High school football preview: Kevin Whaley's record-setting road

Kevin Whaley has zig-zagged his way into the South Hampton Roads high school football record books. He set the single-season scoring record last season. (Genevieve Ross | The Virginian-Pilot)

By Jami Frankenberry
The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

Four thousand, five hundred.

The number has been there, in the distance.

Four thousand, five hundred.

Kevin Whaley can see it, just ahead.

Four thousand, five hundred.

It is logical to think Whaley’s journey toward that figure – South Hampton Roads’ career rushing record – began when he rushed for more than 1,000 yards as a Salem High School freshman.

In reality, the path began long before, with spin moves on a street in the Bridle Creek neighborhood off Lynnhaven Parkway, with a juke on a Virginia Beach recreation field, with a fake at Salem Middle School.

Whaley’s course, like his jaunts to the end zone, was not a straight line. A zig here, a zag there.

Still, the road led him here. To his senior season. To the cusp of a record for the ages.

And while Whaley, a 5-foot-11, 175-pounder, is guarded and elusive, if you get to know his journey, you get to know him. Know how the little boy who refused to admit it hurt when he fell off his bike grew into the teenager who played through pain even in the fourth quarter when he was bent-in-half tired from playing both ways.

This is Whaley’s ride.

Whaley, right, gains yardage as he avoids a tackle during a game against Bayside last October. Hyunsoo Leo Kim / The Virginian-Pilot

To understand Kevin Whaley the running back, go back. Back to Kevin Whaley the toddler.

Picture a first step that leads to a sprint, not a stroll, and a 2-year-old who tells his mother, “Not hurt,” even when he needs a Band-Aid.

At day care, Kevin wasn’t content to glide down the sliding board – he had to jump. A teacher always stayed near because you never knew what he would try next.

“He ran and he jumped and he tumbled,” Tracey Whaley says of her youngest son, who grew up mostly in public housing neighborhoods. “He was tackling everything from the time he could take his first step.”

Larry Whaley, now 30, describes his younger brother as “hard-headed” and “a bad little boy – always.”

Kevin loved gummy worms – or any other candy – and doing what the big kids did. He was fearless.

At about age 4, Kevin found that a bike with training wheels wasn’t for him – even if he couldn’t quite use the brakes.

“He’d sneak out and ride that bike so fast,” Larry says. “He’d keep going until he hit a car and fell off. He’d jump up and say, 'Didn’t hurt,’ and keep going.”

Until he hit something else.

His stubbornness and daring led one neighborhood elder to dub him “Zeus,” a nickname he still carries.

Soon, his never-ending energy was funneled into sports: football, baseball, basketball.

First, though, a zig.

It would be a great, clean story: Little boy with lots of energy turns to sports and turns into a star. This is not that story.

While Kevin was shrugging off boo-boos, Tracey was having financial trouble. She made a decision to let her youngest son, then a fourth-grader, move in with a longtime family friend, Shane Clements, who had grown up around the Whaley boys.

Kevin’s father was out of the picture by then, and Kevin now declines to talk about him.

Clements, then a math teacher, stepped in.

“I could do more with him,” Clements says. “My schedule was good for him. It was just something that God put in me, and I knew I could help him out with school and sports, and he needed me.”

Clements had roommates along the way, including his mother at one point. All kept an eye on Kevin, but he spent most of his time outside with older kids. Kevin and his mom hung out on most weekends.

“He wasn’t one of those kids who needed to be coddled,” Clements, now 33, says. “He knew how to take care of himself. I just tried to keep him busy.”

Whaley, right, holds his cousin, Miracle Powers, 11-months, while surrounded by friends and family including former teacher Shane Clements, far left, whom Whaley considers a “father”, his mother Tracey Whaley, second from left, and cousin Roslyn Gilchrist, at his aunt’s home in Virginia Beach on Aug. 7. Stephanie Oberlander | Special to The Virginian-Pilot

Early on, Whaley was a standout in football, baseball and basketball. In baseball, he played centerfield and batted leadoff; in basketball, he played point guard.

“Everybody thought I was going to be a great basketball player,” Whaley says. “But I used to tell everybody I liked football better.”

The problem was his close friend, Kevin Simmons, whom Whaley refers to as a “cousin,” though they are not related.

Simmons was a standout running back through most of Whaley’s rec-league days. Simmons got the carries, and Whaley was the blocking fullback.

“I always wanted to play running back, but my coaches never put me there,” Whaley says.

Then, an undersized Whaley showed up at Salem Middle School as a sixth-grader. Coach Don Spears noticed something right away: Kevin was so small that only half his number showed after his jersey was tucked in.

But Spears also noticed Whaley was fast.

Whaley saw few carries that first season, then worked his way into the starting lineup as a seventh-grader. By eighth grade, he was a bona fide blur.

In his first game as an eighth-grader, he scored three touchdowns. A few months later, he had scored more than 20 times and scored four TDs in a city championship game victory.

Whaley touched the ball on about 90 percent of the Sharks’ offensive plays, and Spears says his game plan was simple: “Get out of his way and let him do his thing.”

Says Spears, “He just ran by people.”

Now, a zag.

Rumors have dogged Whaley during his high school career at Salem.

He’s too old. He’s academically ineligible. He doesn’t have the grades to attend college. He’s not living in Salem’s attendance zone.

“There’s so many (rumors) going on, I try not to hear it,” Whaley says. “I hear them, but I don’t hear them.”

