Call me Yoshi

[Nexus]

 

"Are you a returner (returning player)?"

 

"Yeah, I am."

 

"Do you want to see my highlight tape?"

 

"Um, sure, I guess."

 

That was the first time Nebraska wide receiver Brandon Kinnie saw Jermarcus "Yoshi" Hardrick. Kinnie was in his second season at Fort Scott (Kan.) Community College. It was Hardrick's first day on campus, and his first trip to Kansas.

 

Not your typical introduction, perhaps, but then again "Yoshi" isn't your typical football player. He proved that later in the day at Fort Scott.

 

After checking out Hardrick's highlight tape, Kinnie, being the veteran player, invited Hardrick to play in a seven-on-seven scrimmage between returning players and newcomers.

 

As Kinnie remembers, "When we got out there and started dividing up, Yoshi said, 'I'm not playing with the newcomers. I'm playing with the returners!' And, he did.

 

"As we were playing this game, he was all over the place. It was crazy. Someone that big shouldn't be that fast. We threw a ball up, and Yoshi jumped up and caught it over some dude. Yoshi was the biggest, most athletic guy I'd ever seen in my life."

 

"People talk about swagger in both a positive and negative way," said Fort Scott coach Jeff Sims. "Yoshi brings the most positive swagger I've ever been around. He does and says things you wish you did as an athlete. That day of the seven-on-seven game, he was lining up at wide receiver, but he wasn't doing it as a joke. He thought he was the best football player on the field. Whatever type of challenge he faces like that, he'll try to back up his actions every day."

 

Those two stories largely begin the "legend" of Jermarcus "Yoshi" Hardrick. They also sum up the 6-foot-7, 320-pound offensive lineman from Batesville, Miss. Confidence and hard work.

 

"My goal when I went to Fort Scott was to graduate and make my dreams come true of the Division-I life," said Hardrick. "Now it's scary because I'm here at Nebraska. It doesn't feel real. My goal was to get to D-I and prove the doubters wrong. Now I have that chance."

 

But there are two other characteristics that stand out immediately with Hardrick: family and trust. Those are what helped lead him to Nebraska.

 

Kinnie is one of the two main reasons – the other being Lavonte David, who started at Fort Scott the same time as Hardrick – Yoshi is in Lincoln now.

 

"Everything is black and white regarding trust with Yoshi," said Sims. "If you're in with him, he has your back to the end. Trust is a huge thing to him. So, being able to play with BK and Lavonte is why we encouraged him to go to Nebraska."

 

"I wanted to be able to play with them again," Hardrick says of his two former Fort Scott teammates. "I know I can trust them. They're like brothers to me."

 

