The amazing thing is, it all seemed so routine.
At 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, Harper wide receiver Rasheed Ward sat down at a table in a meeting room at Dunbar before a few dozen coaches, administrators, relatives and other football players.
With his grandparents to his right and Harper coach Terry Lewis peering over his left shoulder, a smiling Ward carefully signed his name on a letter of intent to attend Northwestern.
The crowd, which had gathered for the Chicago Public League’s annual football signing ceremony, applauded enthusiastically, as it would for 10 others, but shouts of “Hallelujah!” would have been more fitting, for if this wasn’t a miracle, it was certainly an upset–a modern-day Bears-beat-Patriots kind of upset.
The Rasheed Wards of the world, after all, don’t attend Northwestern. Ward was born and raised in the heart of Englewood, a tough neighborhood where surviving to age 17 would be a triumph in itself.
He attends a school where only 10.8 percent of the students in his class who took the Prairie State Achievement Examination as juniors met state reading standards.
On top of all this, Ward is quiet and shy. That, however, disguises the fierce determination and natural leadership qualities that help explain his success.
Early in his freshman year, the then 5-foot-7-inch, 130-pound Ward tried to lift too much in Harper’s weight room and couldn’t get the bar off the rack.
“He couldn’t lift it,” Lewis recalled, “but it didn’t stop him from trying. I laughed because of the determination on his face. He was trying–I’ll never forget that part of it. Every day he was trying. He worked hard to get where he is today.”
Ward’s resolve extended to the classroom, where he has a 3.7 grade-point average. He had learned a valuable lesson from watching older players who hadn’t reached college because their grades didn’t match their games.
“I told myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes,” said Ward, a member of the National Honor Society.
He instead will be the first member of his family to attend college and the first scholarship football recruit from the Public League in coach Randy Walker’s seven recruiting classes.
The quiet heroes in this are his grandparents, Albert and Yvonne Ward, retirees who are raising Rasheed and six of his siblings, who range in age from 16 to 9, in a small house near Harper. Rasheed’s parents have not been a real factor in his life because, as his grandfather put it, “they just got off on the wrong track.”
In biographical information Northwestern released Wednesday, Rasheed lists Albert and Yvonne as his parents.
“They have done a lot for me . . . everything,” he said. “Without them I don’t know where I’d be now.”
Northwestern wide receivers coach Garrick McGee describes Ward as “a perfect fit for us,” not only because of his grades and football ability but also for what he has overcome to attain those skills.
“Harper is a tough inner-city school, and this kid found a way to keep his grades up,” McGee said. “He’s extremely serious about what he’s doing, a very mature kid.”
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Ward never played organized football until he entered Harper. He leaves it as a 5-10, 165-pound Tribune second-team All-State wide receiver who also starred as a defensive back and special-teams performer.
“The first thing I liked is he never left the field,” McGee said. “I try to teach my guys to be football players and not receivers, and that guy is a football player.”
Ward dreamed of playing for Florida State, but Northwestern produced his only firm scholarship offer. McGee believes that Ward’s size may have discouraged other schools but said he fills Northwestern’s need for someone with excellent hands and quickness who can run a short route and make people miss after the catch.
Ward calls Northwestern “a great opportunity” on and off the field but plans to use his lack of offers as motivation.
“It will make me work harder to prove they made a mistake,” he said of other schools.
When McGee began recruiting Ward, the receiver believed that Northwestern was too close to home. His grandfather prayed silently for a change of heart.
“It turns heads when you graduate from Northwestern,” Albert Ward said. “People look at you twice. My fingers were crossed when Northwestern offered, but I wanted it to be his decision.”
It’s a choice worth about $40,000 a year. Ward may not have grabbed the spotlight on signing day, but if he gets a degree he’s all but set for life even if he never beats Michigan or starts a game.
McGee, though, expects Ward to do just fine.
“He’s one of those kids who’s a diamond in the rough,” McGee said. “He’s a different kid, a special kid.
“He’s not into glitz and glamor. He’s into paying the price to earn what you get in life.”
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