FootballSaturday, September 12, 2015
4
By JAKE LOURIM
Managing Sports Editor
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. —
David Sills IV sits at a desk in the
den of his weekend home here,
on a country club just a few miles
from the beach. A table off to the
side holds a laptop decorated with
logos from several colleges, most
prominently West Virginia, where
his son, David V, is a freshman
quarterback. He drinks out of a cup
from Mississippi State, where his
adopted son, Jahmere Irvin-Sills,
now plays football.
Jahmere was a child at a youth
football game when he learned his
mother had been killed. He went
into the witness protection pro-
gram and spent a year in North
Carolina before returning to live
with his grandfather in Delaware.
Soon after he returned, his brother
was killed in a house fire. The day
his family continued to break apart,
he started to form a new one when
he met David Sills IV at a football
practice facility nearby.
Years later, Jahmere won a skills
combine, and he returned that
night to learn that his grandfather
had passed away. No good news
came without a little bad.
Amid unbearable tragedy, Jah-
mere moved in with the Sills family,
who later adopted him. Eventually,
he changed his last name to Irvin-
Sills and earned his scholarship to
Mississippi State.
Kids like Jahmere come around
often in his hometown of Wilming-
ton, Delaware, near Eastern Chris-
tian Academy in Elkton, Maryland.
Sills founded the school in 2012 as
an all-online school intended ini-
tially for only football players.
There are no school plays, chess
clubs or marching bands at Eastern
Christian. The school exists with
one goal — get kids off the streets
and into college for free, using foot-
ball.
The model has been overwhelm-
ingly successful so far — Sills esti-
mates that in a graduating class of
15, on average 13 will go to college
for free — and it stretches to Ann
Arbor, too. Michigan sophomore
football players Freddy Canteen
and Brandon Watson once called
the troubled streets of Wilmington
home, but they made it out.
Some kids from Wilmington
struggle to find themselves. So they
find Sills, they find coach Dwayne
Thomas, they find Eastern Chris-
tian and they find other kids — role
models like Canteen and Watson.
On a Saturday afternoon in late
July, only Sills is at his Rehoboth
Beach home for most of the after-
noon. It’s a “quiet day,” he says,
which is unusual. The next day, his
son and Canteen would be there
after training together. Both his
daughters would be there, too, as
would Jahmere, and likely a bunch
of their friends. The Sills have a
dormitory-style room above the
garage that can sleep 16. Sills refers
to all of the kids as his own, and the
family has been hosting them since
before they founded Eastern Chris-
tian.
“I’m happy to be able to host
them as much as I can,” Sills said.
“I love the kids. I think they’re all
good for each other.”
The kids agree. Watson said he
used to drive a teammate to school
and buy him lunch, hoping that
teammate can now do the same
for someone else. Canteen, while
home from Michigan for a week
this summer, went back to Eastern
Christian and rode the bus with the
team up to Camden, New Jersey, to
watch their 7-on-7 workout.
Together, they serve as role
models for the next group of kids
looking to make something of
themselves.
And so after growing up with lit-
tle reason to believe in their future,
they end up with little reason not
to.
* * *
The players at Eastern Christian
come from all over, but most are
from nearby New Castle County in
Delaware, especially Wilmington.
Wilmington is the largest city in
Delaware, with 71,525 people as of
2013. It is also one of the most dan-
gerous small cities in the country.
A Newsweek piece last Decem-
ber labeled it Murder Town, USA.
According to the Wall Street Jour-
nal, last year’s 28 murders fell
one shy of the record set in 2010
and 2011. In 2013, the per-capita
rate was more than four times the
national average.
“As long as I’m around, we’re
going to always be the least, the
last and the left out,” Thomas said.
“Because that’s what I was. Kids
that need the most get the most.”
These kids come from a wide
range of family situations. Some
have single parents, some have par-
ents in jail, some have no parents.
One, Angelo Blaxon, came from
another high school in northern
Delaware and grew up with his sis-
ter. His mother was a drug addict.
His sister, though she was a “very
strong, valued individual,” as Sills
said, struggled to feed and raise
Angelo, as he was 6-foot-5 and 300
pounds. He started playing foot-
ball for Thomas at nearby Red Lion
An unusual path to Michigan
COURTESY EASTERN CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
Michigan sophomore wide receiver Freddy Canteen graduated from Eastern Christian Academy in Elkton, Maryland, in 2014, after overcoming obstacles similar to many of his high-school teammates.