 

~~~~

 

 

Batesville, Miss., is likely what you would picture when thinking about small towns in Mississippi. It's a northern Mississippi "frontier" community with a little more than 7,000 people occupying an area of 11.1 square miles.

 

Although the average household income is $35,462, approximately 28 percent of city's population falls below the poverty line.

 

That's where Yoshi Hardrick spent much of his childhood.

 

His mom, Delores, whom Yoshi says didn't get her driver's license until she was 30 years old, often worked two jobs or at least as many double shifts as she could as an assistant at a nursing home as the lone providerfor the family. Unknown to Yoshi until he was 15, his biological father was incarcerated when Yoshi was 3 months old.

 

"My mom's friend (a man named James Calvin) stepped in and helped raise us since I was 3 months old," Yoshi says. "Until I was 15, I thought he was my dad."

 

When Yoshi was 15, his mom revealed the truth about his biological father. The two met the following year. It didn't change Yoshi.

 

"I still consider (Calvin) my dad," he said.

 

Because of Delores' constant work schedule, Yoshi and his brother would see their mom briefly in the morning, sometimes, but then not again until nearly midnight. But she always made sure that she left something for the boys to eat for dinner in their mobile home.

 

"She'd call us during the day, and then when she got home at night she'd help us with our homework," Yoshi recalls, "but then she'd go to work early the next morning and we wouldn't see her until the next night.

 

"But watching what she did for us showed me hard work pays off. It don't matter what you gotta do, if you have a job, you do it."

 

When he wasn't at school, Yoshi spent most of his waking hours with his grandmother, Pearly Mae, who lived in a double-wide trailer in Batesville.

 

Pearly Mae, whom everyone called "Big Mom" or "Mama," had five sons, five daughters and 20 grandkids. At any given time, most of the 30 were around her home.

 

"Mama was sick a lot," Hardrick said. "We'd see her struggle, but she wanted to do what she could to make us happy. Like, if she had 20 food stamps, she'd split them up with all of us grandkids and make sure we had food. She wouldn't eat.

 

"She showed us the attitude to wanna work and be better."

 

Yoshi was in the middle of the pack, age-wise, around Mama's house, but he was always the biggest. Even when he was younger, the other grandkids seemed to look up to him – literally and figuratively.

 

"I was raised to do the right things," he says without hesitating. "So I was older in their minds, I guess."

 

By the way, something "Mama" did led to Jermarcus Hardrick receiving the nickname "Yoshi."

 

See, when Jermarcus was in the third grade, "Mama" signed up her grandkids in the local Boys & Girls Club. Jermarcus' brother, who's two years older, is named Mario. (If you're familiar with the game and cartoon character, you can guess where this is going.)

 

"When we got off the bus that first day, everyone started calling us Mario and Yoshi. Back then, if anyone called me Yoshi, I was mad. If they didn't call me my name, I thought it was an insult," Hardrick explained. He paused before adding with a laugh, "Now I get mad if they call me Jermarcus."

 

If you're not familiar with the Mario games, the irony of Yoshi's nickname won't be obvious. In the game and cartoon, Yoshi is a small, green dinosaur. Perhaps the only characteristic Yoshi and his namesake share is speed.

 

Growing up as Yoshi did is foreign and borderline incredible to most people. But, he says, he wouldn't change it.

 

"We didn't have much, but we had a lot of love," he says. "That's all something that I'm glad that happened to me."

 

 

~~~~

 

 

 

Hardrick is quick to point out that even though football is the only sport he's played in an organized league, basketball was his "first love."

 

He remembers many nights, when he'd go back home from his grandmother's home, he'd stay outside and shoot baskets alone until his mom returned from work. Yes, until nearly midnight.

 

"When I saw her car start to pull up, I'd run around to the back door and act like I hadn't been out there," he said. "She didn't want me out there that late."

 

Evidently, Hardrick picked the right sport, though, for his future, because there's a funny thing about the Batesville area. Even though the community is not highly populated and has economic struggles, South Panola High School, where students from four towns, including Batesville, attend, dominates in football. In fact, the 2010 Tigers have been ranked No. 1 in the country throughout the season.

 

At least five South Panola alums have played in the NFL recently: Deshea Townsend, Dwayne Rudd, Peria Jerry, Ron Shegog and John Jerry.

 

South Panola went undefeated while Yoshi was there. Each year. His teams won the Mississippi 5A state title. Three times.

 

However, out of the 24 seniors in Hardrick's class, 13 signed to play in college, but only one qualified. Only three are still playing football. Terrance Pope at Southern Miss, Darius Barksdale at Jacksonville State, and, of course, Hardrick.

 

If not for his incredible size, talent and desire to excel, Hardrick easily could have been in the majority from his senior class who didn't play at the next level.

 

