In The Huddle: Notre Dame

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Family footing

JAMAL CUSTIS grew up with two brothers on the southside of Philadelphia. They used sports to distract them from violence surrounding their home. max freund asst. photo editor

Jamal Custis wants his career to improve the life of his mother, Jeanette

By Matt Liberman staff writer

T

he basketball hoop hanging on the living room door could barely take any more damage. Dunk after dunk rattled the backboard against the top of the door. Still, each night, Jamal, Sharif and Kadeem Custis rocked the rim, leaping across the living room furniture to avoid the imaginary defenders lurking.

Outside Custis’ home on 31st and Napa St., gunshots rang through the air. But the three brothers played on.

“We were used to it,” Sharif said. “We heard it every day. After a while it didn’t really phase us. We knew how our neighborhood was. The best thing to do was stay out of the way. Stay off the streets. When the sun goes down, go in the house.”

In one of Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent dis-

They have to follow some type of regiment, some type of exercise to build their minds and their bodies. I wasn’t going to let (gangs) be an option.

Jeanette Custis jamal custis’ mother

tricts, Jamal Custis’ family, struck by tragedy, turned to their household and sport for a foundation. Custis, now 23, is having a career year in the midst of No. 12 Syracuse’s (8-2, 5-2 Atlantic Coast) best season since 2001.

After battling injuries early in his career, he leads SU in receiving yards and has become one of the best special teams players in the country, Babers said.

But Custis dreams of being more than a great player, he said. He dreams of fulfilling his promise to his mother, to rid her of the impoverished lifestyle she has been trapped in her whole life and to give back to the family that made his career possible.

At about four or five, Custis waved to his mother, Jeanette, from her hospital bed before she went into lung surgery. Months after their father died of bone cancer, Custis and his two older brothers had to temporarily live across the city as Jeanette underwent the surgery see custis page 4

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custis due to chronic bronchitis.

Jeanette promised her son she would be okay, but Custis wanted to be there for his mother, the same way she sat beside his beds for months on end when he suffered from whooping cough as an infant. Custis, a self-declared “mama’s boy,” always clung to Jeanette. When his brothers used to go play outside, Custis stayed in the house, attached to Jeanette by the hip. Seeing her in the hospital was the toughest moment of his life, Custis said.

“I just always felt some type of attachment to her,” Custis said.

After months of recovery, Jeanette was back on her feet, working to support her children as a single mother and protect them from the neighborhood destroying the lives of other kids in the area. As a student at Temple, Jeanette was forced to drop out when her parents died. After enlisting in the Army, she and her future husband, also an Army veteran, institutionalized a regimented lifestyle in her house to combat the gangs and violence in the neighborhood.

Jeanette enrolled her sons in nearly every summer program she could find, making sure that they were constantly active and not hanging around the streets of Grays Ferry in Philadelphia.

At seven years old, while Jeanette was working, Custis learned cartwheels and back handsprings in summer gymnastics classes.

When she was off from work, she took the three hiking and rock climbing, despite her lung condition.

“They have to follow some type of regiment,” Jeanette said, “some type of exercise to build their minds and their bodies. I wasn’t going to let (gangs) be an option.”

When Custis and Sharif developed a love for basketball, Jeanette bought a mini hoop to place over the door in their living room so the two could continue to play basketball at night, when it was dangerous for children to be outside.

Custis’ oldest brother Kadeem also helped

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fill a father-like void for Custis and Sharif in their early years. When Jeanette couldn’t pick her kids up from school or practices, Kadeem walked them home. Every day Jeanette would stand on the front porch, looking for her three sons to turn the street corner. When they were finally in sight, she knew they were safe.

“I feel like now in older age, me and my brothers are developing the brother relationship,” Kadeem said. “For awhile my role in their lives was their dad along with their brother.”

Kadeem was also the first of the three to develop a passion for sports. When Sharif and Custis saw what there brother could do on a football field, they wanted to join.

By 12, Custis became the star of a local AAU basketball team, the Philly BallHawks, and was coached by Charles Martin, who began coaching Custis and Sharif two years earlier in a neighborhood league he created to help kids avoid violence.

When the team came together in 2007, no one had any idea how exactly to handle it, Martin said. He was new to coaching and never wanted to get into it. The BallHawks had been a great team in the area a few years prior when former Syracuse star and current Miami Heat guard Dion Waiters led the team, but hadn’t had a player even close to Waiters.

Custis became that player.

