Ohio State's Haskell Garrett wants to do more than survive

Hastings thinks about whether he really needed his phone that night. He had left it in his car, but it was the middle of the night, so what would he do without it? He doesn't open the door of his apartment to get the phone. It's never a good idea to walk the couple hundred feet in the dark.

He goes back and forth between the first and second frames of the movie, like he does when he watches his football film. He closes his eyes and is back there on August 30, 2020: the ringing in his ear, the rush of confusion, the dawning of a new reality.

He says he remembers that night like it was yesterday.

He was shot in the face while sitting at the football stadium at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, 2,000 miles away from Columbus, Ohio. The Big Ten called off its 2020 football season in the middle of the H1N1 flu epidemic, but the Ohio State players stayed on campus, working with strength coach Mickey Marotti to make sure they weren't going.

Those weeks were hazy and demoralizing. After three years in Columbus, the senior had spent most of his time on the defensive line. He was the highest-graded returning defensive tackle in the Big Ten heading into the 2020 season. He trails off after you get hit with the reins.

Most of the time, he is a gentle, cheerful man. He goes through the hallways at Bishop Gorman, where he spent his last three years of high school winning national titles, and where he now trains in the weeks before the draft. He smiles.

One of the high school's current football players walks up to him outside the locker room and introduces himself as the son of Tony Sanchez, the coach at Bishop Gorman who was Garret's coach in his sophomore season. This time he beamed.

You can't see the two small pock marks on his cheeks that were left by the shot of a handgun when he does.

Before he returns to that split second when a 9 millimeter bullet hits his mouth, he rattles off the normal college goings-on he had been a part of that night. He was living with his friends in the same area off campus in Columbus. He was walking home to the apartment he shared with Pete. The two were going to their respective rooms after he bid goodnight to him. He realized he left his phone in his car and walked out of the apartment to get it.

There he was, a couple hundred feet from home, the streets were mostly deserted and this residential stretch of block asleep, when he saw a man and a woman arguing across the street. He would not have given them a second glance if he had seen the man hit her.

He remembers crossing the street and pushing the man aside to separate him from the woman. Everything went black.

The man and woman were gone when he arrived. All he could hear was a noise. The burn on his face felt like a flame. Had he been hit by a brick? Was it a shot?

He stood up and his shirt and pants were red. He ran back home, spitting out blood in order to not choke on it. He banged on the door until he got a response. I think I was shot.

He pauses and breathes in the desert air.

He thought he would join the military instead of playing football. He was a member of the ROTC in high school because he loved football, but he wanted structure and camaraderie.

He had a lot of siblings, but his mother's children were older than his father's. They were different generations and didn't grow up in the same house with him. When he was growing up in Vermont, he toggled between the homes of his father and mother, but one sister on his father's side only had a few years. His picture did not include the constant companion he sought.

He learned how to fend for himself because his step- father, Joe, was often at work more than he was at home. He would dump out a coin jar and scrounge for five dollars to buy a sizzler from The Shopping Bag in Burlington.

Key says that he wasn't a strict parent. I gave him a lot of latitude and he would hang himself occasionally, but he had a good head on his shoulders. I trusted him.

He was able to do what he wanted without having to ask a parent if he could do it.

When Haskell was born, his father was 54 years old. He was fond of the stories of Haskell walking into Madison Square Garden with his high school basketball team at a time when it was rare for African Americans to play in the arena. He was associated with a small organization aimed at empowering people of color. When Haskell died of stomach cancer, his son felt unmoored, as he was full of and larger than life to his father. He had lost his roots and wings.

Key moved his mother and his son from Vermont to Hawaii after his father died, as his marriage to Joe was falling apart. He had lost his father, the family structure he loved and the only home he had ever known in rapid-fire succession.

Haskell Jr. was always told by his father to be a sharp dresser. The shirt couldn't be wrinkled. He needed his shoes to match his outfit.

He set out to find more people to belong to.

