hopefuls, though he had to note Ashley had trouble running a straight line during one of their first drills. The second time, he blistered it.
“We’re such a young team,” said Curry, who plans to ask Ashley to return to practices in August. “If he can do the basics with that kind of mentality, he could be priceless.”
Ashley isn’t here to be anyone’s inspiration, though.
He wants to make the team.
He wants his wife to be able to wear a T-shirt that says “Wife of the Old Dude” to their games at the Georgia Dome.
“I’m going to play,” Ashley said.
“And I’m going to wear my T-shirt,” Melissa said.
And, yes, he’s sure he wants to do this."
Here's FOSG Dave Cohen interviewing Curry about the new GSU program...
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