The BallHawks soon began traveling to local tournaments in the area, and subsequently the region. Within a few months, Custis’ name began generating buzz in the area and coaches from different high schools in the Philadelphia Catholic League began recruiting the young seventh-grader.

“We didn’t understand how good he was until high schools started calling his mom,” Martin said.

Custis and Martin went through his options: Martin picked Roman Catholic because of its premier basketball and football team. Custis could play both. But Custis chose Neumann-Goretti instead because both his brothers went there. He wanted to follow.

At the same time, other AAU teams in the area tried to poach Custis to come play for their teams, selling more exposure, bet-

ter competition and new basketball gear.

But Custis never considered it. His brother, Sharif, was on the team and the rest of the players became like family. Custis would never abandon family.

He wanted to be coached by that type of caliber coach. Somebody that played and understood that nuances of the NFL. He felt like that would enhance his chances to get there.

Charles Martin

philly ballhawks coach

“They were with him before he became Jamal Custis,” Neumann-Goretti head basketball coach Carl Arrigale said. “He wasn’t going to leave them after he became Jamal Custis.”

As Custis progressed through high school, he became a two-sport star and earned national attention in basketball and football, which he began playing because of Kadeem. In college, Custis decided to pursue football, as it provided a better opportunity for a career, Kadeem said.

During his senior season, Custis committed to play wide receiver for then-SU head coach Scott Shafer, who’s wide receiver coach at the time was former All-Pro Rob Moore.

“He wanted to be coached by that type of caliber coach,” Martin said. “Somebody that played and understood that nuances of the NFL. He felt like that would enhance his chances to get there.”

But when Custis visited to sign his letter of intent, Moore informed him that he would be leaving Syracuse to take the same position for

the Bills. Martin wanted Custis to attend SMU from the beginning, where he was offered a spot in both basketball and football. Despite his frustration with Moore’s departure, Martin said, Custis signed his letter with Syracuse, and refused to transfer.

“What he was really concerned about was if his mom was going to be able to get to the games and see him play,” Martin said.

During Custis’ first four years at Syracuse, he faced many setbacks on the football field.

Within his first two years he changed positions twice. SU’s offensive coordinator left after his first year and Shafer was fired after his second.

When Dino Babers took over the program in 2016, Custis suffered near-season-ending injuries in back-to-back seasons: a severe high ankle sprain in 2016 and a separated shoulder in 2017.

Still, Custis persevered. While his brothers failed to reach the NFL due to their hotheaded nature on the football field, Kadeem said, Custis channeled that frustration and used it for motivation with their help.

“I was scaring him away from that direction of frustration, because that’s what kind of hindered me in my career,” Kadeem said.

For senior night against Louisville, family and friends came to visit and watch the game.

Custis and Jeanette celebrated their birthdays — Jeanette’s is Nov. 5 and Custis’ falls on the 6th. They shared a chocolate Carvel ice cream cake and she proudly watched from the stands as her son played his final game in the Carrier Dome.

“That’s the ultimate reward,” Jeanette said. “To watch my son live out his dream, that’s the ultimate reward.”

But Custis’ dream isn’t done yet. His dream is creating a better life for Jeanette. He promises to do for her what she did for him.

“That’s why we play,” Kadeem said. “To make a better life for us and our mom. To never need or want for anything. He’s able to fulfill the mission. Whether the NFL works or not.

He’ll be able to put a smile on my mom’s face.”

– Senior staff writer Matthew Gutierrez contributed reporting . mdliberm@syr.edu

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CHRIS ELMORE is a native of Chicago who enrolled at Wendell Phillips Academy. There, the sophomore fullback was friends with Carliysia Clark, who died in 2014 trying to save her younger siblings in a fire. josh shub-seltzer staff photographer

In her spirit Syracuse fullback Chris Elmore is driven by his best friend’s death

By Matthew Gutierrez senior staff writer

T

he first indication that something had gone wrong on Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, came shortly after 8 a.m.

Chris Elmore began his sophomore year of high school the same way he had many others, by going to class and starring on the local football team. As Elmore strolled into his first period of the day at Wendell Phillips Academy (Illinois), he noticed a student walk out of a classroom. The room was dark.

Elmore peeked inside, where everybody had their head down. He asked what had happened. A classmate informed him his best friend had died in a fire. His heart sank.

Elmore knew a lot about Carliysia Clark’s life, from its beginning — she was born May 8, 1999, two weeks before him — to the details of its final moments. He called her mom “mom.” He and her father, Carl, still FaceTime frequently. Elmore knew Carliysia had always been generous, smart, funny, kind and positive.

