State, The (Columbia, SC)
2001-04-07
Section: SPORTS
Edition: FINAL
Page: C3

A COMMUNITY'S HERO
KEN TYSIAC, Staff Writer

Todd McClinton was playing basketball one day when a fellow member of Shandon Baptist Church called out to him.

Brad Scott, then the football coach at USC, told the tall, broad-shouldered teen-ager that he needed to forget that round ball and start working out with the pigskin. "Coach," McClinton said, "I am never playing football."

McClinton, who now plays tight end for Scott at Clemson, loved basketball and thought football was too violent for his tastes. Besides, McClinton knew better than to dream that he could create a future for himself by strapping on a helmet and shoulder pads.

When McClinton was a boy, he would summon his grandmother to a window in their home in the Waits Road community of Columbia to show the drug trafficking that was taking place on their street.

Deloris McClinton told Todd that he didn't need any of that, and the boy steered clear of the drugs and alcohol. At the same time, Todd figured he would be fortunate if he could graduate from high school, get a job and hang around the neighborhood with his family and friends.

It was a modest vision, but a realistic one for surroundings that shatter aspirations of those who dream.

"I wasn't a big dreamer when I was growing up," McClinton said. "I guess this is a dream that was waiting to come true, and it just did."

The dream for McClinton is to use football to aid his pursuit of a college degree, which is a rare prize for those who grow up in his neighborhood. If he continues to develop on the field, perhaps he even will play in the National Football League and make millions of dollars.

But McClinton's personal success is just part of the dream. Those in his community hope that the well-mannered, devoted member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes will show them the way to success after he finds it himself.

At Heartworks Ministry, which McClinton and his family helped build in the neighborhood, the player is a hero to a generation of children who long to escape the poverty and oppression that McClinton has overcome.

He is their hope. If he succeeds, the little ones in his neighborhood will know it is OK to have big dreams, because dreams can come true.

"All the little ones in the community want to be like Todd, so we want Todd to be the very best he can be so that others will follow," said Sandee Hensley, the founder and director of Heartworks Ministries.

A special teacher. When McClinton was born, on Dec. 28, 1980, there was no reason to suspect he would become the athletic pride of the neighborhood. The full-term baby born to Yvonne Washington weighed just 5 pounds, 8 ounces. But before long, it was obvious that this was a special child.

Virtually everybody who met McClinton was impressed by his remarkable size.

"People used to ask me if I fed him fertilizer," Washington said, laughing.

When McClinton was 4, a coach from Europe named Linda Davis introduced him to soccer, a sport he played for seven years. While playing forward and goalie, McClinton developed foot speed and dexterity that were unusual for a child of his stature.

But outside of athletics, life wasn't easy for McClinton. His father, James Taylor, died in 1992, when McClinton was an 11-year-old fifth-grader, leaving the boy yearning for a male role model even as his grandmother and mother provided for him.

"We had hard times," McClinton said. "My dad passed away and I had to stay with my grandma for a long time. Now I am staying with my grandma, and my brothers and sisters are staying with my mom. My grandma and my mom worked hard to take care of all four children."

Deloris McClinton, Todd's grandmother, raised four girls of her own as a single mother and provided constant support for Washington as well as for Todd and his two brothers and sister.

Despite the difficult circumstances, Todd was a joy every day. Todd helped his grandmother, who suffered from diabetes and other ailments, with the laundry and the yard work, and the family managed to make ends meet.

And when McClinton entered eighth grade, he crossed paths with a teacher at W.A. Perry Middle School who recognized that he was something special.

"Sandee Hensley came into his life," Deloris McClinton said, "and things started changing for him."

Hensley said she was viewed with suspicion at first by some of the students at W.A. Perry because she was an outsider, a white woman from the mountains of western North Carolina at a school with mostly black teachers and students.

McClinton was one of the few students who immediately welcomed Hensley. He stayed after school to help her clean up. He sat with Hensley at lunch when nobody else would.

"He was just precious," Hensley said.

