CLEMSON – The manager of an IHOP in LaGrange, Ga., wanted Ericia Smith to know she should be proud, even if she had so many reasons to feel otherwise.
Ericia had just been evicted from her home on Barnard Avenue. She didn’t tell her kids it was coming, because after three and a half years in that house – their longest streak under one roof – she hoped to quickly save enough money to stay.
They were living in a motel next to an IHOP in 2020, and Ericia’s son, Tristan, applied for a job at the breakfast restaurant. He told the manager his one and only intention.
“The only thing I want to do,” Tristan said, “is buy my momma a house.”
Ericia had heard this line before. Tristan repeatedly said, since sixth-grade football, he was getting his mom “out of the ghetto.” They picked a song, “Congratulations” by Post Malone, which they’d play when an NFL team drafted him.
But he had to be “patient,” as the lyrics go, if he wanted to say he “made it.”
Tristan’s college football aspirations were initially torpedoed by a 1.7 grade point average as an underclassman at LaGrange High. His housing was unpredictable because Ericia had to find her footing after a year and a half of treatment for a cocaine addiction.
For a while, they lived in an old shack in Hogansville, Ga., where the toilet sunk into the floor. Before that, they lived in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, their porch uncomfortably close to the scene of a murder they witnessed.
Ericia would cling to a tiny orange Bible, fall to her knees and pray “Get me out of here.”
Tristan got out. He now resides in an orange football palace, nervously ordering omelettes from a man named Vern who is literally tasked with stirring up eggs for Clemson athletes.
The 6-foot-5 transfer from Hutchinson Community College, by way of Southeast Missouri State, has never had anything handed to him. One of his first chats with left tackle Tristan Leigh was about bottles of milk packed into unlocked refrigerators around the facility.
“Wait,” Smith said, confused, “you can just go in the fridge and grab a Fairlife?”
“That’s like $5 a pop, somewhere around there,” Leigh said, smiling as he tried to rationalize the JUCO product’s excitement.
Smiling is more of a challenge these days with Clemson sitting 1-3, but head coach Dabo Swinney likes to say adversity reveals character. And it should surprise no one Smith flashed in a loss to Syracuse, using his long arms to shove away multiple defenders on a 23-yard catch and run. He literally scratched and clawed for every inch.
“That dude wants to be out there so bad,” quarterback Cade Klubnik said.
Flash back five years, and it’s easy to understand why. Tristan was living in a motel, just hoping to turn IHOP money into a house for his “queen,” Ericia, who heard him say all the time, “Mama, I’m gonna get you out of the ghetto.”
Rewind a bit more and realize: Tristan was never guaranteed to have his mother at all.
***
Tristan recalls the day in 2011 he was called to the office at school. It wouldn’t have been the only day, because Tristan and his older brother Jarqueze were a rowdy duo.
But this time was memorable. The boys were told to “stick around for a while.” Their mom wasn’t coming for them because they weren’t living with her anymore.
They were heading to Forest Park, Ga., to live with a woman named Ms. Taylor.
“I was crying that day,” Tristan said. “We went to foster care and still didn’t think nothing of it. I’m just thinking we’re gonna be here for a couple of days.”
How easily Tristan tells this story, and many others, you’d guess it was a short stay. The 22-year-old smiles so easily, whether he’s contorting his fingers to show off what he’s learned in a Clemson sign language class, or he’s dancing with his new best friend, receiver T.J. Moore, throughout pregame warmups.
But sociability was a survival skill. Tristan switched schools almost every year as a kid. He had to learn how to make friends quickly. His brother Jarqueze, just a bit older, took different lessons from instability. He’s more guarded, quiet.
“We never thought ever in our life we was gonna see our mom again,” Tristan said.
Leaving the boys behind was Ericia’s only choice. The Division of Family and Children Services was on her case. She was strung out around Tristan and Jarqueze at times, and she nearly overdosed while pregnant with her sixth and final daughter.
Ericia submitted to rehab, but she hoped Tristan and Jarqueze could stay with their grandmother. But Ericia’s mom died three months into Ericia’s stint at the treatment facility, just after she gave birth to her youngest daughter.
For nearly two years, there were weekend visitations where Ericia could take her sons to the movies, the zoo, Stone Mountain. But then they were pulled apart again.
Every time Tristan heard “We gotta go back,” it was jarring. When he had to check off what he wanted for Christmas on a cold sheet of paper, it was disheartening.
What started with a call to the office at school ended, just as simply, with a trip to a doctor. There, Tristan was told he could live with his mom again.
“That,” he said, “was one of the best days of my life.”
This isn’t to say there weren’t hard days. Ericia initially returned to Decatur, where her drug addiction spiraled, because it was the only place she could find housing. She sat on the porch with her kids, watching a group of young men film a music video in the street.
Other men emerged from the bushes, passing through a fence. Ericia heard “pop-pop-pop.”
One man hit the ground. His chalk silhouette remained for what felt like an eternity.
“That environment would have turned them into little thugs,” Ericia said of her boys, “and I just was determined to not let that happen.”
Ericia’s father evacuated the entire family from Decatur and into an old house in Hogansville, tiles missing from the floor, toilet sinking in.
