Staff Photo by John Rawlston
Jonathan Blevins is a senior defensive lineman for South Pittsburg High School who slipped into the press box at the football field where he was secretly staying for two weeks to escape from a bad family situation. He has since been adopted by a local family, and he hopes to move out of town after graduation and become a police officer.

SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. -- The knock at the door jolted Jonathan Blevins alert. The unexpected visitor not only broke the silence but brought Blevins face to face with the opportunity he had prayed for.

"I was used to people just stopping by or knocking on the door every now and then," said Blevins, a senior defensive lineman for South Pittsburg High School. "But there was something different about the guy waiting outside the door this time. I knew it wasn't one of the drug dealers that would come by sometimes looking for my mom."

For as long as he could remember, Blevins had been surrounded by turmoil, his home life a steady decline into an abyss. He remembers as a 9-year-old watching his mother take a severe beating from her former boyfriend. Then last year, as she sank deeper into drug addiction, a hopeless Blevins began finding the type of trouble that is all too easy for an unsupervised teenager to come by.

Too embarrassed to let friends know about his family issues, Blevins often would walk the eight miles from the South Pittsburg football fieldhouse to the room at the Acuff Country Inn in Jasper, where he and his mother lived for nearly six weeks last fall. Using a bar of soap, he would wash his school clothes in the sink and hang them to dry on the railing outside the room.

Each afternoon as he watched teammates drive home from football practice in their own cars, Blevins felt like a castaway, alone and burdened by troubles few his age are equipped to handle.

"Nobody really knows this, but for a couple of weeks last year I would wait for everybody else to go home and then I would go up into the press box and sleep there," Blevins said, shaking his head at the memory. "I was ashamed, but I had no other place to go. I didn't want to go back to the hotel and see some of the things my mom was doing, so I would just do homework or walk the track to pass the time.

"Then I would climb the steps, curl up on the table in the press box and, I'll admit, there were a lot of nights I would just lay there and cry."

Then came the knock, from a man Blevins had never met with an offer he couldn't believe. Rance Castle, a tall man who speaks with a slow, no-nonsense tone, had heard about Blevins' predicament and decided he could not sit idly by. After tracking down the teenager, Castle introduced himself to Blevins and told him matter-of-factly, "Get your things if you want to come live with me."

"It was my choice," Blevins said. "I knew it would be better for me, but the toughest thing I've ever had to do was see my mom cry and have to look at her and tell her I love her, but I had to go.

"When I got in the car to leave, I kept asking myself if this was a dream. I used to pray every single night for God to help get me out of the situation I was in. I couldn't believe it was actually happening. I would have been on the streets, in jail or dead by now if that prayer hadn't been answered."

Castle and his wife, Wilma, instructed Blevins to make himself at home, and for the first time since he could remember, that word -- home -- began to have actual meaning for Blevins. A retired electric co-op supervisor, Castle laid down a set of simple house rules -- no drugs, no lying and Blevins had to be home and studying by 9:30 on school nights.

"When I heard about his situation I didn't hesitate," Castle said. "I knew he needed some help and I just felt like I could do it. He's never given us a single minute's problem since he came to live with us, and we'd feel lost without Jonathan now.

"I've got four other grandsons besides him, and he's every bit as much a part of our family as any of them."

South Pittsburg coach Vic Grider said the structured home led to an immediate change in Blevins.

"The difference was like night and day," Grider said. "All that baggage he had been carrying was gone. He became a better student and a better teammate to the point that he's a leader for us now. Ninety-nine percent of his problem was his anger over the situation he was in, and the sad thing is none of us really knew just how bad he really had it."

Flanked by ends Jiajuan Fennell (6-foot-4, 225 pounds) and Blake Mitchell (6-2, 220), the 5-8, 185-pound Blevins looks out of place when the Pirates' three defensive linemen step toward the ball. But once it is snapped, he becomes the engine that runs one of the area's best defensive units.

"He makes us go," Pirates defensive coordinator Danny Wilson said. "I knew right away that nobody would be able to block him because he's quick, powerful and as relentless as any kid I've ever seen. He's basically got a sic-'em call every snap."

Blevins' 52 tackles ranks second on a unit allowing an average of just 166 total yards per game. His eight tackles for loss and two quarterback sacks lead the undefeated Pirates, who are ranked No. 1 in Class 1A and have beaten five opponents in higher classifications this season.

"We couldn't touch him," Marion County coach Troy Boeck said. "Even when we double-teamed him we couldn't block him all night. If you knock him down, he doesn't stay on the ground. He bounces right back up and keeps coming."

That ferocious determination and refusal to stay down has paid off in Blevins' everyday life as well, and he has become an example that sometimes the greater the struggle the more gratifying the triumph.

"Every time I hear my name called out on Friday nights as a starter, I think about my mom and everything I've been through," Blevins said. "When I make a big play and I see my family or my coaches smile, it makes me feel proud. That's a feeling I never really knew before. But it's something I wouldn't trade for anything now."