Home is definitely where the heart is.
As Blue Springs prepares to host St. Louis DeSmet in Friday’s Class 6 state semifinal football game at Peve Stadium, I sit back and ponder all of the critics on this side of the state who have dismissed the visiting Spartans’ undefeated season so far.
Yes, I’m a homer. Yes, I’m biased toward St. Louis and, yes, I picked the 12-0 Spartans to defeat Blue Springs and move on to the state championship game slated for Nov. 27 in St. Louis.
My alliance with DeSmet is more than just civic pride, however. One of DeSmet’s starting wide receivers is Leon Moody Jr. Moody, a junior who played on the Spartans’ varsity as a sophomore, is the son of my close friend and former University of Central Missouri teammate Leon Moody.
“We make a lot of those decisions based on how well a player works in the offseason and at summer camps,” DeSmet head coach Pat Mahoney said when I asked him why Moody was moved up to varsity as a sophomore. “Leon has such soft hands and he really understands the game.”
This season, Moody has caught 18 passes for 358 yards (a 19.9-yard average per reception) and two touchdowns. In DeSmet’s 27-6 quarterfinal victory over Jefferson City, Moody even completed a 35-yard pass to teammate Durron Neal on a double pass, something Mahoney took note of.
“He has one of the stronger arms on the team,” Mahoney said, probing the possibility of Moody taking over the reins at quarterback for the Spartans in 2010. “Right now we don’t know who will play quarterback for us next season.”
The elder Moody and I became friends while redshirting at UCM in 1992. We instantly clicked, heaping God-parent status on each other with the birth of our sons six months apart.
Unhappy with his standing at Division II UCM, Moody Sr. left the school after the 1993-94 school year for Harper Rainey Junior College in Palatine, Ill., and immediately made an impact on the field there.
After extending an invitation for me to join him in Palatine, I regretfully declined so that I could stay in St. Louis and be close to my son, Toriano II, who was just a 1-year-old at the time. Moody Sr. went to Harper Rainey in an effort to make his dream of playing D-I football come true.
From there, the then 6-foot-2, 190-pound Hazelwood East product went on to Northern Illinois University, a Division I school in DeKalb, Ill., on a full scholarship.In fact, while home on Christmas break that year from Harper, Moody Sr. and I – along with my best friend Rory and good friends Eric and Terry – decided we wanted revenge on these two guys that I’d had a fight with at Harris-Stowe University, the school I attended after being expelled from UCM in 1994.
When we found out that the guys who I had fought were going to be at this pre-Christmas Eve college party at a local skating rink in St. Louis, we gathered five-deep at my step-sister’s house in North St. Louis to extract our plan of retribution. We drank an outrageous amount of alcohol that night, used countless illegal drugs and loaded the one little raggedy seven-shot automatic pistol that we had to do our proposed dirty work with.
We were so young and dumb that we had no clue that we were on our way down a path that had destroyed so many promising lives before and after us.
But God knew – yes, God knew – that we were going down a dark alley that is so very hard to come back from. I’m a firm believer that – and Moody Sr. was the first to say immediately after the accident – God flipped the car we were riding in that night on its roof.
Days after the incident, Moody Sr. went back to Palatine to begin spring semester to get his grades in order to be eligible to play at NIU, which he did, lettering the two seasons he played for the Huskies.
Moody Sr., now married, lives in the Chicago area and works with youth with mental health issues. Moody Jr. lives in North St. Louis County with his mother, Melanie, and she and Leon Sr. have done a fine job of raising their son despite living in separate cities.
“Leon is a 3.0-plus student,” Mahoney said of the 5-10, 180-pounder. “He’s much more motivated in the hallways. He gets along great with everyone. You never hear anyone say a bad thing about Leon. He’s done a good job for us.”
Leon Jr., I am proud of you. You’ll be in hostile territory Friday, but you’ll have an ally in me (although I’ll be covering the Class 5 semifinal game between Raytown South and Fort Osage). Keep working hard on the field and in the classroom and hopefully you’ll follow in your dad’s footsteps and play D-I football and become a true man of God.
