Feedback needed on football profile

5RunHomer · Jul 16, 2011

I struggled mightily trying to write this one. The guy went from D-I college football recruit, to being shot and losing every offer he had. After months of recovery, he went on to go to a D-II school where he was a two-time All-American. Without giving too much away -- believe me, there's much, much more -- he returned to his alma mater last year to be a volunteer coach and this season will be the offensive coordinator. Keep in mind he's only 26 years old.

I walked away from writing this one with my head spinning. It's one of those stories where I don't know if anything in it worked. Let me know what you think did work, what didn't and what you might change. Thanks, all.

Central assistant took long way back to alma mater

TUSCALOOSA | Tucked away in the dimly-lit Central High School field house, Dre'Mail Hardin stands back and looks over the playbook he has drawn out across half a dozen whiteboards.
Scores of plays litter the walls. There's a go-route where the slot receiver runs underneath to exploit the zone. There's a crossing post pattern where two receivers intersect 15 yards downfield. He's even gotten tricky on a few plays, installing multiple-option looks where the receiver reads the defense and can break either right, left or shoot upfield, splitting the safeties.
Last year, Hardin was the defensive coordinator as Central finished the season winless in 10 games. After losing to Woodlawn 27-13 to close out the season, Hardin approached head coach Dennis Conner with a play in mind.
Hardin told Conner he wanted to coach the offense.
Hardin played safety in college and was used to seeing the field from the perspective of a quarterback on defense. Away from the line of scrimmage, with the entire field laid out before him, he knew what made a good offense tick.
It took some assurance, but Hardin's end-around worked and Conner installed Hardin as the offensive coordinator before the start of spring practice.
If only every plan had worked out so well.

Change of course
It was late on Jan. 12, 2003, when Hardin's future was thrown wildly off course.
The 6-foot, 195-pound senior at Central was the talk of Tuscaloosa. The University of Alabama had just verbally offered Hardin a scholarship to play football, and several other Division-I schools were lined up behind the Crimson Tide looking to nab the All-State safety. His plan was to enroll at UA, marry his high school sweetheart, play in the NFL and use that money to start the family he never had.
In a cruel, cold stroke of irony, it was his own family that brought that dream to its knees. Shortly after 11 o'clock on that January night, Hardin's younger brother came home past curfew and got into an argument with their mom. In the middle of the shouting match, Hardin stepped in. The two siblings yelled at one another and the altercation quickly turned physical. Hardin hit his 16-year-old brother, knocking him to the ground.
When the brother came to, Hardin found himself suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun. In a turbulent haze of adrenaline and confusion, Hardin took a bullet to the abdomen. Keeling over in pain, he watched as a mixture of food and blood rushed from his stomach. In that instant, Hardin knew his football career, and possibly his life, was over.
Face down on the carpet, Hardin scrambled to call 911, but there was no dial tone.

All he knew
For three and a half months Hardin was confined to a single bed in the hospital. Laid up in the drab, fluorescent-lit room, he fell into a deep depression. He was alive, but at what cost?
Football wasn't everything for Hardin — it was the only thing. On the field, he was in control. From his safety spot, he could bend an offense to his will, shutting down whatever side of the field he inhabited. In one season at Central he recorded nine interceptions. Fans and coaches took notice. The college offers rolled in, and the Dre'Mail Hardin fan club was born.
Hardin and future UA fullback Le'Ron McClain struck up a friendship as the two seniors neared their college decisions. It wasn't a question of if they would go to UA, it was how many championships they'd win once they got there.
With a leather-bound football in hand, Hardin held the ticket to a better future. In the hospital, he looked for nothing more than a way to end the pain.
Doped up on medicine and sapped of his energy, Hardin took a look at himself in the mirror. The trim, muscle-bound flesh was replaced with ashen skin and bones. One day he walked to the bathroom and saw his reflection. Gasping at the ghost of his former self, he passed out.
“My body -- I looked like one of those Ethiopians,” Hardin said. “You could see all the bones and everything. I'd always been bulky and when I saw that I just couldn't take it. It was just too much.”
One day he decided he had been through enough.
“When I was in the hospital I was asking them to kill me,” Hardin said. “I tried to stick my IV with a pen. My sister was the only person that was in there that night. ... I asked for everybody else to leave the room and she wouldn't. She went to the bathroom and I remember sticking it in there. I had probably another month to go in the hospital. I remember sticking it and keeping on sticking it in there. She caught me and I remember her just crying and then yelling.”
Until now, Hardin had only spoke of the incident with his sister. Looking back, he doesn't make apologies for it. On medication, he wasn't entirely in his right mind.
“Football was all I knew. I had worked so hard to do it,” Hardin said. “It was everything to me for it to then just get taken away, it was just the most devastating experience in my life. I don't think anything will ever come close to it. It was mind-blowing.”
After news of the gunshot spread, letters and phone calls from college recruiters fell by the wayside.
One man, though, thought differently. Conner, then the defensive coordinator at Stillman College, dropped by one afternoon to see the kid he once had no shot of recruiting. In the sign-in book for Hardin, Conner kept it short and sweet, writing, “You're going to play for me one day.”

