Player is working to be a diamond in the rough

CHICAGO

If you thought The Blind Side was a good story, you'll want to keep an eye out for this kid.

Tory Squires won't make the splash that Michael Oher did. But the chance to play big-time college football is in his reach, and if he somehow reaches the NFL, Squires will have overcome odds every bit as daunting.

"I'm honored my own kids got to know him," said Coach Bill Jeske of Gordon Tech. "He taught all of us that bad is never as bad as you think it is."

Squires has one of those stories that crush even the most resilient kids: raised by his grandmother in a tough South Side neighborhood, then shuttled between shelters in three states, always stuck in the turbulent wake of a mother battling her own demons.

By the time he landed at the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls to begin eighth grade, he had mastered one subject: "How to be out on the streets by myself."

A year later, he went out for football.

"One of the first practices, I knocked a guy over and he got up more excited than I was. He said, ‘Dude, you're huge! You can do this!' " Squires said.

He is seated at a library table inside Gordon Tech, a Catholic prep school, wearing a white shirt and tie. He unclenches his hands and runs them over the polished surface, as if searching for a memory.

"I liked it right away," Squires said finally. "It was one place you could take out all your frustrations without getting into trouble."

Four years have passed since that day and by major-college standards, he's not "huge" -- at least not for a defensive end. He's 6-4 and 240 pounds leaving a buffet, more sculpted and much stronger, but not that much bigger than he was as a freshman.

By the end of his sophomore year, Squires was starting on the varsity and getting letters of interest from Notre Dame, Northwestern, Boston College, UCLA and a half-dozen other big-time programs. Several are still tacked to a bulletin board outside his room at Mercy Home, a long-term residential facility for kids in trouble.

Next came stops at several top recruiting camps, playing alongside and against the best prospects in the nation. That's when he learned how far he still had to go.

So Squires went home and started getting up at 4:15 every morning to catch the 4:45 train, then a bus across town to begin lifting weights by 6. Most nights, he didn't return until 8:30 p.m.

"When Tory got here, he was big but not athletic," said Torono Moore, a program manager at Mercy Home.

"I moved him in. He was like a lot of kids that come here, only he had this ... persistence about him.

"He always wanted to be going forward. He was like that commercial, you know, the Energizer Bunny," Moore said with a chuckle.

"He'd take a licking and keep on ticking."

That perseverance is how Squires became one of 30 semifinalists for this season's High School Rudy Award, named for Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, a former Notre Dame reserve, whose inspirational tale became a best-selling movie.

"The common thread is that they never gave up," said CJ Edmonds, whose Trusted Sports organization administers the award. "They're the kids we can't imagine ever making it onto the field. A few lost limbs, some lost their hearing, others, like Tory, had to do it without the support of parents.

"What we try to measure instead of their stats," he added, "is the size of their hearts."

College-football coaches might be sympathetic, but they're hard boiled when it comes to scholarships.

Squires is on the edge of qualifying academically, and he's retaking the ACT exam in a few days. From a football standpoint, though, his size makes him tough to project as a defensive end and nobody disputes his skills are raw.

"He's a diamond in the rough," Jeske said, "I can't tell you how many times I've rewinded tape of him making one play or another ... seeing two blockers hold him, then his arm coming out pulling down a running back like he was taking something down off a shelf.

"I could see him as a tight end, maybe a linebacker, but he's got a frame you could stack weight on and a motor that doesn't stop. His upside is unbelievable."