They developed a friendship that has lasted to this day. Hensley was tutoring members of the USC football team for Scott, and she took McClinton and some of his friends to practice and to games.

When Hensley went on trips, she would bring along McClinton and a friend. She treated McClinton to dinner at restaurants, cooked tacos or Shake 'N Bake chicken and chocolate chip cookies for him and played Uno and Dominoes with him.

Todd's grandmother and mother also became close with Hensley. Despite their vastly different worlds, their similar beliefs in matters of religious faith and morals allowed them to develop an important and mutually beneficial relationship.

Hensley wanted to help people in the McClintons' neighborhood, but she wasn't trusted because she was an outsider. The acceptance of Hensley by McClinton and his family made Hensley welcome to do work in the inner city.

"Sandee is a great person," McClinton said. "She always has helped me and my family."

In turn, McClinton and his family helped Hensley. Two and a half years ago, Hensley decided to begin Heartworks Ministry, a Christian community center affiliated with Shandon Baptist Church.

McClinton, his mother and grandmother, siblings, cousins and friends helped Hensley remodel an old, empty house. For four months, they refinished floors, repaired walls, painted and fixed the front porch.

When the job was done, McClinton and other children in the neighborhood had a place to go for help with their homework and for Bible lessons. It turned out to be a valuable resource for McClinton, who suddenly, unexpectedly found himself in a madcap academic rush to qualify for a football scholarship at Clemson.

Falling in love with football. The boy who told Scott he never would play football uttered those same words to C.A. Johnson High School coach Victor Floyd.

Floyd's response was to grab McClinton by the arm, take him to the cafeteria and force him to sign up for the team. Football is a violent sport that is against the nature of the mild-mannered, soft-spoken McClinton, but he reluctantly joined the team for six games in his junior season.

First, though, McClinton had to convince his mother that this was a good idea.

"She didn't want me to play at first," McClinton said, "but I said, 'Mom, I'm a big boy.' "

The gentle giant played everywhere for C.A. Johnson. He was a running back, quarterback, wide receiver, kick returner and a tight end over the course of one and a half seasons with the Hornets.

He helped C.A. Johnson break a 34-game losing streak with a 26-0 victory over Keenan High School in 1999.

McClinton fared well in basketball against such well-known local talent as Edward Scott, Aaron Lucas, Jerome Harper and Rolando Howell. But the colleges that were interested in McClinton for basketball were smaller names such as Montreat, Presbyterian, UNC Asheville and the College of Charleston.

"I had hoop dreams, but they didn't come true," McClinton said.

His dreams had a chance in football. At a clinic in February, Floyd told Scott that C.A. Johnson had a tight end prospect that Scott had to see. Scott wrote the name "Todd McClinton" in a book he keeps, and he thought the name sounded familiar.

He didn't make the connection with the boy he had met at Shandon Baptist Church until McClinton approached him at football camp in the summer of 1999. "Don't you remember me?" McClinton asked Scott.

The boy who never was going to play football had changed his mind and instantly became a high-profile recruit. McClinton was the nation's top tight end prospect according to Border Wars and Rivals 100, and he chose Clemson over Auburn, Miami, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Choosing a school was the easy part of the recruiting process for McClinton. Qualifying for his scholarship was much more difficult.

Put to the test. Although McClinton had a decent core grade-point average by the end of his senior year of high school, achieving a qualifying standardized test score was difficult. He took the ACT without preparing for it at all and received a score he said was very low.

Undaunted, McClinton began a rigorous program of study and tutoring in an effort to raise his score. He had tutors in math, English, sociology and science, and he worked with them every day for weeks.

"I studied hard," McClinton said. "Coach made sure I worked on my books before I even played football. Sometimes I even missed practice to stay and work to improve my test score."

After McClinton took that test, he knew he had achieved a qualifying ACT score. When the results came back, he was indeed a full qualifier.

The dream had come true. McClinton went to Clemson in July for voluntary summer workouts and immediately became a favorite of his new teammates.

Scott called Hensley to tell her that players were raving about McClinton's ability to catch the ball. McClinton returned to Columbia to spend the final week of the summer with his family before he was due to report to camp.