Whaley does not care to set the record straight. But …

Held back in first grade, he turns 19 in November, making him older than most classmates. But he’s within the Virginia High School League’s age guidelines, which prohibit students from playing sports if they turn 19 on or before Aug. 1 of the school year.

As for his grades, Whaley says he has improved in the classroom, and coach Robert Jackson expects him to qualify academically for college.

And Whaley’s living situation? Three years ago, he moved in with his aunt Marika and her boyfriend, Shaun Powers, who live a few touchdown runs from Salem High .

When Whaley’s mother was back on her feet, she lived in Norfolk and “he didn’t want to go to Norfolk,” says Tracey, who works at a Wal-Mart bakery.

Marika welcomed her nephew.

Says Tracey, “We do what we need to do for each other.”

Whaley commands the attention of his teammates, so much so that one wonders if the seven or so teammates with dreadlocks are making a fashion statement or falling in line behind “Zeus.” Three varsity seasons, 4,035 career rushing yards and 51 touchdowns gain a player respect.

Whaley strikes an imposing presence in his No. 7 jersey: dreadlocks hanging well past his shoulders, framing a scraggly beard and mustache and broad nose and jaw. He sports one tattoo, a pit bull on his left shoulder, and his compact frame is crammed with muscles.

Around friends and family, Whaley is outgoing and talkative, but there are things he won’t talk about.

Of his father, he says, “I don’t really mention him that much.”

Asked why, Whaley says, “I just really don’t mention him.”

Kevin is fast with a spin move, faster with a smile to those who are close to him.

“Large smile,” says Powers, his aunt’s boyfriend. “He’s got to work hard to keep a straight face.”

Whaley doesn’t drive a tricked-out car, own an iPod or sport designer threads, often choosing a T-shirt or no shirt at all. His room is typical teenager: clothes strewn across the bed, shoe boxes, video games and VCR tapes stacked by a small TV. The walls mostly are bare save for an award banner and a few pictures. The photos include a shot of Whaley’s’ boyhood friend Dominique Palmer, a former Landstown High running back now serving time for shooting a man during a robbery in 2005. Whaley writes and talks to Palmer occasionally, telling his friend of his football exploits.

Also perched above the stereo is a coveted snapshot of Ms. Marie, Kevin’s beloved grandmother. Marie Whaley died in 2000.

“She’s my heart,” Kevin says. “I pray for her before and after games.”

Eyes glistening, he turns away.

“I don’t like talking about her,” he says, and the discussion ends.

Often, the family converges on the modest townhome in the Colony Oaks neighborhood that Kevin shares with his aunt Marika, Powers – “Uncle Shaun” – and their 11-month-old daughter, Miracle, whom Kevin lifts high and tickles into giggles. In the living room, they huddle around Kevin’s trophies, which clog the fireplace.

“There’s lots of Whaleys,” Powers says. “Kevin is family oriented. His world has always been his family and who he’s grown up with.”

At Salem games, there usually is a contingent of Whaleys and family friends. Nearly a dozen of them show up wearing

No. 7 jerseys with monikers on the back: “Kevin’s Mom,” “Uncle Lou” and so on.

“I don’t think he’d be right,” his brother Larry says, “if we didn’t show up.”

Among Whaley’s pre-game routines is to blow a kiss to his mother. The two are extremely close, and Tracey says when her son – he has three siblings – picks a college, she’ll try to move nearby.

“He’s the youngest,” Tracey says, “so he’s my baby.”

Maybe there are no more zigs, no more zags from here.

Maybe this season Whaley breaks the record, celebrates with a state title and rides the wave to a Division I scholarship.

Whaley, also a defensive back, has scholarship offers from Maryland, Michigan State, Virginia and Virginia Tech, but he didn’t spend the summer touring the combine circuit like many top recruits.

“He didn’t want to go everywhere,” Clements says. “It’s not free and he doesn’t want to put people out there. He knows this is a big season for him.”

Whaley worked out at home, at Salem and at a Beach gym, spent time running up and down Mount Trashmore, and says he’s “way stronger” than last year.

Four thousand, five hundred.

For four years, Mike Majette churned out yardage as a running back at Princess Anne. His 4,500 regular-season yards have stood atop South Hampton Roads’ career rushing list since he finished his high school career in 1995.

Whaley, dreads bobbing from beneath the back of his helmet, is closing in, one ankle-breaking move at a time. The same traits that made him a rambunctious toddler – fearlessness, toughness – have made him a menace with a football.

“He runs the ball like it’s the last time he’s ever going to carry it,” says Oscar Smith coach Richard Morgan, whose team Whaley nicked for 95 yards in last year’s Eastern Region Division 6 championship game. “He runs as hard as he possibly can until he either scores a touchdown or gets tackled.”

Whaley’s quest to pass Majette included three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, and his 1,560 last year landed him at 4,035 for his career, just 465 behind.

Three games into this season – maybe two – and the record likely belongs to Whaley, the reigning All-Tidewater Player of the Year.

“I don’t really think about it at all,” says Whaley, whose 30 total touchdowns last year broke South Hampton Roads’ 35-year-old single-season scoring record. “When it happens, it happens.”

Barring injury, it will happen.

And when it does, Whaley expects to hand the ball to a referee, return to the huddle and keep going. Zig. Zag.

Jami Frankenberry, (757) 446-2295, jami.frankenberry@pilotonline.com

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