Chances Tim Hightower Will Play Again

"It got to the point where if you told me that I wasn't going to exercise it, you lot nearly instantly became the enemy," Tim Hightower said of his NFL dreams. (John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON Post)

Tim Hightower wears a blackness safety bracelet on his correct wrist that bears the words "Purpose Driven." On his back, he wears a shoulder-to-shoulder tattoo — the same saying, bracketed by wings. In front of him sits his side by side, best adventure to go what he has told folks he would become since he was a fifth-grader in Fort Washington: a star in the NFL, correct hither with his hometown Washington Redskins. You take evidence to the contrary? Don't dare arroyo him with information technology.

"When you understand your purpose, that purpose will drive you," Hightower said last week. "That focus, that goal, it drove me to the point where that's all I could think about. That was it. That was my purpose, to get to the NFL."

The condensed version of Hightower'southward story is this: His singular dream appeared thwarted when he suffered an injury during his senior year of loftier school. He took the but college scholarship offered him, even though information technology wasn't from a Division Ischool. He played a position for which he didn't believe he was suited. He eventually broke out in his concluding collegiate flavor, but all the same wasn't so much as invited to the NFL's scouting combine.

Notwithstanding Dominicus, his family will get together at FedEx Field, the same stadium they used to avoid because of the traffic on game days, and watch Hightower against yet another perceived doubter — the Arizona Cardinals, his onetime team. "The road less traveled," Hightower calls his route, and that's fair.

Hightower had no backup plan should the NFL non piece of work out. That could be perceived as impractical. Hightower speaks of it with a measure of pride. He would allow no other discussion. He would play in the NFL. He would play in the NFL. To heck with the naysayers.

"It got to the point where if you told me that I wasn't going to exercise it," Hightower said, "you almost instantly became the enemy."

In that location were, it seemed, as many enemies as there were reasons to believe Hightower wouldn't reach the pros. He wasn't particularly fast. He wasn't very flexible. The yards he racked up at Richmond came against Towson and Northeastern, non Tennessee and Nebraska.

"We would pray with him and believe in him," said Mike Freeman, Hightower's pastor every bit both a child and an adult. "Simply with all the adversities and the uncommon route and track he'south had, information technology was about, at times, hard for us to proceed up with his belief."

His belief in himself, in his power to attain his dream, colored every 1 of his interactions. Hightower remembers sitting in a dorm room with a girl his sophomore year.

"I don't mean any disrespect," she said, "but yous're at Richmond. Take you always thought about that? What if information technology doesn't happen?"

The question nigh didn't register.

"But what if it does?" Hightower responded.

"What if it doesn't?" she shot dorsum.

They volleyed perhaps twenty times, Hightower recalled. Neither budged.

"What if it does?" Hightower said. "What if it does?"

"The more she asked, 'What if information technology doesn't?'," Hightower said, "the angrier I got."

'Big human on campus'

If Hightower'south path to the Redskins was united nations­or­tho­dox — Arizona selected him in the fifth round of the 2008 typhoon, and he spent 3 seasons there before arriving in a July 31 merchandise for defensive lineman Vonnie Holliday and a 6th-round draft pick — his loftier school career was downright strange. He began as a freshman at Friendly in Oxon Hill. As a sophomore, he started at DeMatha, the Hyattsville football power. After a month, he went back to Friendly. A month afterwards, he was off to Westlake in Waldorf.

The reasons, Hightower said, were complex. His mother, Nikkie, worked as a instructor and schoolhouse administrator, and she wasn't particularly impressed with the Prince George'south County schools. When he enrolled at DeMatha, he institute the athletic competition he wanted.

"But at that point at DeMatha, we had a program in place," said Redskins cornerback Byron Westbrook, who used to pick upwards Hightower and then they could schlep off to Hyattsville together. "He was skilful, simply you didn't just come in and play. The seniors played. Y'all had to wait your plough."

Hightower has never been much for waiting his turn. There were fiscal concerns also, he said. As a inferior, he finally settled at Episcopal High School, a boarding school in Alexandria. He was following his sister Victoria, the youngest of the Hightowers' 4 children.

The adjustments were significant. He couldn't go home. The academics were challenging. He knew no one. But in football game, he found himself.

"Information technology was cool because — and this is the selfish part of me — I got to be the center of attending," Hightower said. "They treated me similar I was the large man on campus."