His head was in the clouds because he was about to join new friends with the opportunity to play in front of 80,000 people at Death Valley. But on Aug. 2, his dreams came crashing down to earth.

While Hensley and Deloris McClinton packed dishes and towels for McClinton to take to school, the family learned that his test score had been invalidated. His score had jumped so much on his second test that it was called into question.

He couldn't report to Clemson with his teammates. He had to take the ACT over again. And if he didn't post a qualifying score, he wouldn't receive a scholarship.

"He went back in his room and stayed back there," Deloris McClinton said. "And then when he came back out he said 'Momma, it's going to be all right. I'm going to get it.' "

Frustration, then triumph. If McClinton had never dared to dream, he never would have faced this test of his character and determination.

The suspicion that he cheated on his test hurt the most. McClinton is a devout Christian who has avoided trouble all his life in a tempting environment.

And he wants people to know that he didn't cheat on the ACT.

"I was scared sometimes," McClinton said. "I couldn't believe that I earned a scholarship to this school, and then some people would say I would cheat on my test to get in here."

The next five weeks were among the most difficult times McClinton and his family have ever endured. There was an outcry among Clemson fans who were furious that McClinton's credentials had been challenged.

Federal student privacy laws prevented school officials from disclosing the nature of McClinton's academic snafu, so reporters called at all hours of the day and night trying to get information from the family.

Each caller received no comment from McClinton, his mother or his grandmother.

"They got on my nerves," Deloris McClinton said. "They really got on my nerves. Two or three o'clock in the morning, they would call and wake us up."

McClinton was even more frustrated after he went to re-take the test, but was turned away because he didn't bring the proper identification. Finally, he retook the test at Midlands Tech, but it seemed to take an eternity to get it graded.

The family was frustrated, and Hensley's blood was boiling. She said Clemson President James Barker did everything he could to help, and Bowden increased the public pressure with comments to reporters on Fan Day.

With McClinton on the team, Bowden said, Clemson would be able to develop an entire new phase of its offense using the tight end in the middle of the field. Without McClinton, he said, the fans would have to be patient.

This, of course, made the fans even more impatient.

"It was a month of distress, that's for sure," Hensley said.

Finally, the test score arrived on Sept. 6. McClinton hadn't performed well enough to be a full qualifier, but he was a partial qualifier. He could report to Clemson and play three seasons but would have to sit out the 2000 season.

School officials rushed into action to get the ACC faculty academic chairs to approve a special exception for Clemson to the league rule that allows only one partial qualifier in any sport. The Tigers already had a partial qualifier in the class with running back Terrance Huey, and needed McClinton to be a second.

The exception was approved, and McClinton was allowed to enroll at Clemson. Sitting out the season wasn't easy, but he felt good because he had proven himself by achieving a score good enough to get him into school under incredible pressure.

"The thing that speaks volumes for Todd," Scott said, "is that he took his test under difficult circumstances, one on one in a strange environment, and he did that and performed well enough to still receive his scholarship without a chance to study or prepare."

Full of potential. The dream came to fruition in bold, brilliant orange for just a moment Wednesday afternoon under a gray sky as a cool breeze blew off Lake Hartwell.

McClinton, who wears size 18 shoes and has hands the size of oven mitts, peeled off the line of scrimmage to catch a pass late in a scrimmage on a practice field near Jervey Athletic Center.

John Leake, a promising sophomore linebacker, delivered what should have been a crushing blow after McClinton caught the ball and took two steps forward. But the 210-pound Leake simply bounced off the midsection of the 6-foot-6, 260-pound McClinton and crumpled to the ground as the tight end continued to run free.

While the players on the offense hooted their approval, defensive coaches screamed at Leake for failing to make the tackle.

It was just a glimpse of what fans and coaches hope McClinton will do regularly for Clemson in the future.

"People say I've got good hands and good feet," McClinton said. "I think I do. I can run. I can catch. My weakness is blocking. I didn't block in high school. The ball came to me most of the time."