Elmore also knew a lot about the day everything changed. His best friend, Carliysia, died on Sept. 8, 2014, at about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. while trying to save her younger siblings in a fire. Elmore wept uncontrollably when he found out a few hours later.

He wept himself to sleep that week. He wept at school. He wept when he thought about her on his way home from school, see elmore page 11

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Inside the creation of a football field at Yankee Stadium

By Josh Schafer sports editor

Less than an inch of grass will separate the 2018 iteration of a football field at Yankee Stadium from those of years’ past. In the last 13 games housed in the stadium, since its 2009 opening, football programs played on what DeLea Sod Farm owner Rick DeLea described as short cut grass.

DeLea’s short product, normally suited for the Yankees outfield, New York City Football Club soccer games or tee boxes on golf courses around the country, is too short for football, he said. It doesn’t have the stability for the wear and tear from the “Clydesdales,” as DeLea describes football players.

So this year, as skepticism of playing on the soccer grass rose, DeLea outsourced to Tuckahoe Turf Farms in Hammonton, New Jersey, a company which supplies five NFL teams.

“If that’s what it takes to put the right product in, for this instance, for the football game,” DeLea said, “that’s what we’re doing just to make sure the Yankees got the right field going on there.”

On Saturday afternoon, when No. 12 Syracuse (8-2, 6-2 Atlantic Coast) and No. 3 Notre Dame (10-0) walk out of their respective dugouts, a professional grade football field will span more than 50,000 square feet from home plate deep into the outfield.

At the center, an estimated 35-by-45 foot Shamrock Series emblem will pop out of the grass. Field goal post netting dropped in by cranes will bookend the freshly groomed playing surface. And in Syracuse’s first Top 15 matchup in 20 years, the labor of love will be one fit for the moment.

After decades of football games at Yankee Stadium, the MLB’s most successful franchise didn’t host a football game in the final 21 seasons of the old building. When the new stadium was built, it was meant to be a one sport facility, head groundskeeper Dan Cunningham said. But switching over

The Yankees Stadium grounds crew puts the finishing touches on numbers of the newly formed football field. courtesy of the new york yankees

the field has become commonplace for Cunningham and his grounds crew, who have hosted hockey games, boxing matches and concerts among other events. In 2015, the stadium became home to the New York City Football Club, an MLS franchise, and DeLea estimated the field is switched over 17-19 times per year.

“These are some big boys and they have the ability to — they can do some damage in a hurry on a field,” 30-year groundskeeper Cunningham said. “That’s something we’re not really accustomed with … it’s just a different beast. Football, to me, is very nerve racking.”

With the first football game in midNovember, field transformation started soon after the Yankees were eliminated

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from the playoffs in early October. The dugout railings are uplifted and decked over so the corners of the end zones can nestle in where Yankees players normally spit sunflower seeds. Cunningham and his crew taper down the infield “skin,” the term they use for the dirt comprising the basepaths.

Cunningham estimated his crew shaved off about one and one quarter inches of “skin” to accommodate for the thick cut sod. The New Jersey bred grass, known as “Gameday Sod,” by Tuckahoe Turf Farms business administrator Allen Carter Jr., is a mix that’s been tested by mimicking the field conditions of customers such as the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers.

DeLea Sods and his crew, along with Cunningham and the Yankees grounds crew,

finished matting down 375 of the 4-by-35 foot rolls last Friday, eight days before the game. DeLea compared the longer, thicker grass used this year to tree roots: The taller the tree, the deeper its roots.

On the field, the rolls are matted together by a sidekick, a large tractor-like machine that pushes each strip of grass together.

Laying down the field takes about three days between his 12 workers and the Yankees crew, DeLea said.

“When our sod arrives at their stadium,” Carter said, “once it’s laid out and lined with white paint, it’s ready to be played on.”

For the most part, the painting is “kept in house” Cunningham said, as his crew lines the field and paints the iconic “N-Y” logo below home plate. But since 1996, Kunath Signs Co., a commercial sign company out of Teaneck, New Jersey, has been responsible for many lettering projects, including playoff emblems and football logos.

Kunath Signs Co. owner David Hollenbach said this year’s logo, which features the Statue of Liberty, the NYC skyline and a metro train, consists of five colors. Standard paint rollers and brushes will color center field in blue, gold, green, white and silver to make the logo pop, Hollenbach said. The day before heading to the Bronx, Hollenbach anticipated a 10-hour day for his six-to-eight man crew to fill in the logo.