The comeback
There's still a spot on Hardin's right hip where he has no feeling.
There was a time when doctors told him he wouldn't be able to walk. His gallbladder was removed. His small and lower intestines were operated on, taking out large chunks of each. The bullet that pierced his abdomen was never removed, and remains lodged an inch away from his spine.
After months of rehab and time away from football following the shooting, Hardin inevitably came back to the game he loved. Working out in the gym became working out on the football field. Running laps became running routes. Flag football turned into full contact, and before he knew it he was a walk-on at Mississippi State, starting in the annual spring game.
After a year without a scholarship, Hardin decided to return to Tuscaloosa to play for Conner at Stillman. Conner handed Hardin a full scholarship, and, after the first day of practice, the starting position at safety. After three seasons at Stillman, Hardin was a two-time All-American with 17 career interceptions.
Despite being projected as a top-20 safety overall, draft day came and went without Hardin's name being called. Stunned, he wondered what more could possibly go wrong.
“I was questioning God like, you took me through this and I got through it,” Hardin said. “Now, you've put me back down to where I have to start over again? … I'm sitting at home like, are you kidding me? What is going on?”
Hardin pressed on, joining the United Football League and the Arena Football League, spending a year with the Washington Kent Predators and New York Sentinels. After the birth of his second daughter, Hardin's wife stepped in when the Canadian Football League came calling. Hardin was faced with the option of making a life in Tuscaloosa or following football to another country, thousands of miles from his family.

A new life
Hardin's life changed when Khyla and Khloe were born. It wasn't an easy adjustment for a man in his mid-20s still chasing a life in professional football. After years of trying, running toward football became running away from life as a father.
For the first time in his life, Hardin decided enough was enough.
Hardin returned to Stillman and earned his teaching certificate. Before long, he was calling up an old friend for a job. Conner had left Stillman to take over as head coach at Central. As luck had it, Conner needed an assistant coach. Stepping onto the Central football field, Hardin was at home again. Looking at players like Nathan Carter, an outside linebacker with Division-I potential, Hardin saw himself -- a young athlete with the world in his hands.
Conner watched as Hardin caught on quickly. At 26, Hardin provided a link to the players that Conner couldn't have -- an assistant who can speak the language.
“Once he started coming, he fell in love with the kids,” Conner said. “He can communicate with the guys. ... He can talk with kids who might be having trouble at home and get them to understand there's a better way.”
Hardin has embraced the job, spending extra time in the office and on the football field. His scarred body might say he's a player, but his mind is all coaching.
“If you would have asked me two years ago if I would stop playing football, I would say no,” Hardin said. “But now, I don't have to play football anymore. I don't have to strap up. I can still do it, but I'm content with coaching.”

What might have been
Convincing himself that he doesn't need to play has been the hardest part. The calls from his agent still come, and on some nights he finds himself searching through his old clips online. It's been eight years since his brother shot him, and still Hardin wonders what could have been if not for that night.
“Who would have thought that I would be a P.E. teacher? Who would have thought that?” Hardin said. “It definitely pisses me off every time I think about it because I just want to know where my life would have been if it didn't happen. Like, what could it have lead to? What could it have been? Could I be one of those guys on TV?
“I have to make sure that I'm not going to leave this because I still get that itch. I got people trying to hit me up to play Arena Football one more time. It's definitely not like I'm washed up. I'm 26. There are guys just now getting in that league. But I'm all about my girls right now. I can't explain it. ... I've got to do right by them.”
In an effort to be a better father, he has made peace with the brother that put him in the hospital years ago, robbing him of the future he dreamt of as a child. After nearly two years in jail and time apart, the bond between brothers has begun to heal. As Hardin puts it, he can't preach forgiveness to his children if he can't practice it himself.
Fidgeting in a hard, plastic chair, Hardin lacks any outward signs of having once been shot. In a cutoff shirt and gym shorts, he looks like a professional athlete you'd see on television during practice. His arms and shoulders are mammoth, his body every bit the well-oiled machine it was when he was 17. Remove his shirt, and the scars on his abdomen give the impression of a brick wall hit by mortar, muscles surrounding an area of tissue maimed by scalpels and hot lead. The bullet knocked a hole in Hardin, but didn't take the rest of him with it.
At the office, Hardin is poring over a love that never faded and never needed questioning -- the love for his school. He'll make it home in time for dinner, but for now it's about getting Central football back where it needs to be. Looking over play after play, he's focused on one simple goal.
“I'm going to put us back on the map the way we used to be,” Hardin said. “It's meant for us now.”
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