This is why McClinton's dream still has one hurdle to clear before it becomes reality. Bowden's comments in the fall led Clemson fans to believe that McClinton might be an All-America candidate immediately.

Nothing could be further from the truth. McClinton played only a year and a half of high school football, most of it at positions other than tight end.

McClinton also still is working on learning the playbook. After quarterback Woodrow Dantzler called out "Rio" to signal a formation to the offense during a drill Monday, McClinton lined up outside the wrong tackle.

Dantzler quickly stopped McClinton and directed him to the right place.

"I think the fans sometimes think that because a guy is a top recruit and five people who have never seen him play put him on their All-America lists, he is supposed to come out and save the program," Scott said. "That kind of pressure on a young man is not always fair, because they've got to get there and learn the system."

McClinton is learning quickly. After fervent prayer before his first final exams in the fall semester, he achieved a 2.96 grade-point average that has his coaches and his family bursting with pride as they prepare to watch him in today's spring game at Death Valley.

With his easy sense of humor, McClinton has charmed people on campus who were skeptical of his character and academic ability before he arrived. In Scott, he has found the father figure that has been lacking in his life.

"He calls me 'son' sometimes, and I call him 'Daddy Brad' sometimes," McClinton said. "He likes it most of the time."

While the boy who was never going to play football uses the game to live a dream, the children in his community are counting on him. His mother and grandmother, Sandee Hensley, the coaches and his fans all have high hopes for him.

The burden is almost too big for a young man to shoulder. But so far, Todd McClinton has proven to be bigger than every test that has been placed before him.

"He's trying to do the best he can, and if he looks up for a minute and sees the hugeness, he'll get swallowed up," Hensley said. "He's just trying to survive, and he's doing a great job, and I'm so proud of him I can hardly stand it."

CLEMSON SPRING GAME

3 p.m. today at Death Valley

* Tickets: Free. Enter at Gates 5, 9

* Info: 1-800-253-6766

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH

At Clemson's spring football game

1. The point of attack

Clemson's offensive line dominated the last scrimmage despite the absence of four starters. That was bad news for a defensive line that has been depleted by injuries and suspensions, but coach Tommy Bowden said it was partly due to a rigorous defensive workout the previous night.

There will be no such excuses today, and if the big guys on defense can't hold their own, there will be plenty of concern heading into fall camp.

2. Willie Simmons

Starting quarterback Woodrow Dantzler is out because of an injury, so Simmons will have the spotlight to himself. Simmons has looked good and made some spectacular plays this spring, but he also sometimes fails to complete the high-percentage throws that should be easy for such a talented passer.

3. Field goal unit

Place-kicker Aaron Hunt has improved after posting decent numbers (8-for-13 on field goals) as a freshman. But Hunt's longest successful kick last season was from 31 yards, and he still needs to prove he is reliable from outside 35 yards.

4. Kevin Johnson

The likely starter at right cornerback despite little experience, this sophomore will be the target of the offense for most of the scrimmage. Part of that is because left cornerback Brian Mance has had a solid spring. Part of it is because Johnson, though he has made his share of stops this spring, also has been vulnerable to big plays.

5. Three key WRs

Kevin Youngblood, Jackie Robinson and Derrick Hamilton have made big plays this spring. They also have dropped far too many passes. If their catches don't outnumber their drops by at least five to one, the Tigers will finish the spring happy that help is on the way with the nation's top group of wideout recruits reporting to campus in the fall.

-Compiled by Ken Tysiac

1. Todd McClinton had to be dragged to a sign-up session for football at C.A. Johnson. Now he's showing loads of potential as a tight end at Clemson. PHOTOS BY RICH GLICKSTEIN/THE STATE

2. McClinton once thought football ws too violent for him.

3. Todd McClinton (getting a pat on the back from Clemson assistant Rick Stockstill) thought basketball would be his best chance for success. 'I had hoop dream, but they didn't come true,' says the soft-spoken tigjt end from Columbia. PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICH GLICKSTEIN/THE STATE