Kunath also paints the emblems on the first and third baselines for the Yankees when the circumstances require it. Hollenbach joked that when he first started in the late ‘90s, it was a guarantee to paint three logos, one for each round of the playoffs. But because the Yankees have won one World Series since the new stadium’s inception, Hollenbach’s baseball workload dipped.

“Then football came around,’ Hollenbach said. “The last couple of years, to be honest with you, I’ve made more money lettering football than I have baseball.” jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44

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Opponent preview: What to know about the No. 3 Irish

By Josh Schafer sports editor

No. 12 Syracuse (8-2, 6-2 Atlantic Coast) plays No. 3 Notre Dame (10-0) at Yankee Stadium at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. The Orange enter the game riding a four-game win streak, most recently defeating Louisville 54-23. The Irish are coming off a 42-13 victory against Florida State. Saturday’s Shamrock Series game is a home game for Notre Dame, which chose the neutral site — it will be Syracuse’s first Top 15 matchup in 21 years.

Here’s what to know before Saturday’s matchup.

All-time series: Notre Dame leads, 5-3 Last time they played: In 2016, Syra-

cuse fell to Notre Dame at MetLife Stadium 50-33. Syracuse and Notre Dame combined for 36 points (the Irish led 23-13) in the first five minutes. Behind 17 unanswered points through the third and fourth quarter, the Irish pulled away marking the end to Syracuse’s 0-4 run in the MetLife series.

DeShone Kizer threw for 471 yards, three touchdowns and an interception while Eric Dungey completed 31-of-51 passes for 363 yards and two touchdowns.

The Notre Dame report: Notre Dame enters Saturday’s game with wins over three Top-25 opponents spanning two starting quarterbacks. In Week 1 against Michigan, senior quarterback Brandon Wimbush started at quarterback completing 12-22 throws for 170 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Junior Ian Book started for the first time three games later against Wake Forest. In six games starting under center Book threw for 1,811 yards while completing 14 touchdowns.

After Book injured his ribs against Northwestern he sat against Florida State. Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said after the Florida State win he expects Book to be back

for the game against SU. On the defensive side of the ball, Notre Dame boasts one of the nation’s strongest units, head manned by defensive coordinator Clark Lea, a former SU assistant under Scott Shafer. The Irish defense ranks 15th nationally in points per game, allowing 18.7 points per game.

How Syracuse beats Notre Dame:

In Syracuse’s upsets over Virginia Tech in 2016 and Clemson in 2017, the Orange had similar formulas. Fast starts, chunk yard gains, and winning the turnover battle. In both games Syracuse’s defense played beyond the level it had throughout the season.

This year’s Orange team is different, but like things will still need to happen. Head coach Dino Babers has said in the past that in order to win on the road, his team needs to dominate the run game, on both sides of the ball, and win the turnover battle.

Headed into Saturday’s matchup, Syracuse ranks tied for fourth in the country in turnover margin. Notre Dame is tied for 49th.

On paper, Notre Dame’s rushing attack (42nd) outmatches Syracuse’s run defense (70th). While The Orange’s rush offense (27th) ranks higher than Notre Dame’s rush defense (41st). Babers said earlier this week that he expects Notre Dame to attack his group of linebackers, none of whom started a year ago. If Syracuse wins that battle, it’ll be on it’s way to a victory.

Babers’ described his teams matchup with Notre Dame as a “freebie,” referencing Syracuse’s 4-0 start following the bye week and the Irish not being a nonconference opponent. Saturday’s game will hold serious implications in Notre Dame’s College Football Playoff hunt. The pressure will be on the undefeated, while Syracuse, according to its coach, is gambling with house money.

Player to watch: Te’von Coney, linebacker, No. 4 Coney leads the Irish with 87 tackles, 8.5 of which were for a loss. A senior leader on

ERIC DUNGEY threw for 363 yards and two touchdowns when Syracuse lost to Notre Dame 50-33 in 2016 at MetLife Stadium. daily orange file photo

the Irish’s defense, Coney will play a major role in how well Notre Dame’s defense can counteract Syracuse’s top 10 offensive unit.

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from page 5

elmore because he knew he would never see her again, never laugh with her again. He was bored, helpless, frustrated and hopeless in the wake of her death. Elmore said there was something unique about her deep affection for self and others. He kept thinking about the time he wouldn’t spend with her.