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Home is definitely where the heart is.
As Blue Springs prepares to host St. Louis DeSmet in Friday’s Class 6 state semifinal football game at Peve Stadium, I sit back and ponder all of the critics on this side of the state who have dismissed the visiting Spartans’ undefeated season so far.
Yes, I’m a homer. Yes, I’m biased toward St. Louis and, yes, I picked the 12-0 Spartans to defeat Blue Springs and move on to the state championship game slated for Nov. 27 in St. Louis.
My alliance with DeSmet is more than just civic pride, however. One of DeSmet’s starting wide receivers is Leon Moody Jr. Moody, a junior who played on the Spartans’ varsity as a sophomore, is the son of my close friend and former University of Central Missouri teammate Leon Moody.
“We make a lot of those decisions based on how well a player works in the offseason and at summer camps,” DeSmet head coach Pat Mahoney said when I asked him why Moody was moved up to varsity as a sophomore. “Leon has such soft hands and he really understands the game.”
This season, Moody has caught 18 passes for 358 yards (a 19.9-yard average per reception) and two touchdowns. In DeSmet’s 27-6 quarterfinal victory over Jefferson City, Moody even completed a 35-yard pass to teammate Durron Neal on a double pass, something Mahoney took note of.
“He has one of the stronger arms on the team,” Mahoney said, probing the possibility of Moody taking over the reins at quarterback for the Spartans in 2010. “Right now we don’t know who will play quarterback for us next season.”
The elder Moody and I became friends while redshirting at UCM in 1992. We instantly clicked, heaping God-parent status on each other with the birth of our sons six months apart.
Unhappy with his standing at Division II UCM, Moody Sr. left the school after the 1993-94 school year for Harper Rainey Junior College in Palatine, Ill., and immediately made an impact on the field there.
After extending an invitation for me to join him in Palatine, I regretfully declined so that I could stay in St. Louis and be close to my son, Toriano II, who was just a 1-year-old at the time. Moody Sr. went to Harper Rainey in an effort to make his dream of playing D-I football come true.
From there, the then 6-foot-2, 190-pound Hazelwood East product went on to Northern Illinois University, a Division I school in DeKalb, Ill., on a full scholarship.In fact, while home on Christmas break that year from Harper, Moody Sr. and I – along with my best friend Rory and good friends Eric and Terry – decided we wanted revenge on these two guys that I’d had a fight with at Harris-Stowe University, the school I attended after being expelled from UCM in 1994.
When we found out that the guys who I had fought were going to be at this pre-Christmas Eve college party at a local skating rink in St. Louis, we gathered five-deep at my step-sister’s house in North St. Louis to extract our plan of retribution. We drank an outrageous amount of alcohol that night, used countless illegal drugs and loaded the one little raggedy seven-shot automatic pistol that we had to do our proposed dirty work with.
We were so young and dumb that we had no clue that we were on our way down a path that had destroyed so many promising lives before and after us.
But God knew – yes, God knew – that we were going down a dark alley that is so very hard to come back from. I’m a firm believer that – and Moody Sr. was the first to say immediately after the accident – God flipped the car we were riding in that night on its roof.
Days after the incident, Moody Sr. went back to Palatine to begin spring semester to get his grades in order to be eligible to play at NIU, which he did, lettering the two seasons he played for the Huskies.
Moody Sr., now married, lives in the Chicago area and works with youth with mental health issues. Moody Jr. lives in North St. Louis County with his mother, Melanie, and she and Leon Sr. have done a fine job of raising their son despite living in separate cities.
“Leon is a 3.0-plus student,” Mahoney said of the 5-10, 180-pounder. “He’s much more motivated in the hallways. He gets along great with everyone. You never hear anyone say a bad thing about Leon. He’s done a good job for us.”
Leon Jr., I am proud of you. You’ll be in hostile territory Friday, but you’ll have an ally in me (although I’ll be covering the Class 5 semifinal game between Raytown South and Fort Osage). Keep working hard on the field and in the classroom and hopefully you’ll follow in your dad’s footsteps and play D-I football and become a true man of God.
