Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Hard Lessons Learned, Celestine Returns
February 03, 2010 | Football, B.G. Brooks
What he couldn't - more accurately, wouldn't - learn as a University of Colorado freshman and sophomore in 2007-08, doing odd jobs at the Walmart store in Lafayette, La., taught him.
The difficult and demanding education he couldn't - more accurately, wouldn't - take advantage of during those same years as a CU scholarship football player, Walmart provided.
Celestine's story is a long way from a happy ending; many second-chance sagas of this sort don't get that far. But Celestine's feels different, mainly because of a big difference in him.
On Wednesday, national letter of intent day for football, CU expects to sign upwards of 20 prospects. The majority will report to campus this summer, eager to make an impression on their coaches and a mark on Buffaloes football. Each should make time to seek out Kendrick Celestine, who can tell them what not to do.
When he signed on at CU in 2007, Celestine didn't have a clue about what it took to stay on. Moreover, he didn't care. He was a highly recruited receiver out of minuscule Mamou, La., who, in the words of Sabrina Thomas, his former academic coordinator, "just thought being there (at CU) was enough. When he ended up hitting rock-bottom, that was a good thing."
Celestine's plunge to what he later considered abject failure was self-plotted. He blew off classes . . . he opened his playbook as infrequently as he opened his textbooks . . . he skipped off-season workouts . . . he fathered a child.
Why he was able to play as much as he did (11 receptions for 151 yards, six rushes for 27 yards in 12 games) as a freshman is a mystery to him - or maybe not.
"They put me on the field because I could blow by guys," he said. "I didn't know a damn play, I didn't run routes (correctly). They were basically telling me every play to run."
Even so, his 2007 playing time furnished Celestine with the false impression that he should be on the field more in the following season. When that didn't happen in the first two games of 2008 (he caught five passes for 46 yards), and with an avalanche of personal issues piling up around him, he bolted for Louisiana.
"Just making that move back home at the time felt like the right decision," he said. "My son (Dyllan) kind of put the icing on the cake; I felt like I had to get out of here because I had no family here to help take care of him . . . a lot of things were going through my mind at the time."
But if Celestine's escape landed him in more familiar surroundings, it only amplified the turmoil in his life. When he walked into his mother's home in Lafayette, La., he was overwhelmed by a long living room wall that she had turned into a virtual shrine for her son - the former scholarship football player at Colorado.
There were pictures of his high school graduation and football games, framed newspaper clippings from high school and his first football season in Boulder. There was even a framed replica of his CU jersey.
His first thought: "My mom is really proud of me."
His second thought: "Look at me now . . . Every day, I was waking up and seeing that jersey in my living room. I didn't even play for Colorado anymore. I was like, 'I have to go back and play for them again . . . I have to finish.'"
It was a good intention, but a difficult one to fulfill. Celestine had walked away from his teammates and his scholarship. Neither he nor his mother, a middle school teacher in Lafayette, could book him on the first return flight to Colorado and cover his out-of-state tuition.
And then there was the matter of being re-admitted to school and re-joining the football team - a pair of major obstacles. Celestine believed he was in line for a scholarship at McNeese State University. But the very day he signed his letter of intent and was about to fax it, he got a telephone call from the Lake Charles, La., school's admission office saying his CU transcript had arrived.
Celestine immediately knew what that meant: his grades were too poor for him to receive a scholarship. With his girl friend (Vianca) at home in Puerto Rico, his only option was to find a job for the first time in his life.
Walmart was hiring. His hours were 6 a.m. until sometimes 8 or 9 p.m.
"It was overwhelming for me to wake up and do something I just really didn't like to do," he said. "I was angry to wake up at 5:30 to do these workouts (at CU), but I was like, 'I would love to do these workouts' rather than being at Walmart for nine or ten hours a day.
"It was terrible for me . . . I don't even like to go in Walmart now. That's when I put it in my mind that I've got to get back into school . . . I'm a failure, I felt like."
During his exit from Colorado and return to Louisiana, Thomas, his former academic coordinator, had kept in touch with Celestine - telephoning him and texting him.
Now working on her PhD in history at Arizona State, Thomas saw more in Celestine than he initially saw in himself.
