The phone doesn’t ring every 15 seconds in Javon Stewart’s house, with some college football coach or recruiting guru pleading for his services or his latest thought.
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The mailbox by the curb isn’t dripping with letters and brochures.
The senior quarterback from Bolingbrook is one heck of a high school football player, but he is not a blue-chip college prospect.
Stewart is a victim of the numbers game, in this case the numbers being 5 feet 7 inches, 165 pounds. That means the likes of Illinois and Nebraska aren’t likely to offer him a scholarship, even to play another position.
Many a player in that spot would be talking smack, insisting he can star anywhere and that his reluctant suitors will one day regret their lack of interest.
Sitting in his kitchen Monday night, Stewart offered none of that. He seemed comfortable waiting for interest to develop at the big-time level and satisfied to play at a smaller school if necessary.
“My pride’s not hurt,” he said quietly. “I’m really flexible where I play.”
This is the kind of perspective you learn the hard way, the kind you develop when your life gets turned upside down but you manage to stay right side up.
That’s what happened to Stewart in 1994 when the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services took him and three siblings away from his mother, who was battling personal problems in Chicago.
Stewart’s father had been serving a long prison term for murder since Javon was 2, and it appeared the four children would be forced to separate.
Fortunately, family members stepped in. One of his mother’s cousins, Veronica Mitchell, took in Stewart, who was 6, and his 4-year-old sister, Kiara. Another cousin took the other two kids, who are now 14 and 12, into her Bolingbrook home.
“We sat and talked as a family and decided to bring all four with us,” Veronica’s husband, Tyrone, said. “They would have split all four up.”
For six years, hope lingered that the kids’ mom would pull herself together and regain custody. Then Tyrone and Veronica became Javon’s and Kiara’s legal guardians.
“We got in a routine here, so everyone felt it was in the best interests of the kids to remain with us,” Veronica said.
Javon had been angry with his fate at first but eventually came to peace with it.
“It basically got to the point I was just comfortable here and didn’t want to go back,” he said.
That was largely because the Mitchells and their two kids, Jason and Falisha, made Javon and Kiara feel so at home.
“We have four children,” Veronica emphasized.
Stewart began to play football at age 8, even then as a quarterback. As a sophomore, he won Bolingbrook coach John Ivlow’s confidence and the starting quarterback job, even if he did weigh just 150 pounds.
“He was going against 300-pound players, and he was skin and bones,” Tyrone said. “But he has no fear.”
Stewart, a running and passing threat, helped lead the Raiders to the state playoffs the last two seasons, and with a 6-2 record, they have clinched another postseason berth this year. Ivlow praises his quarterback’s intelligence, quickness and strength on the field but insists he is even more talented off it.
“He has always got a smile on his face and is always positive,” said Ivlow, who is the Bolingbrook Police Department’s liaison officer at the high school. “He’s not a tough guy, not a jerk, never in trouble, never in the dean’s office, always respectful.
“For what he has been through, he has turned out picture perfect in my opinion. I’ve seen a lot of these circumstances where kids take a different path.”
Credit for this, of course, goes to Stewart, but also to the Mitchells, who have kept him and Kiara on track.
“We preach a lot about not going the wrong way and the importance of education,” Tyrone said.
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Javon knows that one way or another, football will pay for that education. Eastern Illinois, Western Illinois and College of St. Francis have shown the most interest in him so far.
Size, of course, is his recruiting hang-up, even if Stewart plays running back, receiver or defensive back in college. Ivlow believes some offers will come as recruiters start to miss out on some priority targets.
“Everybody loves him . . . everybody,” Ivlow said of Stewart, who could play quarterback in an option offense. “They just don’t know where they can project him at the college level.”
Stewart, though, realizes that when it comes to opportunities, his glass definitely is half full, thanks to the Mitchells.
“If I was with my mother, I probably would not be doing half the things I’m doing now,” he said. “So I’m very grateful that they brought us in and gave us a chance to broaden our lives.”
Stewart occasionally considers what might have been, but mainly uses his parents’ woes to stay focused on achieving his own goals.
“It motivates me to be better,” he said, “to make sure I don’t make mistakes in my life so I’m not a person who has to say I coulda, woulda, shoulda.”
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