“She had some friends coming in and I told her not to worry about it, we had a double header on Saturday, and I’d see her then,” he remembered. “I said, ‘I love you!’ and she told me she loved me.
“That was the last conversation I ever had with her.”
On Saturday, his mom wasn’t in the stands for those two games at Northmont. And on Sunday – which was Mother’s Day – she failed to pick him up for the jobs they both had at Long John Silver’s. She was always a conscientious worker and that was a sign something was truly wrong.
When Jerell couldn’t reach her on the phone – Saturday or Sunday – his worst fears settled in.
" My mom was my rock, but I was being real with myself and I knew it probably wasn’t good,” he said. “I didn’t want to false hope my two younger sisters, but I didn’t want to say anything about what I was really thinking either.”
He went to school Monday and again on Tuesday.
As he was headed into the weight room Tuesday to prep for the team’s upcoming Lift-a-Thon, he said he got the call from his maternal grandparents – Charles and Alta Marrs – with whom he and his eldest sister, Jordaya, lived:
“They said, ‘We need you to come home!’
“But I told them, ‘I’m not coming home. I already know!’
“I hung up and went in the weight room and it wasn’t long until two cops walked up the stairs. Everybody stopped and they were all staring at me. That’s when Coach Nees (longtime football coach Bill Nees) came and got me and brought me out into the hall with them.
“The cops said, ‘You have to go with us, unless your grandma says you don’t, because you’re a minor. I was like, ‘OK, I’ll call her.’ And I begged her not to get me. She agreed and they let me go back in, but it really hit me.
“It wasn’t just because I was upset. It was embarrassment, too. Everybody knew.”
Elizabeth Lewis was just 36 when she died in Dayton on May 14, 2019.
“They said she OD’d,” Jerell said quietly. “I didn’t even know she was into that stuff. They found her with her soon-to-be husband.”
She left three children: Jerell, Jordaya Walker, and the youngest, Treasure Higgins, who lived with her.
Jerell played a baseball game that night and went to school the next day.
It was his way of coping. “I kinda had a ‘that’s life’ mentality,” he said.
His mom – a 2000 Piqua High grad – had had him when she was a teenager and had gone through some early struggles. His dad was in trouble and mostly has been out of the picture in his life.
His mom did love coming to Jerell’s games and he said that was one reason he didn’t skip any right after her death:
“She loved watching me play and I don’t think she would have wanted me to stop.
“Most of all, though, I figured I had to be strong for my two sisters and do something to show them that we weren’t going to be statistics. I already had a chip on my shoulder from a lot of things that had happened over the years and my mom’s death made it an even bigger one. But that just made me more determined than ever to prove people wrong.
“I wanted to show my sisters that even though something bad happens, you can make it out.
“I wanted them to see that when life gets tough, you can go two paths. You can go the easy way like everyone does or you can walk down the path least traveled and make something of yourself.”
If there’s any question which route he has taken, consider this:
--As a senior, he was a first team All-Ohio football selection and was named the Miami Valley League’s Defensive Player of the Year.
--He was voted the Homecoming King at Piqua.
-- Out of high school, he got a football scholarship to Fordham University in the Bronx. He came home after month, in part, he said, because his sister was “slacking off’ and he wanted to get her “back on track.”
--Although he said he had gotten football offers “from every D-II school in Ohio,” he said he’d been overlooked by almost all Division I schools, who thought he was too short (5-foot-11 ¾) to play defensive end. A few schools like Bowling Green offered to take him as a walk-on, but he said he wasn’t willing to compromise.
-- Eventually, he came to the University of Dayton and said he appreciated the way then head coach Rick Chamberlin spelled it out for him: “I really liked Coach Chamberlin. He didn’t sugarcoat anything. He told me what it was here and what it wasn’t.”
The only thing he didn’t agree with was when Chamberlin suggested he might not see significant playing time until he was a junior.
That played into the chip on his shoulder. “Before he said anymore, I told him I wanted to commit here,” Jerell said. “In my mind, I was going to show them all.”
And he’s done just that.
As a freshman, he played in nine of 10 games, started one, had 23 tackles, two sacks and five tackles for a loss. He won the ROTC Cannonball Award given to the team’s top newcomer.
Last year, as a sophomore, he played in all 11 games, had 34 tackles and two sacks.
This season, under new head coach Trevor Andrews, there are high expectations for him as a 6-foot-1, 240-pound defensive end.
--And, in yet another sports venture this summer, he made his foray into Mixed Martial Arts competition. As part of the Fightopia MMA team from the Smile Back Training Center in Piqua, he won his first heavyweight bout in a cage by TKO.
‘Best feeling ever’
“When I was a senior in high school, I house jumped,” he said. “I lived with my grandparents, but I know that was tough (financially) for them at times. So I stayed with friends and coaches and my tattoo artist, Johny Conner. He also started the Smile Back gym —it’s a great place – and during COVID I got really close with him.
