USC QB Caleb Williams uses his past to change kids’ futures

The Heisman Trophy favorite’s Caleb Cares foundation addresses anti-bullying and mental health awareness

Adam Grosbard (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — A group of eighth-graders from Audubon Middle School sit in Heritage Hall on USC’s campus. They’ve just been introduced to five players from the Trojans’ football team, including Audubon alum Anthony Beavers, whose appearance delights his former teachers in the back of the room.

But the teenagers are growing restless as they wait for the Trojan they have come to know over the past eight months.

Then he arrives, quarterback Caleb Williams. Dressed in black sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt on a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, he walks with a distinct limp. It’s two days after he pulled his hamstring in USC’s loss to Utah in the Pac-12 championship game, a day before he will be named a Heisman Trophy finalist.

It’s the final event for the 40 Audubon students who were selected to participate in a program developed by USC’s Trojan Outreach and Williams’ own foundation, Caleb Cares. And certificates are handed out to the two kids whose GPA improved the most and to the one who performed best in the creative writing prompts assigned to the group.

The three standouts ask Williams questions in front of the group, and the once-rowdy middle schoolers are now silent. What is your favorite quote? “Change your habits or change your dreams,” he says without hesitation. Did you used to play any other sports? Yes, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, basketball. What is your favorite subject in school? It was once was math, but now …

“Learning about history and learning where I come from is really an interest of mine.”

The giving family tree

When Williams was young, he noticed his father, Carl, frequently giving things away to people. Shoes, clothes, food.

Once or twice, Williams asked, “Why are you always giving something to someone?”

His father’s answer was simple: The other person needed it.

“That was one of the little kid mind, selfish mind of me,” Williams said. “I never understood that at that age, but getting older and kinda sitting back and watching, it for sure took a toll on me of like this is what you should be doing, especially with the platform that I have. I also kind of enjoy it and it’s kind of been instilled in me in a way.”

Carl is a small-business owner and Williams’ mother, Dayna, runs a nursery school. His grandfather is a pastor at St. Paul’s Baptist Church in his hometown of Washington, D.C. They provided an example he soon followed.

During the pandemic, St. Paul’s started the Stand and Deliver campaign that provided more than 130,000 meals to anyone in the area in need. Caleb Williams volunteered at the church and helped hand out food to families, as he did at the soup kitchen at Gonzaga College High, his D.C. alma mater with the motto “Developing Men for Others.”

And at his father’s insistence, Williams wrote an essay when he was named Gatorade Player of the Year in D.C. The essay was selected as the winner, and with the cash prize Williams purchased laptops for a study room at the Bowie Boys & Girls Club where he played as a kid.

But it wasn’t until the summer before his senior year of high school that Williams realized the platform he had as a rising quarterback prospect.

It was 2020, with school reduced to Zoom screens by COVID-19. But the pandemic also brought about a new level of activism in the nation’s capital, and Williams marched three times that summer with the Black Lives Matter protests that arose in the wake of the George Floyd slaying.

“There were a lot of movements going on around that time,” Williams said. “I kinda started to realize and understand that I do have a platform and I can use it in a good way.”

When, a year and a half later, he transferred from Oklahoma to USC, Williams wanted his foundation to focus on two areas near and dear to him: anti-bullying messaging and mental health awareness.

“I don’t think bullying and mental health is and has been addressed enough, and not aggressively enough even when it is addressed,” Williams said. “Especially at a young age because the brain is growing, a lot of mannerisms, a lot of actions, the younger generation are downloading what they’re seeing in their brain.”

Origin story

Williams’ preferred nickname is “Superman”, a title he earned with the way his record-breaking sophomore season at USC transformed the Trojans from a 4-8 program in 2021 to an 11-win team that was one victory away from the College Football Playoff.

But every superhero needs an origin story, and Williams’ came last season at Oklahoma. He arrived in Norman as the top recruit in the country, a tantalizing quarterback prospect ready to be molded by one of the position’s best coaches, Lincoln Riley.

But the Sooners already had a veteran starting quarterback in Spencer Rattler. And for the first time in his life, Williams found himself on the sideline, watching and unable to help a team. That new reality took a toll on him mentally.

“I care about football so much, I care about the guys that I’ve had so much blood, sweat and tears with, the relationships that I’ve built with them,” Williams said. “And possibly being in a position to lose and me not being able to help with me being on the sideline really frustrated me.”

Williams maintained his typical exuberance when around teammates, but when he got home he felt his energy fade. He called home a lot, something he had not done much during the winter and spring after enrolling early at Oklahoma.

“Sometimes we’d sit there in silence for a little bit and I’d finally say something,” Williams said. “It was tough for me.”

Williams told this story to the Audubon students during his first meeting with them in April, reminding them to lean on friends and family to help them get through hard times. He also used his own experience with social media harassment to speak to his anti-bullying message.

Since high school, Williams has painted his nails before football games. Sometimes it’s different logos to represent his own team, sometimes it’s an explicit message for the opponent. But it’s always been a way that Williams has expressed himself, and always a way that people have tried to attack him.

“It’s a good way to connect to them also, the younger kids that may get bullied or even someone older that may get bullied,” Williams said. “I’m supposed to be this football player that is the quarterback at USC and in reality I’m just the same as you. I have people that say things about me, that don’t like me.”

Prior to the Trojans’ game against Washington State in October, Williams painted his nails with the phone number for the Suicide Hotline, a cause that he drew attention to with a public service announcement filmed by USC students in the fall.

“It was one of the easier ways for me to bring publicity to it,” he explained. “I did it last year at Oklahoma. I’m going to keep doing it as long as I paint my nails.”

Passing it down

When Caleb Cares partnered with Trojan Outreach to create a program for Audubon Middle School, it was a chance to pass on more than just Williams’ messages about bullying and mental health.

A group of 40 seventh-graders were hand-selected by teachers and administrators at Audubon both their academic achievements and room for improvement. The goal was to create incentives to perform well at school.

Between trips to football games, the students got opportunities to go on field trips. At the Barboza Space Center, they worked on robotics projects and learned about the physics of football.

“I think the big thing is seeing yourself in a light that you didn’t see before,” said Audubon teacher Candace Rosby, noting that the LAUSD school has a majority Black population. “When we went to the first field trip, they got to meet pilots that look like them. I have noticed a different urgency to do the work, to be at school, especially when they know it’s going to be a luncheon day.”

Given his schedule, particularly in the fall, Williams isn’t able to attend every event. But he writes letters to the students and records videos for them to continue to build their connection.

“When he left for Oregon State, his prompt was, ‘How do you adapt to a new event?’” said Kamela Stewart, the Trojan Outreach official who has spearheaded the collaboration with Audubon and Caleb Cares. “So making sure that he is not only starting a conversation but also getting that feedback back and reading through so that way the next week can continue.”

Williams turned 20 just a month ago. But as his profile has grown the past several months, now on the verge of potentially being USC’s eighth Heisman winner, he’s finding more rewards in using his platform for good.

“I want to make sure that they’re in a position where they can be successful or mentally where they’re OK with themselves or it’s OK to feel things or be emotional or feel things and find a way to correct them or correct some mannerisms or some habits or anything like that,” Williams said.

“So it’s been really cool for me to help out and help out a bunch of different groups. It’s been a blast.”

ocregister.com

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