Things improved, slowly. Ericia worked for $2 an hour, plus tips, at Waffle House. Then she took various factory jobs. Then she earned her GED.
Ericia kept watch over her kids. She recalls living in public housing in LaGrange, and a 14-year-old boy was killed at a nearby store. Her children bought candy there.
“It’s us in this house. We don’t go out. You go to your friend’s house on the other side of town,” Ericia said. “We’re not going to hang out in this area.”
Luckily, Tristan had another favorite hangout.
His locker at LaGrange High.
***
LaGrange coach Matt Napier would describe Tristan as a “character.” He was “lively” in the locker room, the un-deputized fashion police who was quick to poke fun at teammates when they didn’t have the right wristbands or arm sleeves.
Napier wouldn’t have known Tristan was deprived if it weren’t for how early he arrived to school. He’d knock on the door at 7:30 a.m., needing to take a shower before class.
After a week’s stay in the motel by the IHOP, Ericia’s family moved into her sister’s one-bedroom apartment just over the state line in Alabama. They slept on the couch, or the floor. The bathroom was a high-traffic area.
So packed, Tristan started sleeping at LaGrange quarterback Dontavius Snead’s house.
“(Ericia) did everything she could to provide for them. But you’re a single mom, economy’s not great, you find yourself in some tough situations,” Napier said. “They moved around, but Tristan never flinched.”
This was, unfortunately, not a rare circumstance at LaGrange, which is exceptionally diverse socioeconomically.
Some students drive Teslas. Others ride home on bikes and live on dirt floors.
The football team serves hot dogs after Tuesday practices, a quirky snack for the Tesla drivers. Maybe the only guaranteed meal of the day for the bike-riders.
Everyone eats, LaGrange receivers coach Stephen Tuck said, “So nobody has to feel ashamed they’re getting those two hot dogs.” Napier and his staff are intentional about these things, because LaGrange was losing before they arrived in 2020 — on and off the field.
Tristan was very behind. Physically, he stood just below 6-foot as an underclassman. Emotionally, he was remarkably good-humored but immature, more focused on having fun at his locker than homework.
A light bulb turned on when he sprouted to 6-5. He so easily snatched footballs from Snead during 7-on-7 camps at Georgia Tech and Auburn that coaches from both schools were interested. “Who is that guy?” they asked Tuck. “What grade’s he in?”
More importantly, how were his grades?
“You go back and look at the transcript, and you’re like, man, this is not a situation where it’s going to be successful,” Napier said. “The good thing about Tristan, his humility, is he understood he put himself in that situation.”
Ericia bettered herself, and Tristan would, too. His grades improved, just not fast enough to lift a 1.7 GPA to the Division I threshold of 2.5 before graduation.
Drew Dallas, the head coach at Hutchinson Community College, started showing up at Tristan’s basketball games. He saw just how baby-faced he was.
“He still had developing to do,” Dallas said, “but the stature and just the athletic ability, you knew he had a very, very high ceiling.”
Off to Kansas, Tristan went.
Ericia was just a phone call away.
For Tristan’s coaches, at least.
“If he was messing up in class, ‘Hey, get in here and let’s call your mom on speakerphone,’” Dallas said. “Mom was 100 percent supportive. ‘Hey, do whatever it takes to make him a man.’ If you need to rip his butt, rip his butt.”
She wasn’t allowing Tristan to come back to LaGrange. Even if he begged.
***
After two seasons in Kansas, Tristan returned from a recruiting visit with tears in his eyes.
A lower-tier D-I school in the Midwest flew Tristan and another receiver out for a workout. They offered a scholarship to the other guy.
On his ride home from the airport, Tristan cried. Ericia pulled over and asked her son, who led prayers at Sunday church, to pray with her. She told him, “God has you.”
“We’re two different ages, two different skin colors, but he’s gone through some of the same stuff,” Tristan said. “Right then and there, I knew I had to come to Clemson.”
Ericia knew next to nothing about Clemson. She just knew it was a small town in South Carolina, nowhere near LaGrange, but still within driving distance. She only knew the football program was well-regarded because Jarqueze, the quiet one, was really excited.
When Tristan committed in Swinney’s office, Jarqueze was there. He cried.
To think they made it this far, it’s almost unbelievable. They aren’t about to hit play on Post Malone’s “Congratulations,” but Tristan landed at Clemson in the first year of revenue-sharing for college athletes. He’s making money to play football.
Ericia has built a medical billing business over the last two years and doesn’t want Tristan’s money. But she’ll still get a random $300 or $400 dropped in her Apple Pay. Tristan wants her to splurge on a haircut or nails. He bought her shoes for her birthday.
He has to pay respects to his queen, who pushed him out of LaGrange and into a football palace with free Fairlife milks and omelettes.
He wouldn’t relentlessly stiff-arm Syracuse defenders if not for her. It’s all for her.
Ericia was in the stands that day. Jarqueze cried out “That’s Tristan, mom! That’s Tristan!” as he scratched and clawed for every inch against Syracuse. She understands almost nothing about football, but she knew what was driving her son forward.
That boy who wanted to buy his momma a house is still striving. He’s given Ericia something more precious than some walls and a roof. He made it out of LaGrange, and into the world, moving toward something better.