Long before he was a sophomore fullback on the No.12-ranked Orange (8-2, 6-2 Atlantic Coast), Elmore said he was like a lot of kids from Chicago. He had big dreams and wanted a chance at life. His transformation begins amid the details of that troubled day, week and ensuing months. As he grieved from her death, he forced himself to carry her spirit forward. He wanted to grow into an echo of her.

“I sometimes wonder, if she was still here, would I be in the same spot that I am now?”

Elmore said. “That always hits me. I don’t know if I’d still be here today if that didn’t happen.” ƀƀƀ lmore and Carliysia texted often. Sometimes they discussed their life goals — Elmore first wanted to be part of a SWAT team, then a social worker. She wanted to graduate near the top of her class, enroll at Princeton and be a pediatrician. Now he wants play in the NFL. She wanted to help others.

Carliysia dated Elmore’s best friend, Daurice Lee, a center on the football team. They hung out between classes, at lunch, after school and on Chicago’s lakefront. Elmore went to some of her basketball games, and she cheered him on at his football games.

They shared life anxieties at a local park.

They were part of the school track team, too.

“She was his diary,” Lee said. “She was his go-to, man.”

Carliysia knew that Elmore grew up with his single father, Clinton, a retired firefighter paramedic who raised three kids. And Elmore saw her little brothers as his own — they would approach him after school because their dad was also the wrestling coach. They’d chat about school or what they were doing that weekend.

“A guy from Chicago, there’s this stigma that nothing good comes from there,” Elmore said. “We’re the good that comes out of that. We’re here to show people that that’s not what Chicago is all about. She was the nicest person in the world, and that just drives me to do better in everything I do.”

Elmore and his family know many of the details from that Monday night on Chicago’s South Side, in the Roseland neighborhood on South Vernon Avenue, where the building Carliysia was living went up in flames. Including Carliysia, four children died. Two adults were seriously injured.

Carliysia Clark was 15, a sophomore at Phillips Academy. According to Elmore’s family and Carliysia’s father, Carl Clark, firefighters said she died huddling inside a closet on the third floor while using her body to shield her younger siblings from the f lames. She and her three siblings died while their mother, Shamaya Coleman, broke several bones jumping from the window.

Elmore and Carl said the fire started on the second floor, went down a hallway and up a stairwell to the third floor. The building had been cited several times for code

E

violations such as missing smoke detectors.

Clark said he received a “big” settlement after the tragedy.

I sometimes wonder, if she was still here, would I be in the same spot that I am now? That always hits me. I don’t know if I’d still be here today if that didn’t happen.

Chris Elmore

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su sophomore fullback

Elmore didn’t go to classes the day of Carliysia’s death. When he went home that night, he didn’t talk to anybody. He kept the light in his room off.

After his grieving, Elmore helped the school retire her No. 33 jersey and put together a presentation at the school’s graduation in 2016, when Carliysia was scheduled to graduate.

When the situation demands it, Elmore will think about the way she lived and the manner in which she died. She refined his idea of where he was and what he wanted to become. By dedicating his football career to her, he likes the idea that Carliysia gets to live a life through him.

Elmore credits her for his demeanor on the field: never one to berate an official or complain to coach why he isn’t on the field.

“Sometimes I wonder how she did it,” Elmore said. “She saw the positive in everything. She was in Chicago, one of the lights that shined.” ƀƀƀ arly this month, Elmore stood in Manley Field House and remembered September 2014. The final texts are somewhere on Elmore’s old Android, on the Kik app he used to message her with. He screenshotted his last messages to her and keeps her spirit alive by holding onto that phone.

“She was his heart,” said her father, Carl.

“Always will be.”

In their last conversation on Kik, Elmore said to Carliysia that he was still recovering from the weekend game. There was blood on his pads. In their last ever message, Elmore asked about how she was doing and how Daurice, her boyfriend, had been that weekend. She didn’t respond.

Elmore visits her grave when he’s home from Syracuse on break. He wants to win a Bowl Game this season and obtain a ring for Carliysia.

“Everything I do, I do for her,” Elmore said.

She is the reason he prays before every game — for no one to get hurt on the football field, for his single father who raised three kids, for Carliysia’s family and for Carliysia.

She is the reason he points to the sky to a “special someone” after a big play or touchdown.

She is also the reason Elmore tattooed praying hands on his chest, just behind his jersey block numbers, just over his heart.

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