In the summer before his senior twelvemonth, Hightower trained 3 times a 24-hour interval, going from the basketball courtroom to the rails to the football field. "It was insane," he said. It toll him. He suffered a stress fracture in his foot. Though he began the flavor playing, he could hardly walk after games. Inevitably, he ended up at the doctor. He got the news — his senior season was over — and broke down, sobbing.

"I felt similar I permit my whole family downwardly," he said. "It'south like I had this 1 goal that I worked at, worked at, worked at, and somebody just snatched that out from under me. I was crushed, homo."

Despite what the doctors told him, Hightower returned that flavor. He even managed one,100 yards in the 6 games in which he played. But the recruiting calls from the schools he wanted to nourish — Maryland and Virginia Tech and Wake Forest — stopped coming. Mark Gowin, Episcopal's coach, tried reaching dorsum out, selling his player not only on power, only on attitude.

"He was such a tough child," Gowin said. "It was a frustrating time for both of us. He knew he could play at that level. I knew he could besides. And no one was buying it."

Breakaway speed

When Hightower arrived at Richmond as a freshman, he was both grateful for the opportunity to play college football — anywhere — and bitter that he wasn't doing it with a higher profile. That mix intensified as his higher career moved on. His purpose was notwithstanding to play in the NFL. But every bit he was moved to fullback, as his chances at recognition passed, his personality inverse.

"I was so angry," Hightower said. "I was simply so angry and bitter."

This led to a serial of internal conflicts. "I never saw Tim say a bad word about anybody," Gowin said. Merely inside, the accumulation of slights both existent and perceived burned.

"I felt similar I was e'er kind of searching for an identity," he said. "I grew upwardly in a Christian home, so I knew sure means that I was supposed to be living. I wasn't actually upholding those standards.

"What do yous do with all these emotions? I was taught non to have sex before union. Okay, then what do I practise when I'm having sexual activity at present? Am I bad? I'm going to go to hell now? I'yard supposed to walk in dearest toward these people. Well, I'm angry. They only pissed me off. He just told me I was never going to play professional football."

Somewhen, Hightower handled information technology past working. He spent and then much time with Brandon Horrigan, Richmond's force and conditioning jitney, that "my wife probably thought I was having an affair," Horrigan said. Hightower would return to school early from Christmas pause to train. Merely non merely to arrive shape. Each workout had a purpose. He needed to exist more than flexible. And he needed to pick up speed. He joined the track team, and competed against the women, because if a daughter beat him, he wouldn't alive information technology down. He used plyometrics. Whatever Horrigan asked, Hightower did.

"He had aspirations and dreams, just he as well had a ticker in him that kept him going to fight to get better, to be the best," Horrigan said. "A lot of guys, they have so much potential, just they never had that blazon of bulldoze. He was and then driven."

Before his senior yr, Hightower approached Charles Bankins, Richmond'due south new running backs coach who had worked with runners such as Marshall Faulk and Steven Jackson in the NFL. Hightower wanted to know his chances as a pro.

"You're a good back," Bankins recalled telling Hightower. "Y'all're a tough dorsum. But you don't have breakaway speed. If you've got a shot, yous'll be a gratuitous agent," meaning he wouldn't be selected in the draft.

"And he merely shook his head," Bankins said. "He walked out and said, 'Okay.' "

In Richmond's second game of the year, Hightower broke through for a ninety-yard touchdown run in the beginning quarter at Northeastern. When he got to the sideline, he went straight to the phone to the press box, where he reached Bankins, who was coaching from his perch.

"Coach," Hightower said. "That enough breakaway speed for yous?"

He finished the day with 246 yards rushing and four touchdowns. By the finish of the twelvemonth, he had a Richmond record 1,924 yards and 20 scores.

So here is Hightower now, coming off a 25-carry, 72-yard performance against the New York Giants in his starting time game as a Redskin, one he realizes could take been much amend, one that showed how far he still has to go.

Here's how he sees his goals, his purpose: "Until I got a couple championship rings on my fingers — a couple, I said a couple — and until I walk beyond the phase getting a yellowish jacket, I won't be satisfied in this career."

Those are the purposes that drive Hightower at present. Be a multi-time Super Bowl champion. Become a Hall of Famer. Sound crazy? Merely don't tell him.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/redskins-running-back-tim-hightower-a-very-purpose-driven-life/2011/09/17/gIQA8o6laK_story.html

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