 

~~~~

 

 

Oftentimes there's a bad stigma placed on college athletes who start at a junior college. They aren't really smart enough to attend — or at least play for — a big school. Or they're bad apples. At least that's the perception. And, in many cases, it's true.

 

Fort Scott coach Jeff Sims points out how junior-college players "think about image and what they're doing. A junior-college player sometimes would rather make a great play and lose a game instead of making an average play that helps win the game."

 

For the record, Hardrick is one of the student-athletes who didn't qualify academically to play Division-I football out of high school. He says he was a couple of core classes short, but didn't realize it until it was too late. So, instead of giving up his dream of playing D-I football, he went the junior-college route.

 

In Mississippi, junior colleges can "protect" the top 15 players in their region. Then, if one of those 15 players chooses to go to a junior college, the only one he can attend in Mississippi is the one that protected him. Just one problem: Yoshi didn't want to play at the junior college that protected him.

 

Through a "7 Degrees" type of coaching contact, Hardrick's coach at South Panola, Trey Dickerson, got in touch with Sims at Fort Scott Community College in Kansas.

 

"You know, Yoshi just wanted an opportunity to play and to prove to people that he could play at the next level," said Sims, who's been the head coach at Fort Scott since 2007. "He felt the best way to do that was to get away from distractions and temptations in Mississippi.

 

"That's great for us because, as we tell kids when we're talking to them about Fort Scott, it's not about the next year and a half. It's about being at the next level. Kids don't grow up wanting to play at Fort Scott or any other junior college. They want to play at places like Nebraska and LSU."

 

Football players around Hardrick's age certainly didn't grow up wanting to play at Fort Scott. The school had won one bowl game during the 36 years before Hardrick's arrival.

 

"I knew nothing about Fort Scott. I didn't even know Kansas had junior-college football," admits Hardrick, who was going from the Southeast to the Midwest for the first time. "I just knew I was going to better my life and I had to go through whatever it took to do that."

 

During Hardrick's two seasons in the "middle of nowhere," as he calls it, he helped lead the Greyhounds to a win in the Heart of Texas Bowl in 2008. Then, last season, Fort Scott was the national runner up, losing the championship game in the closing seconds. The Greyhounds finished the season at 11-1. Along the way, Hardrick became a first-team all-conference selection and an All-Region VI pick.

 

"In the eight years I've coached junior-college football, the two toughest people I've ever met are Yoshi and David Garrett (who's currently at Kansas State)," Sims said. "When I talk about toughness, I'm not talking about a guy who can punch another guy in the face because of a disagreement. Toughness is not punching a guy in the face. It's taking the challenges. It's going to class when you have no idea what the teacher is talking about, but when the class is over, going to the teacher and asking for help.

 

"When Yoshi and David showed that type of toughness, they felt they could dominate on the field, and they did."

 

 

~~~~

 

 

 

Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini remembers the first time he saw Yoshi Hardrick. It was while Pelini was at Fort Scott trying to recruit Brandon Kinnie.

 

"I ran into (Hardrick) in the hallway and just thought, 'Oh, my goodness.' I couldn't believe how big he was," Pelini said. "But I didn't think we could get him because at that time we thought he was headed to another school. He was a talented young man, and we knew we wanted him on our football team."

 

Pelini's initial thoughts on Hardrick were confirmed when the Nebraska coaches saw Yoshi in the junior-college national championship game last season.

 

"He was a big, physical, hard-playing guy. His skill was obvious," says Husker offensive coordinator Shawn Watson. "The thing that impressed me most about him, though, was his incredible athleticism. As soon as I saw him, I thought he was a can't-miss player. Plus he has a great heart; he's a good kid. That made it even more of a no-brainer, because if you have that skill set but you're not coachable, you're going to waste everyone's time. Yoshi's a coachable guy."

 

Looking back now, Yoshi was a slam dunk for the Nebraska coaching staff. After all, Jeff Sims and Nebraska defensive coordinator Carl Pelini have been friends since the two were coaches on Jeff Jamrog's staff at Minnesota State-Mankato. Not to mention, Kinnie, one of Hardrick's best friends at Fort Scott, was already a Husker.

 

Like Kinnie, though, and any player going from junior college to a major university, the biggest challenge is, well, everything. The speed of the game, the playbook, the size of the opponents, the size of the crowds, the size of the campus. And so on.

 

"I told him it wasn't going to be easy at all," Kinnie said. "I told him he'd have to work. The transition from junior college to here is huge. I'm glad I'm here and went through that to show him that it's going to be alright. He'll be fine."

 

"The transition is huge and we're asking guys to do it in a hurry," said Bo Pelini. "I think Yoshi's handling himself well."

 

As with other junior-college transfers, Hardrick acknowledges that the transition to one of the nation's top college programs has been difficult. He has the physical part down, he says, thanks to Jeff Sims' coaching style being similar to that of Pelini. The biggest adjustment has been on the mental side and the "little things."

 

"Knowing the purpose of the play, the steps I'm taking and why," Hardrick says. "And getting to trust my teammates."

 

"I think the thing with Yoshi is consistency," Pelini said. "Learning how to come to practice every day and keep competing every day and keep working to get better every day. If he continues to do that, he's going to be a good football player. Every now and then he has his ups and downs because he's in a totally new environment. But the future's bright for him.

 

"There's no doubt that he can be a special player. The problem is that a lot of guys want it right now. They don't understand it's a process to get there. He's developing that understanding. He's made a lot of progress, but he just has to keep continuing to do so."