He found them by playing football. Key says the game was the only thing left for him when he lost his father, step- father and hometown.

When he met the three boys who took him under their wing, he coveted what he saw in the Mooks. These boys took care of each other, even though they had taken care of themselves. They were native Hawaiians, like the one who decided to live and play football for a powerhouse on the mainland named Bishop Gorman. After opening his home to him, Ray Mook allowed his son to move to Las Vegas and then to Bishop Gorman. Uncle Ray was Ray Mook. Uncle Ray was Pops. For convenience, Key's son stayed with Pops for most of high school, but also for the comfort of this new family dynamic.

Pops had a firm hand. There are enforced curfews. Each evening at 8 o'clock, Pops' wife,Shelly, surrendered her phones. The team had a big game on the horizon, and that's when he told Pops that he was going for a jog. A few hours passed when one of Pops sons wondered where he was and how far he had traveled. The family went out on a search and eventually found the boy and the girl, but Pops wasn't happy about it. He drove out to Red Rock Canyon in the dark, without a streetlight or phone signal, and told his charge: "You want to run?" You can run home from here, even if you lied, and Pops opened the car door to let him go.

He gained in Fraternity, what he forfeited in freedom.

He was led to his second pack by the Mooks. Alex Neal had dated another boy who spent time in the Mook household, but the relationship that stuck was Alex's older sister-like bond with Garrett. Teresa became Mama Neal. Life shifted from Las Vegas to Columbus after high school. The home base became the Neals' home when Mook moved back to Hawaii.

A big family with stability. Several of them. These were things that he didn't have growing up, and now he clutches with an iron grip. He is holding his birth family. His siblings are scattered across the country, but they all use technology to stay in touch. He has adopted families. A family friend of Teresa's had a baby recently and the father died suddenly from a heart attack. Teresa says that he told her what it was like when her father died. We will help you through this. We will do this for you. They were all gone six months later.

When they were told that he had been shot in the summer of 2020, the families came together. His mother told him to get some rest because she was sure he had been shot. She told him that she would be on the next flight. After missing calls from Urban Meyer and Larry Johnson, Ray Mook saw the news on the internet. He panicked and wanted to go on a plane, until he was reassured that he was not in danger. Alex Neal got on a plane and stayed in Columbus for 10 days as the Neal family ambassador.

He knew how to fight for himself. He did not have to anymore.

The man and woman who fled the scene were found empty by the police who were called to the scene, so they followed the bloody trail that the man and woman had left. He rode to the hospital in an ambulance crying and praying. Please be ok. Let me be okay. Please. He went to the hospital. He talked about what happened to the police. I thought I was doing the right thing. He waited for his mom. He had surgery the next day to close his wounds. He lost five teeth, but the bullet went in one cheek out and out the other, without hitting bone, without even hitting his tongue, and he was discharged by Monday.

The hospital stay stretched on for too long, even though it was short-lived. The other hospital where he spent too much time with his father was the one where he witnessed the ravages of cancer and chemicals to treat it on a man's body. When he was in sixth grade, he had to learn to drive in order to take his father to the hospital because no one else could.

He did not want to go back into his apartment.

Sometimes he felt guilty, like he had to put him through all that.

He knew he was lucky. Teresa says that he knew. I'm going to be fine.

It felt like a man who had been shot. The bullet had missed his tongue, so he was unable to drink. His mother and oldest brother went to an auto parts store to buy a funnel so he could pour water into his mouth from overhead.

The Big Ten reversed course while the body did the slow work of mending. After declaring the season over and being shot two weeks later, the football season was back on, and even though he was still restricted to a mostly liquid diet, he got it in his head that he wanted to play. He set up camp in Larry Johnson's office because he couldn't practice. He searched for a way to feel helpful, worthy again, when he really wanted to fly around the practice field.