“He trained me. We boxed a little and wrestled and mostly I got more fit. I went from 295 pounds down to 215.
“He became a big aspect in my life after my mom passed away. He and his wife tried to give me guidance and help me out with things.”
Conner’s wife, Chelsea “Tiny Tank” Faulder is a trainer at the gym and a professional MMA fighter.
“This summer I was just going to them for cardio,” Jerell said. “But Chelsea had a big local show in Troy and Johny said, “I know you’re a little green, but do you think you can do it? Do you think you could fight?’
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a chance.’
“They have a couple of in-house pros at the gym (fighters like Jayde Sheeley and Diamond Long) and they all gave me a great support team.”
On June 17 – as part of the EGO Fight Series that Conner launched – Jerell stepped into the cage against Mateo Muniz at the Miami County Fairgrounds in Troy.
He came in at 237 pounds and Muniz, who was making his amateur debut with the Demolition Fight Team of Findlay, weighed 213.
“I had really bad fight jitters before the bout,” Jerell said. “I was supposed to fight late on the card, but they bumped me up to second match and I was freakin’ out.
“I was all amped up at the start and came in heavy-swingin’ and going too strong. It was kind of a fight or flight mode.
“In football, it’s go 15 seconds hard and then take a break. When you’re fighting, you’re in a marathon and you have to pace yourself.
“But my team had prepared me really well and in the second round I was more myself.
“We locked up and I threw a knee into his sternum and he kind of folded over and fell on me. I fell back into the cage and then fell on top of him. As we were falling, I locked into the guillotine and I was cranking it up and wanted to mount up, but he tapped out.”
Jerell won by TKO at 0:58 of the second round.
Adhering to NCAA rules, he received no pay for the bout, but he said there still was plenty of reward:
“Being an individual is not my forte, I like the team aspect. But I have to admit, when you fight and win in the cage, it’s the best feeling ever. Doing that right there in front of my hometown, my family and friends was really a high.”
Although he was offered a boxing match later in the summer, he turned it down because it would have been a week before the start of UD’s football camp, and he didn’t want to risk an injury that might put him in bad light in front of the new coaching staff and hurt team preparations.
Right now, life seems finally to be going well for him.
His girlfriend, Cara Reed, graduated from Edison State with an associate degree in engineering and has transferred to UD.
He said his oldest sister now lives in Trotwood and is a nurse and his youngest sister has started her freshman year at Piqua.
“Back when we were growing up, we didn’t have much money for a lot of things,” he said. “That’s why holidays are different for me than for a lot of people.
“What was important was that me, my sisters and grandparents were always together. We had each other. Nothing is more important than family and people who really care for you.”
Included in that list are several of his high school coaches, the people at the Smile Back gym and especially the community that supports Piqua and its athletic teams.
“One day I want to be a coach, too,” he said. “And I wouldn’t mind coming back to Piqua High. There’s a culture there and I love it. There’s pride in the football program. There’s tradition and the community is behind it.
“That’s how I got through a lot of what happened. The community backed me 110 percent.”
Tattoos tell his story
As Jerell and I sat together in the Frericks Center the other morning and talked, you couldn’t help but notice the tattoos that cover both of his heavily-muscled arms and his left leg. All were done at Endless Ink Tattooing in Piqua, the shop founded and owned by Conner.
“My tattoos tell the story of my life,” he said quietly. “I hate it when people get random tattoos. Everything I have is meaningful to me.
“For me, it was my way to cope with my mom’s death. I get to tell my story that way.”
He said his right arm is “dedicated to my family and who I am.”
Among the many tats there are his sister’s favorite bible verse (Proverbs 3: 5-6) and there’s an intricate tomahawk to designate the Piqua Indians.
“My grandparents aren’t into tattoos, so my grandpa was like, ‘If you do have to have something for us, make it religious,” he said with a smile as he pointed to his upper left arm.
“This is the stairway to heaven,” he said. “And the three crosses are for my grandparents and my (paternal) grandma.”
He’s most proud of the inkwork dedicated to his mom.
His upper right arm has praying hands draped with rosary beads. Beneath them are his mother’s birth and death dates.
He lifted his gray “Dayton Football” T-shirt to show a tattoo covering his chest.
“I’m a big mama’s boy, so this is for her,” he said. “Her favorite number was 8 and in high school, I wore 8. This image has the number 8, a halo, and wings. And there’s a red X in the middle. That’s so my mom can always find me.
“It goes back to my junior high days.
“We all wore navy blue uniforms at Piqua – we all looked the same – so I wore red gloves so my mom could always find me on the field. That way she could see what I was doing.
“And you know, even though she’s gone now, I still wear red gloves to this day. Maybe it’s a force of habit. But she’ll still be able to see me.”
And now, more than ever, she would like what she sees.
He’s walked down the path least traveled.
He’s made something of himself.
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