Whirlwind week sends Clark to Mizzou

On Sunday evening, O’Shae Clark was all settled on his future. He was going to play college football at Southeastern Louisiana on a full scholarship. Things were good.

“I took a visit,” Clark said. “It was a good program.”

His mother, Racheal Powell, really liked the coaching staff. The all-state receiver from Cypress Springs in Houston was happy. And then he got a direct message on Twitter.

It was from a coach at Missouri. The Tigers had lost two commitments at wide receiver in the span of 48 hours. They wanted a receiver to add to their 2017 class. Clark was next on the list.

“It was the fastest 36 hours of my life. It was crazy,” Clark said. “They just said stay patient, don’t sign anything. I said coach ‘I'm going to take your word.’ Right after Missouri hit me up, five other D1 schools hit me up. It got crazy.”

But Clark knew what he wanted. He wanted to play in the Southeastern Conference.

“I’ve been following the SEC my whole life,” he said.

Clark didn’t need to visit. He committed publicly on Tuesday. He signed with Missouri on Wednesday morning.

“We’ve had some around that same area,” Mizzou receivers coach Andy Hill said of the whirlwind recruitment. "But he’s a quick one for sure.”

“My phone's been blowing up since yesterday,” Clark said. “My phone’s been freezing just because of my Twitter. I’ve been seeing these notifications pop up. I haven’t been opening nothing.”

So Clark—all 5-foot-8 and 154 pounds of him—is set to fulfill his dream and play in the SEC. It’s a goal that once seemed very far off.

“I didn't take grades serious. I was just going to school to play football,” Clark said. “Sophomore year I had a breakout season, but they wasn’t offering. I asked my coach ‘what is it?’ Your grades got to be good. I didn’t know what a GPA really was. He said, ‘You got to get that up.’”

Clark worked on his grades and got them up. But there was one other piece. He’d never taken a college entrance exam. Since he was a freshman, his coaches had told him to take the ACT or the SAT.

“I always told them I would just to get them off my back,” he said.

He didn’t. Not until this spring. Clark took the SAT and scored an 1120 on his first try. Suddenly, he was qualified to play Division One football.

“If O’Shae’s honest about it he drug his feet on taking the ACT and SAT,” Cy Springs coach Rick Cobia said. “He decided to take the thing late and he pops an 1120 and his market went up because he’s going to be a qualifier.”

Clark was honest. It was his fault he hadn’t taken it. And it was to his coaches’ credit that he finally did.

“My coaches really helped,” he said. “They’re like my dads. Every single last one of them. I ain’t really got a dad in my life.”

His coaches may have helped him take the final step, but without his mother, O’Shae Clark is nowhere near the top of the staircase.

“My life started off like this,” Clark said. “My mom’s been a single parent since she was 15 years old (when) she had my sister. She’s been working two jobs since she was 15. I really know what the struggle is.

“I’ve just seen her go through so much stuff. I’ve seen her stressed out wanting to give up. I’ve seen her go through so much stuff. For me to be in the SEC and to be where I was at today...Everybody's been doubting her since she was 15 years old.”

Clark grew up in California. He played his first football game at five years old in Snoop Dogg’s youth league.

“I got that first hit at practice,” he said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh boy, it’s something for me.’”

The family moved to Texas in 2009 and settled in Alief. “Some people call it the hood,” he said. Racheael and her younger son moved to Cypress when O’Shae was in eighth grade. He didn’t immediately go with them.

“My team was undefeated,” Clark said. “I didn’t want to leave them.”

Eventually Clark followed and enrolled at Cy Springs, a 6A school in one of Texas’ largest districts.

“When you’re being raised by mama, the role of a high school football coach is so important, or a male role model,” Cobia said. “O'Shae was blessed to have a staff of coaches that were involved in his life off the field. He’s an alpha male. He’s not your soft guy. We’re a campus of 3100 kids and he’s not going to be messed with. He has a presence about him that kids aren’t going to mess with O’Shae.”

Clark played and played well for Cy Springs. But he was just so little.

“A lot of people come in, dimensions, dimensions, dimensions. They come in they’ll say coach 'we’re looking for this, this and this,'” Cobia said. “That eliminates a lot of kids.”

It seemed Clark would be one of them. Even after a senior season in which he had 1,736 receiving yards (Cobia said it would have been close to 2,000 if not for penalties that negated some big plays) and 18 touchdowns in ten games, Southeast Louisiana was the biggest shot he would get. Until that message from Mizzou.

“It was quick,” Missouri offensive coordinator Josh Heupel said. “We kind of pushed things back too because you don’t want anybody else to come in on a guy you’re going to go on late.”

“Mizzou was in contact with a couple of my other players that are pretty special,” Cobia said. “They always hit up on O’Shae. He was on their radar, but they finally broke loose with the late offer and he made the decision to change his earlier commitment.”

Only one person remained for Clark to convince: Mom.

“She didn’t really know what the SEC was. She heard University and knew it was a big school but she didn’t know how big it was,” Clark said. “I was like, that’s like a million dollars they invest in every athlete. You’re gonna be on airplanes and playing on TV. I broke it down to her. That gold school? LSU? I’m gonna be playing against them on TV. She was like, ‘I understand now.’”

And now the undersized kid who has seen his teenage mother raise three children and work two jobs for most of his life gets to pay his mom back with a free education playing college football in the biggest, baddest conference in the country.

“A good lady,” Cobia said. “These kids don’t hurt for stuff. She makes sure they have things. Then his grandpa, he’s a big part of his life. They’ve overcome some setbacks just in life. They have overcome things by being a family, by staying together through thick and thin.

“She just never blinked an eye. She kept grinding, the boys kept working and positive things happened for them.”

O’Shae Clark didn’t need so many words when asked about his mom.

“She’s my guardian angel in human flesh.”

His mom and his coaches helped him get this far. Now, O’Shae Clark is ready to take the next step all on his own.