 

 

~~~~

 

 

Defensive opponents, before thinking Yoshi Hardrick would be a pushover because he's not up to big-time football speed yet, you might want to hear Brandon Kinnie's word of caution.

 

"He's making the transition, it's hard for him, but he's going to be fine," Kinnie said. "Once he's out there regularly, I feel sorry for the guy who has to block him."

 

"Yoshi's a work in progress, but a great work in progress," said Watson. "It's a matter of growing up in major-college football. He's no different than BK (Kinnie) was a year ago. I hold Yoshi accountable, but I keep encouraging him. He just has to trust what we're telling him; trust what we're asking him to do. It has to get into your blood stream. He'll get there. And when he does get there, he'll be a force, no doubt."

 

Watson then pauses for a second before adding with a grin: "He's really good."

 

Hardrick continues to make the transition on the field and in his heart. At times, he still misses his family. He talks to his "dad," James Calvin, daily. The same holds true for his mom, who he considers his best friend.

 

He doesn't, however, miss life in Batesville. The "negative things and people doing bad," he says of life back home. At Nebraska, he's somewhat escaped his past and has a chance to look ahead to what should be an incredible future.

 

Besides, he's happy being a Husker.

 

"Coming here has made me grow up a lot more, which I needed," he says. "From being one of the top players in my conference at Fort Scott to now where I'm sharing a spot and competing for a spot has been hard. I just want to go out and do the best I can do. I can only control getting better. Whatever I need to do to make an impact here and then play professionally is what I'll do. I just want to be the best in everything I do.

 

"But, I really like it here. I was headed to LSU after Fort Scott, but I'm here now, and that's all that matters."

 

And to think, being "here now" started with a simple — and straightforward — conversation a little more than two years ago in Kansas.

 

Fort Scott Community College products (L-R): Linebacker Lavonte David, wide receiver Stanley Jean-Baptiste, offensive lineman Yoshi Hardrick, wide receiver Brandon Kinnie

 

LINK

[knapplc]

That is a great article. Lots of good reads on HuskerBoard today!

[PaulCrewe]

Great read but all I could think at the end was DAAAAAAMN that is one huge 5-0 in the last picture.

[shpadoinklehusker]

Thats one huge dude!

[Ziebol]

Great read

[papersun87]

Someone told me once that "Yoshi" is Japanese for "killer."

 

This being the Internet, I expect someone to confirm.

[irieboy8]

love the picture in the end...... Kinnie looks fricken studly.... sjp looks like he needs another year to get some weight on him.. and well yoshi with the glasses on and that pose it let me know all i need to know about him... i know a lot of people like that.. the ones that everyone loves... isn't afraid to be silly goofy or funny... someone people are drawn to....

 

i f'ing love yoshi!!

 

great story!!!

[corncraze]

Someone told me once that "Yoshi" is Japanese for "killer."

 

This being the Internet, I expect someone to confirm.

 

Yoshi is the Male Japanese name that simply means Better.

http://www.chacha.com/question/what-does-the-japanese-name-yoshi-mean

[papersun87]

Someone told me once that "Yoshi" is Japanese for "killer."

 

This being the Internet, I expect someone to confirm.

 

Yoshi is the Male Japanese name that simply means Better.

http://www.chacha.com/question/what-does-the-japanese-name-yoshi-mean

There it is. Thanks, dude.

[HuskerJosh]

Wow. All the props in the world for Yoshi to getting where he's at. I am positive it took a ton of work. I'm proud as hell that he's a Husker.

[PaulCrewe]

 

Fort Scott Community College products (L-R): Linebacker Lavonte David, wide receiver Stanley Jean-Baptiste, offensive lineman Yoshi Hardrick, wide receiver Brandon Kinnie

 

 

Seriously the dude is friggin huge. Is that really a zero behind the 5 or a spare white walled radial tire

[JTrain]

Why does the picture say dragon though?

[mnhusker]

He is a stud; I believe he has seen some playing time this year I was hoping to see some thoughts on how he has done.

[HuskerJosh]

He is a stud; I believe he has seen some playing time this year I was hoping to see some thoughts on how he has done.

Barney said his play against OSU when Sirles got hurt earned him some time against MU.

[sdhusker82]

Pretty amazing players we're getting from Fort Scott, I think SJB we'll turn out to be pretty good too