By Lance Lysowski August 22, 2017

Horrific accident, ADHD, juco detour can’t stop Edwards’ascent

dkpittsburghsports.com/2017/08/22/allen-edwards-inspiring-journey-horrific-accident-silent-leader

In Liberty City, Fla., children grow up in fear, conditioned to the sound of gunshots andconflict. The impoverished town, just north of Miami, is six square miles and infamous for drugtrafficking and gang violence, filled with abandoned buildings and public housing complexes.

It’s an area where those with even the highest of aspirations end up on the wrong path, butAllen Edwards fought to avoid that fate.

His father was in and out of jail throughout his childhood. His mother, who gave birth to him at15 years old, worked multiple jobs to provide for him and his younger brother. He suffered fromattention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and was feared dead after being struck by two vehiclesat 8 years old, which left him with scars inside and out.

His story could have followed the same tragic arc as many of his friends from Miami — somewhose athleticism was even greater than his — but Edwards found hope amid the despair.

Each adverse situation only motivated him to get out, first to a tiny junior college in Franklin,Mass., and eventually, Pitt, where he’s now a quiet leader as a senior defensive end.

“A lot of people he knew from Liberty City are either in jail or dead,” his mother, JosephineEdwards, said. “He beat the odds.”

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Those who saw the accident could not believe Edwards was still breathing. A large puddle ofblood surrounded his motionless body on the street, the right side of his face pressed againstthe pavement after he was struck by two cars — one a Chevrolet Trailblazer that sped througha red light to cause the gruesome scene.

The impact sent Edwards flying into the air before landing in oncoming traffic, where he was hitagain. A few feet away, another boy who was also hit lifted his head to check on his olderbrother.

The children were 8 and 6, running across a crosswalk at the busy intersection when the whitelight signaled it was safe.

Edwards’ younger brother, Terrill Hanks, still recalls the spring day in 2002 with vivid detail.The helicopter that transported his brother away from the scene. The throngs of people exitingtheir homes to watch emergency personnel tend to their injuries.

“There was blood everywhere,” Hanks said. “I looked up and my brother was laying theremotionless. Everyone in the neighborhood came out. My aunt thought he was dead.”

Upon arriving at the hospital, doctors conducted a battery of tests to look for internal injuries,which they expected to be present based on witness accounts of how hard Edwards wasstruck by both vehicles.

Shockingly, there were no broken bones, but most of the skin on the right side of Edwards’face was gone. Josephine was in Fort Lauderdale — roughly a 40-minute drive north — whenshe received the call that still gives her chills to recount all these years later.

“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” she said. “I just screamed when they told me. When Igot to the hospital and saw him they had to take me out of the room. It was too much to bear.”

The doctors decided to allow the ghastly wound to heal on its own, using stitches for sizablegashes next to his right eye and basic ointments for the exposed flesh. The scars remain 15years later.

Edwards was hospitalized for a week before being sent home, bandaged and distraught.Family members visited, but he did not want to see them. He was ashamed of his appearance.

“Half my face was gone,” Edwards said after a recent preseason practice at Rooney SportsComplex. “It looked like it was from a scary movie. It was all yellow. That made me build ashell.”

Edwards was bullied when he returned to school. A number of insults were hurled at him byclassmates, including ‘scar face.’ His mother tried to ease his concerns, reassuring him thewound would heal in time. Eventually, no one would notice, she said.

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Josephine knew how cruel children could be, though, and she also knew Edwards’ morepermanent condition would only exacerbate his anxiety about his temporary one.

Edwards was struggling with ADHD, a condition doctors diagnosed him with at 5 years old.Josephine always noticed something was unusual about him. He was unusually hyperactive,rarely able to stay still. When the family went to church, she’d give him her cellphone to keephim distracted. At doctors appointments, he’d fiddle with the doctor’s stethoscope and anyother instruments within reach.

Medication helped with those symptoms, but it made Edwards nauseous and schoolwork wasstill difficult. The accident only made it worse.

“All it did was make me stronger,” Edwards said.

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Allen Edwards had 1 1/2 sacks in 11 games for Pitt last fall. – MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

When Josephine and her sons were in trouble, they usually stayed at her mother’s home. Butas Josephine was finishing high school, when Allen was just 2 years old, she was kicked out ofthe house and forced to leave the children behind to live in a shelter.

She got a job at McDonald’s to save money for an apartment. Staying with their father was notan option; he was absent for most of their lives, having done jail time since they were infants,most recently a four-year prison sentence on gun charges. On Christmas Eve night in 2003,the children arrived home to find their presents gone and the house ransacked by burglars.

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“It makes you grow up faster,” Edwards said. “How could you not with all the things I’ve beenthrough?”

After bouncing between crime-riddled neighborhoods to avoid the violence, Josephine metObie Dunn, who she eventually married, and that allowed her to move her two sons out ofLiberty City to south Miami, a safersetting. It was three years after the accident — Edwards’face had finally healed — and their grandmother wanted to get them out of the house. So, sheencouraged them to play sandlot football with the other children in the neighborhood.