Kerry Coombs didn't have the heart to tell him that he didn't see a world where he could make it back. When his jaw was wired shut, how would he maintain his weight? How could he wear a helmet with injuries to his face? How good could he be if he made it back? The kid was in the operating room. He was the first to sew him back together. One week after that, to clear out the remnants of the bombs. Another week after that, to put in a bone transplant. In the final weeks before the 2020 season began, Coombs pondered who his backup was.

He was lifting weights, even if he couldn't bench press, because he wanted the blood to flow to his face.

He was allowed to wear shoulder pads for modified training by the end of the month.

The first game of the year was against Nebraska. It was a Saturday. He sustained his first contact the Tuesday before.

When Garrison was 3 years old, he snuck out when his sister fell asleep and rode his two-wheel bicycle to his father's house. He lived a mile and a half away, and he made it all the way to his father's street when he crossed the busy intersection.

Key likes to tell the story about her son because he has always been independent. 55 days after he was shot in the face, he played in Ohio State's first game of the 2020 season. He recorded a sack.

Coombs kept an eye on the detective and he never flinched. He enjoyed the chance to throw his 300 pounds around more, accruing the kind of statistical prominence rare for interior defensive linemen as the year wore on: 20 tackles, four tackles for loss, two sacks, two pass breakups, one pick-six and a breakthrough campaign after years.

Ryan Day, the Ohio State head coach, said that his coaches were certain that he had changed. Coombs says it was more about his mouth than his eyes. He was determined to be something after the incident.

He will calmly break down when he sees a bullet in his face. He will remember the hole that his father left in his chest. He bristles at the idea that his shooting spurred his breakthrough.

He had a small impact on who he was that year and what he accomplished in 2020, but he was always the defensive tackle. The guy has a lot of hands. The person has a motor. To show people that he is who he is, and not because of what happened to him, is what the intent was.

When he wrapped his arms around Nebraska's quarterback in his first game back after being shot, he didn't consider himself new or improved. The sack was not validation of who he was. It was a reminder of who he was.

I am still me.

The shooting still sneaks up on him. His father's death still sneaks up on him.

He walked into a fast food joint his junior year at Ohio State. He gave the cashier his name after placing his order. The man asked if he was from Vermont. The cashier told a story about how your dad helped my family move when we were in the US.

That was the kind of man his father was. He was lucky to have had a father like that, as he thought to himself, "OK, I see you showing off, Dad." It takes your breath away to know that he was the unlucky one.

The nightmares don't bother him anymore. He fell asleep every night after the shooting, but now he is focused on living.

The pop of a gun is not brought back by the pop of a car. Fear does not paralyze him when he passes by Chittenden and Grant avenues. That is not where he could have died. He was fortunate to stay alive there.

He still carries that night with him because he knows that the world will not let it leave him.

The teams that are considering bringing him into their fold are relentless because he is an NFL draft prospect and a likely third-day pick. They want to make sure he was a good guy in a bad situation and that he learned from it all.

This isn't unexpected, of course. Their curiosity is not in step with the import he affords. His mother says they talked about what happened when she first arrived in Columbus, but haven't talked about it since. The case is officially inactive because there are no leads on the suspect's identity or who the woman was. He would be open to pursuing charges if there was a lead, but he doesn't want to focus on the case's loose threads. He can remember the man who shot him being a little smaller than a tackle. He cannot remember the look in his eye, his eyes, his nose, or his face. He would rather keep it that way if he was being honest.

There are reminders that he can't or won't give up. The two small blemishes under his beard are not visible, but they are there. He didn't throw out the clothes he was wearing. Never washed them. He says that they are in the bag, stained but still a faith renewed.

Two years ago, he was lost in the mind of Ohio State's talent, wandering to what he could or should be doing. He is three days away from the NFL draft in his backyard. While the names of future NFL stars will be called out on Las Vegas Boulevard, he will be a few miles off the Strip, at home with Rick and Teresa and Alex, with Ray Mook, if he can catch a flight.

He says that the man above, God, Allah, whatever you want to call him, brought him back.