Scott Springer|Cincinnati Enquirer
INDIAN HILL - As he stands on the colorful turfed football field at Indian Hill High School, former NFL player Antwan Peek is miles away from his upbringing ina Cincinnati public housingproject.
The Indian Hill High School outside linebackers coach grew up in Winton Terrace, failed both seventh and eighth grades, worked hard to right himself academically through thelove of a caring aunt. All this while managingto catch the attention of a youth football coach, the late Chris Cash,who made sure he made it to football practice.
If he hadn't beencoaxed into coming out for football at Woodward,he may have never found his way to Rick Minter's UC football team and, later, the NFL.He was also athletically gifted enough to see some hardwood time for Bob Huggins' Bearcats.
Antwan Peek made the most of his second chances.
Now, after years as a player, educator and coach, his greatest gift is the ability to relate to those who have had difficult backgrounds and to provide hope when days seem dim.
Aunt Carolyn
With his father not in the picture at an early age, Peek stayed with his mother. Along the way, he said, she had boyfriends who were abusive.
"I used to always want to go to my Aunt Carolyn's house to spend the night," Peek said. "One day I was over there and I said, 'I want to stay over here'. She welcomed me in with open arms. She already had four boys and a girl, so there was a lot of boys for me to play with. That's where I learned those rough tendencies and physical aspects of football that I later on needed."
While Peeklater reconnected with his father and mother, who passed in October 2018, he credits his aunt with making sure he gotwarm clothes out of the dryer and breakfast in the morning.
Regardless of where he lived, Peek was seemingly always out of the house doing something. He would like to see more of that from today's players.
"We had to go outside and play," Peek said. "It was get out of the house and don't come back until the sun is getting ready to go down. You were always being active with people and I think that's one of the differences we have with the kids today. Getting them to have that aggressive mentality on the football field, you've got to somehow pull that out of them."
Curveballs
Peek would go on to be a multi-sport star at Woodward High School, but not without other obstacles in the way.
Prior to Woodward, a cousin, Urban Jackson, diedin his early teens from appendicitis. They were the same age and had done everything together, including failing seventh grade. Both passed summer school, but then after Jackson's death, Peek also failed eighth grade. He eventually entered an accelerated program and was able to move on, using the tragedy as inspiration to improve his academics.
There was always a friendly face somewhere lending a hand.Peek had a white youth football coach from the West Sidecome to the projectsto drive him to every practice.
Then there was Woodward's Ed Jackson, now in the Cincinnati Public Schools Hall of Fame. Peek fancied himself as a basketball player.Jackson saw otherwise and sought out the6-foot-3 youngster with great leaping ability.
"He stayed on me," Peek recalled. "He saw me as a kid walking through the hallways. He said, 'Hey, come out and play football.' I'm like, 'No, coach, I'm a basketball guy.' He asked me every day of school until one day I said I'd be out there."
Peek finished as the team MVP and was recruited to the University of Cincinnati as a wide receiver at 180 pounds. Eventually, at UC, he won an achievement award handed out by the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletes. He finished his degree at UC in criminal justice
When he left he was a defensive lineman nearing 250 pounds.
Peek was the third-round pick of the Houston Texans out of the University of Cincinnati in 2003. He eventually finished his career with the Cleveland Browns in 2008.
"Ed Jackson was able to get me out and play because he showed he cared," Peek said. "He didn't give up on me. If it wasn't for him being on me every day about coming out and playing football, who knows what I would have been doing? Being in the streets could have been an easy outlet for me."
Instead, he lived the dream.
After the NFL
Whenhis pro career ended, Peek became a personal trainer, which led to an interest in becoming a coach. He coached at Ginn Academy in Cleveland, Strongsville High School and then Division II college football at Lake Erie College. He is now in his second year coaching at Indian Hill High School.
"I'm always trying to tell them everything that I know," Peek said. "Any knowledge that I have, anything that can make them a better person, a better player, a better student, you learn from your mistakes. Our goal as parents is to not allow our kids to make the mistakes we made."
Peek is a strong advocate of playing multiple sports, multiple positions and doing anything that will give a young student an opportunity to earn a scholarship.
While God-given talent comes into play, so does mentoring, he said.
Peek recalls several coachesputting their arm around him and constantly encouraging him. At UC, former Pittsburgh Steeler defensive lineman Keith Willis helped Peek during histwo-year tenure coaching with the Bearcats. Willis is now on the Tennessee Titans staff.
"He was the coach that converted me from offense to defense," Peek said. "He stayed as a mentor for me through college and the NFL and we still keep in contact."
At Indian Hill, should players doubt Peek's word, some of Tony Arcuri's staff have football cards of his NFL days to display. However, many of his words of wisdom come from an early coaching stint at the Ginn Academy in Cleveland, an all-boys school for at-risk students.
"My first day there, there was gunfire outside of the football field," Peek said. "The coaches do a great job of protecting the kids, but you're on 152nd in Cleveland, some of the roughest neighborhoods in the state of Ohio. Those kids are having to worry about walking home and gang violence."
It was there he would sometimes see a white sheet over a dead body on the way to school. Having to focus an athlete on practice after that put things into perspective.
"When you talk about not knowing what a kid is going through, you don't know what traumatized that kid," Peek said. "Then you get to practice and try to communicate with them and they're rebellious."
The challenge for Peek is to take the focus away from life's distractions and to use the sport as therapy.
"We're at a time right now where these kids need us," Peek said. "Where are we at right now? We are at a time of crisis right now. The kids need influential people in their lives."
Peek will be one of the five storytellers at the Cincinnati Enquirer's Sept. 24 "Champions and Underdogs" Storytellers show, 7 p.m.,at the Transept, Elm Street. Fortickets and more information, clickhere.