The two were rarely allowed to leave the house or apartment in Liberty City. At 2 years old,Edwards knew to drop to the ground at the sound of gun shots, so playing outside for anystretch wasn’t safe.

“My mom had a rule that we had to be inside before the streetlights went on,” Edwards said.

That’s where Edwards discovered the answer to his ADHD and his way out.

He was able to harness his energy on the field. Edwards was far from being the best athletewhile playing offensive and defensive tackle in little league football, but he began to excel withtime.

“That was his release,” Hanks said. “That’s the only time you ever saw those emotions comeout. If he couldn’t hit someone he’d go crazy.”

Without football, Edwards had nowhere to channel that hyperactivity, but the sport gave himan outlet to pour that energy into. When that became noticeable to Josephine, she made adeal with Allen: Play football and he could stop taking the medication.

Individualized Education Programs helped Edwards in the classroom, though his condition didmake it difficult at times. As part of the program, Josephine often met with school counselorsand teachers to keep up with his progress.

When Edwards was in eighth grade, one counselor at Mays Community Middle School toldJosephine her son was not fit for college and it might be time to prepare him for a technicalschool.

“I cried at the table,” Josephine said. “They said he wasn’t college material. I couldn’t believethey would say that about a boy that age. I was so upset.”

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After his sophomore year of high school, Josephine sent Edwards and his brother toImmaculata-La Salle High School, a private school in Coconut Grove. That’s when the injuryhappened.

Edwards tore his ACL during his junior year, but returned as a senior to record 48 tackles and10 sacks. It was too late, though.

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Most Division I interest was gone, but Florida Atlantic offered him a scholarship. He planned togo there, but didn’t qualify academically.

Allen Edwards started three of Pitt’s last four games in 2016. – MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

That’s how he ended up nearly 1,500 miles away on the campus of Dean College in Franklin,Mass. The weather was unlike anything he had experienced, and the junior college locatedless than 40 miles southwest of Boston proved to be a culture shock.

“It wasn’t easy,” Edwards said. “It was an adjustment.”

It was also an adjustment for his family back in Miami. Before financial aid, tuition for aresidential student at Dean College is $54,736 per year. That figure was lowered after financialaid and scholarships, but the bulk of the expenses were shouldered by Josephine and Dunn.

Josephine worked at Miami International Airport and a telecommunications company to followa strict payment schedule, having to avoid spending any additional money on something assimple as a haircut. Dunn paid for most of the $900 the family owed the college after Edwards’freshman year, as not doing so would prevent him from enrolling.

Junior colleges also do not feed athletes as often as Division I programs, so she sent her sonan allowance for food. The best way he could find to stretch that money was eating atDomino’s.

“I’d call (Domino’s) and they’d say, ‘The usual?’ ” Edwards recalled with a laugh. “They knewme as soon as they heard my voice.”

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Before his final season at Dean — which included 13 1/2 tackles for a loss — ended in 2014,Edwards’ received a scholarship offer from Pat Narduzzi, who was then the defensivecoordinator at Michigan State.

Not long after that conversation, Narduzzi called to get Edwards to Pitt.

“The funny thing is no one thought he’d make it to that level, especially after the knee injuryand juco,” Hanks, who is now a junior linebacker at New Mexico State, said. “The whole thingwas tough on our mom, but he told her, ‘Ma, give me two years and we’ll be straight.’ ”

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Atop the depth chart, Edwards is the only senior on the defensive line. – MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

When Edwards arrived at Pitt in the summer of 2015, he had to relearn how to properly playon the defensive line. Relying on athleticism simply wasn’t enough, so he was redshirted.Then, he was buried down the depth chart at the start of 2016.

When his opportunity came, it was 15 minutes north of Liberty City. Edwards’ first careerDivision I start was last November against Miami in front of family and friends at Hard RockStadium, and he even got his first sack, a surreal moment in his hometown.

“I pretty much distanced myself from Miami,” Edwards said. “The guys I thought were going tobe something ended up doing nothing. I’m the only guy from my little league team who is stillplaying football.”

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One week after his hometown debut, Edwards started in front of 81,048 fans at Clemson’sMemorial Stadium, a far cry from the 1,500 seats at Dean College’s Longley Athletic Complex.Yet, there was Edwards, ripping through a block to make a game-saving, one-armed tackle onthird and 1 with just over one minute left in the fourth quarter, a marquee play in Pitt’s upsetover the Tigers.

“That was so big for me,” Edwards said. “So big.”

One month after he made that tackle, Josephine was sorting through boxes when she cameacross her son’s IEP paperwork from Mays Community Elementary School, where she wastold he was better suited to learn a trade.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” Josephine said. “It means so much now. It’s surreal that he’s made itthis far. I tried to be that parent my mom wasn’t to me. He made it.”

Now, Edwards is working towards a degree in administration of justice and is as a soft-spokenleader who the Panthers are relying on both on and off the field — the only senior on thedefensive line.

He’s made it this far by still fighting like the bandaged 8 year old in a hospital bed.

“Everything is coming through for me,” Edwards said slowly. “It definitely wasn’t easy.”

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