A troubled football standout tries for one last chance

PORTSMOUTH

The heavy bag moaned as Deveon Simmons hammered away, Thud, thump, thwack! Thud, thump, thwack!

The rusty chain squealed as Simmons swung his ham hock of a right arm, clubbed the bag with his paw.

For all the questions that remain about Simmons, this much is certain to anyone who knows him or has crossed him: He's still a devastating hitter.

As a hulking linebacker with sprinter's speed at Landstown High School in Virginia Beach three years ago, he slammed running backs, laid out wide receivers. As a boozed-up, doped-out wild man on the club scene, he bloodied the face of anyone foolish enough to bump him and not apologize.

"Never knew a guy I couldn't tackle," he said. "Never lost a fight, neither. And I've been in too many to count."

On a sweltering day in June, though, he was training for the only fight that matters anymore. Sweat rolled off his crinkled brow as he huffed his way through another brutal workout. It was hot in the dimly lighted weight room, upstairs at Portsmouth's Cavalier Manor Recreation Center.

He looked into a full-length mirror, staring at a bloated version of what he used to be, and wondered:

Can I get back a football career that's been dead for three years? Can I stay away from drugs and jail?

He scowled as he returned to punishing the heavy bag.

"That bag is like a focal point for all my anger," Simmons said. "I have a lot of that."

He's mad at those who have doubted him. Mad at his father, who left him. Mad at the principal who expelled him, and the neighborhood dealer who first got him high.

But mostly, Simmons is angry at himself.

"I shouldn't be here, and I'm not going to stay here."

No, in fact, he's already gone. He packed up the last week of June and flew to Perkinston, Miss., to attend Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

The football coach there called Simmons this spring and offered a second chance. The defending junior college national champs needed a linebacker, and they'd heard he used to be a pretty good one.

But there were conditions, and all the work would be on Simmons. So here he was. At the heavy bag. Preparing to become a 22-year-old freshman.

"It's going to be a long road," said Simmons, who is haunted by mistakes from the past. Because of what he calls a misunderstanding, he still faces warrants for his arrest on some misdemeanor charges in Virginia Beach.

" People ask me: Can you still hit? I say it's natural. That's easy. School is the hard part. Life is the hard part.

"Football, that's my born talent."

 

There was probably only one player in Hampton Roads who could've stopped Greg Boone that night in 2004.

Oscar Smith High's 6-foot-4, 260-pound quarterback took the snap and barreled toward the end zone, trying for a two-point conversion and a trip to the state semifinals. Landstown led Boone's team 40-39 with 1:16 left to play. Boone, now a Virginia Tech tight end, had been known to carry defenders on his back.

But Simmons had his own ideas. The two stars collided at the 1-yard line. Simmons drove him back. Stopped him cold. Landstown went on to win the Group AAA state title.

"Every time I see Boone on TV now," Simmons said, "I think, 'Man, if he can make it... ' "

Simmons was named the Beach District's best defensive player, and first-team all-state, two straight years. He had 105 tackles as a senior, plus eight sacks, six forced fumbles and 13 touchdowns as a part-time tailback. He was a rare combination of strength and speed, carrying a muscular 220 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame that could move like a receiver's.

He ran the 40-yard dash in a ridiculous 4.39 seconds in front of college scouts.

Landstown's coach at the time, Chris Beatty, called him "the most explosive player I've ever seen."

Percy Harvin was on that same Eagles team. Harvin is a dynamic receiver and running back for the University of Florida. He owns a national championship ring and is a top Heisman candidate this fall.

But while Harvin is dangerous, Simmons was scary.

"He takes heads off," said Scotty McGee, a star running back at Ocean Lakes High at the time. "My main goal was to stay away from him."

Rivals.com rated Simmons the No. 8 outside linebacker in the nation and one of the top 100 overall prospects in the country in the Class of 2005. His college suitors included traditional powers such as Florida, Georgia, Nebraska and Oklahoma. He wanted to stay in state, so he signed with Virginia Tech.

"He should be in the NFL now," Harvin said of his old teammate, whom he still calls a best friend. "I've been playing in the SEC for two years, and I've only seen one linebacker in college that I'd even put in the same sentence as him."

None of that mattered, though, on the night when police officers stripped Simmons naked in a cold jail cell.

Less than a year after he'd saved the day against Boone, officers were checking Simmons' body for gang markings. They screamed in his face, wanted answers, said they'd heard he was running the biggest gang in Virginia Beach.

"I'm like, 'Where'd you get that from?' I was bad, but not that bad. That was awful. I'm thinking, 'How did I end up here?' "

 

To say it all went wrong when Simmons was expelled from Landstown a few months before graduation would be oversimplifying his story. He had been teetering on disaster long before that.

He grew up without a father. He often was left alone while his mother, Sharon, who declined to be interviewed for this article, worked two jobs to take care of him and his siblings. He fell in with a bad crowd.