"He was a kid you know has the potential to learn," she said. "I'm glad he hit rock bottom - if that's what it took. I thought he could learn from this (and) I wanted to keep a finger on the pulse of what he was trying to do.
"He didn't like rock-bottom; he wanted to change things in his life. And I knew he had the ability to do it."
Celestine made the decision to return to Boulder in the spring of 2009. He found a couple of jobs that would help him make ends meet and put away some money for tuition. Thomas helped walk him through the readmission process at CU, and he began taking summer classes to rebuild his GPA.
Some of his former Buffs teammates saw him on campus and wondered why he was back. Celestine hadn't yet approached football coach Dan Hawkins about his intentions.
"My plan was to wait until after the summer semester and show him my grades," he said. "But then it began to worry me that maybe other people would talk to him before I did. I felt like before they told coach 'Hawk' I was up here, I wanted to tell him."
Celestine scheduled a meeting with Hawkins and told him he was back in school, paying his own way, and hoped he could walk back onto the team.
"All I told him is that I wanted an opportunity," Celestine recalled.
Hawkins was receptive, but a caveat was included. First, Celestine had to restore himself academically and demonstrate that this time around, he was ready to adhere to the standards his teammates were meeting.
"When kids quit, everybody thinks it's our (coaches) fault; it's not," Hawkins said. "We're not here to throw guys into the gutter. We're all about helping guys.
"But we have standards and they're not unreasonable . . . we want to make sure the integrity of the university and the success of the young men are intact. And they have to take care of their school work."
His first time around, Celestine didn't measure up in any of the above. So proving he was prepared to do it this time was paramount to Hawkins, who allowed him to use 2009 as a redshirt season to concentrate on academics.
Celestine did, and on Christmas Eve, Hawkins telephoned him with news that his scholarship would kick in for the spring semester.
"It was like the best Christmas present I ever could get," Celestine said, adding that his girl friend, a CU graduate with a degree in human resources, has returned to Boulder and will begin pursuing a job in earnest as she recovers from a broken leg suffered in late November.
Celestine is working - this time with a purpose - in the Buffs' off-season conditioning program. He shows up on time. He stays late. Thomas, who left CU in August, said she receives an occasional text from him saying, "You'd be proud of me for this or that."
After seeing so many other kids in similar scenarios who didn't pull out of the dive, Thomas has high hopes for Celestine: "This is whole new dynamic for him. But he's always been capable."
Finally showing his capabilities has become Celestine's goal. Football-wise, he doesn't believe he lost anything during his time away. He even thinks his speed has improved and he still feels capable of "blowing by people."
He also believes a productive junior season awaits him and the Buffs. Whatever transpires, though, this will be a season spent where he wants to be - a place he now realizes he never should have left.
"I just wanted to be somebody," he said, recalling his time away. "When I was in Louisiana and working at Walmart, I felt like I was under the dirt. I had gone from being a highly recruited guy in Louisiana, coming here and playing as a freshman, then just going straight downhill . . .
"I told myself, 'This is unbelievable; it can't be like this.' I used to feel like this whole process of playing football and going to school was like a big disaster. That was my mind-set: I can't do school and football.
"The only Kendrick Celestine people here know is the Kendrick Celestine that came over here and played around . . . I didn't take school or football seriously. I got a second chance and I want to make the most of this.
"I want the best for my son, too, and working at Walmart wasn't cutting it. There was no way I could give him what he wants in life. I have to get a degree or get the opportunity to go play at the next level - one of the two.
"Going to work and not having any of this - it made me feel like this is a vacation. This is the life - playing football and going to school. The real world . . . there's your disaster. It flipped my perspective. That's going to help me out."
Hawkins thinks so, too.
"I think it will be (a success story) in the end," he said. "He's organized and he's on it now . . . he's climbed back up the mountain by himself.
"I think a lot of (student-athletes) take this for granted. We tell them you're never going to have as much support as you do in this football program. I'm glad to see him finally realize it."
The big realization came with a price, but Kendrick Celestine is glad to have paid it - and is still paying it, in fact. The bigger realization is that after a series of wrong choices, he made the right one.
"I have to make this work," he said. "And it's going to work."
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
