Beverly finds home with Wheelers
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By Eric Page | Thursday, June 19, 2008 |
David Beverly has found a home with the Quad-City Steamwheelers after being homeless. Beverly ranks second on the team with 32 tackles and has an interception and four pass breakups. Buy this Photo
It's hard for David Beverly to get too worked up about the Quad-City Steamwheelers’ struggles this season.
Yes, the team is 3-5, and there is a steep uphill climb between here and a playoff berth.
But four months ago, Beverly, a rookie defensive back, was homeless, sleeping in cars and scrounging for money in his hometown of Long Beach, Calif.
“It’s been tough,” Beverly said. “Being in that hole really makes you challenge yourself and say, ‘What are you going to do?’ It’s hard when you can’t depend on anybody but yourself, but that’s all about becoming a man. But I finally got here, and God has been keeping me strong, giving me the strength to keep going.”
Four years ago, after his junior season at Idaho State, Beverly was a rising star, a mutli-dimensional athlete with an NFL pedigree — his father, Dwight, played running back at the University of Illinois and for the New Orleans Saints in the 1980s.
The younger Beverly played running back, receiver and defensive back in college, and he was a dangerous return man. Leading up to his senior season, he was being mentioned as a potential steal in the NFL Draft.
The world, it seemed, was his oyster.
But while he was doing everything he needed to on the field, he did little that was required of him off it. The move from Long Beach to Pocatello, Idaho, the change in culture and demographic, was a shock, and Beverly acted out. He blew off classes, ignored the consequences and watched his grade-point average suffer irreparable damage.
He was declared academically ineligible in the spring of 2005. His career was over. Gone was his senior season, gone his shot at the NFL.
“For me to have everything I wanted and then get stripped of it, not being able to play, not being able to go to the NFL and provide for my mom, get my moms out of the ghetto. I really had to look myself in the mirror and ask myself what I wanted to do,” Beverly said. “I almost gave up football.”
Beverly left Idaho and returned home to Long Beach to live with his mother. Out of work and out of luck, he drifted for the better part of two years.
Last spring, he surfaced on the roster of the San Diego Shockwave, a team in the now-defunct National Indoor Football League. He played three games before the franchise folded. Without a team and without a home, he reached bottom.
That’s when his father, who had been absent for most of his life, came back in the picture.
“I really started playing football again because of him,” Beverly said. “When I was homeless, he said, ‘Man, you’ve got too much talent to just be sitting here.’ He didn’t want to see me give it all up.”
That was last fall, the same time his son, Dion — named for Beverly’s idol Deion Sanders — was born and the same time Wheelers coach Troy Biladeau first got in touch with him.
“The first time I looked at his stats, I was like, ‘Sign him,’ ” Biladeau said. “I didn’t even watch film on him. There aren’t a lot of receivers who can play running back and not a lot of running backs who can play DB, so I knew he had to be a pretty special athlete.”
At first, Beverly was reluctant. He was homeless. He was broke. He had a child and another on the way, and he had no way of getting to the Quad-Cities for training camp.
His father took him in in February, helped him train and get in shape, helped him prepare for one last shot at his dream.
Eight games in to his first af2 season, Beverly, Biladeau said, still is learning the nuances of the arena game. But he’s improving. He ranks second on the team with 32 tackles and has an interception and four pass breakups.
“He adds a lot of swagger and toughness to the team,” said Wheelers linebacker Tyus Jackson, Beverly’s roommate and best friend on the team. “Anybody that has come from where he’s come from and can still have a level head about everything, those are the kind of people we need on the team. Because this is what they really want. He could be in jail right now with what he’s been through. I don’t think I could have done some of the stuff he’s done. He was homeless, didn’t have a place … it’s hard to talk about to be honest with you.
“It’s been a humbling experience to play with him.”
Humbling — and inspiring, because Beverly is here with a purpose, a true sense of urgency. The stakes, of course, are much higher now than they were four years ago when he failed to take advantage of his opportunity at Idaho State. He has his 8-month-old son, Dion, and a 6-month-old daughter, Kiana. He still longs to rescue his mother from his neighborhood. He’s only 23, but this might be his last chance.
The road from the af2 to the AFL to the NFL is a long and seldom-traveled one, and, Beverly admits, it is a long shot. But it seems like so long since Beverly had a chance.
Finally, he is back there again.
“When I was at my highest point, I reached my lowest point at the same time,” he said. “That was hard. You learn from your experiences, though, so that’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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