"I saw people shot, saw people deal drugs, saw cops roll up on folks. You had to be mean. You had to let people know you weren't nobody's punk."

So he developed a hard edge, a bad attitude. It showed up on the streets, where he'd deliver a beating to anyone who dared him - and even some who didn't. And it showed up in school, where he had no use for studying, no respect for teachers.

He was a football star, and that probably gave him a longer leash than most, but he was pushing his luck by his senior year.

"I don't think he had a bad situation at home," said Angel Smith, Simmons' girlfriend of seven years. "His mom was

really good to him, but she could only tell him so much. He was a hothead."

Finally, the pot boiled over.

Harvin and Simmons agree on the events that led to Simmons' expulsion.

Kids at school, one in particular, had been hounding Harvin, who had had his own share of problems at Landstown.

"We'd been in trouble. Anything else, they were going to kick us out. This guy knew that," Harvin said. "And he kept brushing me. He wanted me to start something."

Simmons took care of that. He and Harvin rounded up a crew, mostly football players, and headed to the offender's neighborhood after school. An all-out street brawl ensued.

A gun was pulled. Everyone fled. Fortunately, no shots were fired.

"Probably not the smartest thing, going there," Harvin said this summer. "We were lucky. I learned from that; fighting makes no sense. Unfortunately, Deveon likes to fight."

Soon after that showdown, the kid who'd pulled the gun approached Simmons in the school cafeteria. Simmons, never one to back down, hopped to his feet.

They shouted at each other, made a spectacle and, Landstown administrators said, incited a riot.

Other students "were yelling, 'Fight! Fight!' But we didn't even fight," Simmons said. "They pulled us apart, and... I didn't think anything of it - until they told me I was out."

Without graduating, there was no way he would make it to Virginia Tech that fall.

Beatty set him up with a junior college, but Simmons never showed up there.

By then, he was already circling the drain.

"I didn't care anymore. I was running the streets, hanging out, partying all the time. Coming back felt like too much work. My mind was made up: There were no more chances for me."

 

Simmons became a regular on the police blotter in the three years following his expulsion. The charges ranged from the stupid to the scary: driving without a license, underage purchase of alcohol, public intoxication, hit and run.

And assault and battery. He served jail time for beating up two men outside a Virginia Beach night club - "They spilled a drink on me, didn't say excuse me" - and for assaulting a woman during an argument.

"She was swinging at me. I grabbed her and choked her to calm her down. I don't know what I was thinking. There was a lot going on in my life."

In jail, inmates who recognized Simmons from his football days urged him to get out, go back to school and never come back.

But he was hopeless, smoking marijuana three or four times a day, drinking every night. His weight ballooned to almost 270 pounds.

"I was polluted. When I did that, my problems went away. But they were always still there."

He fathered a daughter - not with Smith, though she was his girlfriend at the time. He's not certain how to spell the child's name; he said the mother doesn't want him around.

Since leaving Landstown, he has held only two jobs, each for less than a month. He is still supported by his mother and Smith, who drives him around when he's in town.

"It was really hard," said Smith, a 24-year-old with a degree from Norfolk State and a job at Alltel. "It was hard for me to tend to him and make sure his head was on straight. I had to graduate. I couldn't put things on hold for him.

"He was breaking my heart, though. He was breaking his mom's heart."

Smith said she has stayed with him - they've broken up a few times - because he and his mother took her into their home when her own mother was "out running the streets herself."

"I owed it to him and his mom. I wanted to help lead him to the right path,... but until he was ready, you couldn't say anything."

It took tragedy to finally get his attention.

One day, a good friend's mother called, hysterical. Her son had been shot. By the time Simmons rushed over, his friend was covered by a white sheet.

In March, one of Simmons' closest friends, Kevin Whaley, was shot in the leg outside a Virginia Beach club. Whaley was Salem High's star running back, and his future at the University of Minnesota was suddenly in jeopardy.

"That was it," Simmons said. "I saw him in that hospital bed, and it was just time. I was thinking, 'There's got to be something better than this.' I realized if I didn't get out, I was probably going to die."

 

Getting out was a good thought. By then, though, Simmons seemed out of options. Until fate - what else, he wonders, can you call it? - intervened.

The same day he was in the hospital with Whaley, Chad Huff called Simmons' mother. The assistant coach at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College wanted to know if Simmons could pass a high school equivalency test fast enough to be on their team this fall.

"It was crazy," Simmons said. "Like it was meant to be."

Huff had visited Green Run High looking for a linebacker. The head coach there, Shawn Wilson, is a relative of Simmons'.

"I didn't have any for him," Wilson said, "but the first person I thought of was Deveon. All you can do is give them a chance."

Simmons, however, had blown other opportunities. He needed more than a chance; he needed help.

Wilson, busy running his own team, turned Simmons over to a friend, DeCarlos Mitchell, a junior varsity coach at Churchland High who works summers at the Cavalier Manor rec center. Wilson told Mitchell: "See if you can get him straight."

"We agreed he still had something left in the tank," Mitchell said. "It was just a matter of getting it out."

Mitchell helped Simmons enroll in night classes to study for his equivalency test, which he passed in May. Smith helped Simmons fill out applications and financial aid forms and stayed in e-mail contact with Huff.

"For some reason, a few people believed in me," Simmons said. "I'm sure glad they did."

But there was still work to do. Simmons remained seriously out of shape. He also knew that just because he wanted to clean himself up didn't mean he was even remotely prepared to resist the temptations of his previous lifestyle.

That's where Byron Joyce came in.

Mitchell introduced Simmons to Joyce, a former crack addict who now shares the Gospel and helps youth at Cavalier Manor. Joyce set up a workout regimen for Simmons that included regular words of encouragement.

"When he came in, he was fallen Deveon," Joyce said. "I was 42, smoking him in those workouts. He was going to the sink throwing up that first week. He needed muscles in his body, but he really needed muscles in his head. We worked on both."

For the first month, Simmons sometimes showed for workouts. Other days, he blew them off. Old habits were dying hard. So Joyce pushed harder.

"I put it on thick. I told him, 'You got an educated girl. You think she wants to be with a bum?' I'd do anything to spur a man to get up."

Simmons started showing up four days or more a week to lift and be lectured. He didn't talk much, didn't resist Joyce. He kept his head low, listened, nodded, pushed up the weights, soaked in the sermons.

"He was broken down," Joyce said. "He was ready for somebody to tell him what to do."

On the rare occasions when Simmons opened up, Joyce discovered an all-too-familiar story.

"No father around, learning how to be a man from their friends," Joyce said. "A kid is born with a brain, but not a mind. A young man coming from the ghetto, he doesn't get a chance to breathe. He's in this box.

"If you can get them out of that box, to a place they can breathe, that's when they start to understand the world."

 

Simmons left Virginia on June 28, hoping to never return.

"There's nothing there for me but trouble. What I did there, I'm going to leave there. I'm a whole new man. "

It's not quite so simple, though. Virginia Beach Police spokesman Jimmy Barnes said last week that Simmons has four outstanding warrants in the city. All are misdemeanors: public intoxication and refusal to provide identification to police in February; revocation of a suspended sentence in April; and contempt of court in May. It is unclear how much, if any, jail time Simmons faces. Barnes said Simmons would be arrested if pulled over in Virginia Beach.

"I had no idea," Simmons said by phone from Mississippi on Wednesday. "I guess I need to go back there the next break I get and deal with it - once again."

Huff, the coach who recruited him, wasn't worried about Simmons' past. He said players at junior colleges are often there because of academic trouble or character concerns. Schools like Huff's give them a second chance.

Only about 1,300 students are enrolled at the small campus, and the football program puts players in a structured environment: breakfast check at 7, tutoring every afternoon, study hall each night, workouts in between.

Simmons has been taking summer classes at Mississippi Gulf Coast for more than a month. Huff said the staff checks attendance and, so far, Simmons has been on time and smiling every day.

"He showed up here," Huff said, "and that's half the battle. He had to do a lot just to get here. Now that he's here, we'll work him hard every day. He's pushing himself. He's tired of people telling him how good he could have been."

Simmons is now under 260 pounds, and Huff thinks the August heat and two-a-day practices that began Aug. 7 will slim him down further. The coaches would like to see him at 240, because when the season starts they plan to play him.

The school takes only eight out-of-state players each year, so "they've got to be NFL-caliber for us to take them," Huff said. "We heard how great he used to be, and we took a chance that he can still be that great. We're gonna play him right away and find out."

Players typically stay for two seasons, then try to catch on with a four-year school. More than a dozen players in the past two years have gone to Division I schools.

Simmons admits he's not an overnight choir boy. He said if someone offered him drugs or alcohol today, resisting would be tough. If someone bumped him in a club, "I hope they'd say sorry, because... "

But one thing is different: He understands his weaknesses.

"I haven't been tested yet. I'd like to think I can walk away, but it's better to just avoid those situations right now. I can't blow it this time."

Those who love him are amazed how a little hope and help have started to transform him.

"I would never voice it, but I wondered if he'd ever make it," Smith said. "Now I'm just ecstatic. It's all I talk about. I tell everyone, 'Deveon's in school!' I'm so proud."

Said Harvin: "I almost broke down in tears. People said we wouldn't make it - the streets were going to get us. I made it out first, and I wanted to get him out, too. For a while, I think I wanted D to make it more than he wanted to make it himself."

Harvin still has a videotape of Simmons' high school highlights that he sometimes shows to his Florida teammates.

"Man, I've got this linebacker that's second to none," he tells them. "Now he has a shot to prove it."

Pilot writer Shawn Day contributed to this report.

Kyle Tucker, (757) 446-2374, kyle.tucker@pilotonline.com