Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — Ja’Kobi Lane slumped into the parking lot in Tempe, Arizona, at the end of the night, crestfallen after the homecoming that never came.

He had stood out during USC’s 2023 training camp, a 6-foot-4 matchup nightmare, and the freshman receiver from Mesa was hoping for a blowout in last September’s game at Arizona State so he could get some playing time. But ASU hung tough in a 42-28 USC win and Lane didn’t get a snap. It didn’t go the way they wanted, Trojans receivers coach Dennis Simmons lamented to Lane’s youth football coach, Leo Aviles, after the game.

Lane had invited 40 people to Mountain America Stadium that night, suite tickets for all the Mesa faces who had appeared in his young story. They waited for him, postgame, in that parking lot. He could offer nothing except frustration.

The next week, Aviles got a text from Chris Carter, then USC’s director of player development.

Hey, Carter wrote, to Aviles’ memory, what do I need to do to keep this kid motivated? 

And so it was that Aviles and a man named Terry Brennan flew to Los Angeles midseason, meeting with Simmons and then-inside receivers coach Luke Huard to figure out what USC could do with Ja’Kobi Lane. They all had their part to play in this safety net for Lane, a young man climbing to remarkable heights but often caught on thorns along the way.

Aviles was a longtime mentor and quasi-guardian, a youth coach who had stuck around as others had come and gone. Brennan was a Mesa native who helped take in Lane his senior year at Red Mountain High. Huard was the coach who recruited Lane at USC, who made it a mission to help a truly special personality mature through the academic struggles and occasional antics.

Together, they devised a path forward. Normally, a kid with such lack of opportunity would redshirt his freshman year. But, as Aviles expressed concern, if Lane didn’t feel in the mix – feel valued – he could stop trying.

So Simmons and Huard decided to blow his redshirt, and Lane stuck with the program for the rest of the year.

“I think it just answered his question that he’s always had,” Aviles reflected. “‘Do these guys really want me? Do these guys really think I am what they’ve been telling me?’”

There has long been a plan for Lane, USC trying to give a receiver with enormous potential the infrastructure to achieve it. It paid off in December’s Holiday Bowl, a long-blooming connection with quarterback Miller Moss resulting in two touchdowns. It paid off again Sunday against LSU, the 6-foot-4 Lane burning a defender on a fourth-quarter go route for a crucial score and throwing up a west side to the crowd in Vegas.

In less than 150 snaps of college football, Lane has won the hearts of USC’s faithful. He skipped into the Trojans’ first practice this fall, bellowing “LET’S GO!” at the top of his lungs at 6:57 a.m. When USC’s Spirit of Troy student band went marching into one practice in late August, Lane marched right out with them, his helmet resting backward on top of his head as he banged a pair of cymbals in perfect rhythm.

Lane having fun, Red Mountain receivers coach Diego Hernandez said, is the best version of him. To those who know him, it means he’s found true comfort at USC. Because if you show you care about him – show you love him – Ja’Kobi Lane will do anything for you.

“Always fighting for a place that he could call home,” Aviles said. “And once Ja’Kobi finds that, he’s pretty locked in.”

Staying home

At Red Mountain High, the largest school in the largest district in Arizona, everyone knew Ja’Kobi Lane.

He manned the microphone at the pep rallies. He pulled off a backflip, and a frontflip, in a choreographed dance for Red Mountain’s “Beaus and Bros” cheerleader-plus-player homecoming special. He once threw the ball to himself off the backboard in a student-versus-staff basketball game, Red Mountain head coach Kyle Enders remembered, and dunked on a school counselor.

“He just lives life, I don’t know – in the moment, good, bad and different,” Red Mountain teacher Laurel Moore said, pausing. “Yeah. What a character.”

A character, though, that Red Mountain’s staff often tried to reel back. Lane didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. But Red Mountain operated like a blue-collar program, and coaches occasionally felt Lane would talk back too often or disagree with criticism, and he spent much of his sophomore year relegated to junior varsity.

Constant insecurities expressed themselves in different ways, Red Mountain assistant coach and former Pro Bowl tight end Todd Heap reflected, coming from Lane’s upbringing. He grew up in a single-parent house in Mesa, and was his mother Megan’s world. But he struggled with structure and the lack of it, Hernandez said. At one point, growing up, Lane ran away from home and was refusing to come back.

As the kid’s frame and talent became obvious, Aviles said, youth coaches would try to position themselves as father figures. Grown men would promise him a new pair of cleats, or fly him out to 7-on-7 tournaments, a process that only continued into high school.

“I’ve seen countless people,” Hernandez said, “try to get a piece of the pie.”

Eventually, as Megan grew to trust Aviles, Lane stayed on and off with him and the Brenner family for the better part of a decade. When Lane got himself in trouble in middle school, his principals would call Aviles to come pick him up.

Eventually, before Lane got to high school, Aviles sat him down and told him: I’m not quittin’ on you.

“I think Ja’Kobi, just, I think he was testing a lot of people because he had had people jump in and out of his life,” Aviles said.

The summer before his senior year of high school, Lane and Aviles went on a few recruiting trips outside of Red Mountain’s football office, and he missed a few practices. Shortly after, Red Mountain played in a 7-on-7 tournament and Lane showed up, trotting out with the offense on the first series.

“Ja’Kobi,” Enders told him, as Hernandez remembered, “absolutely not. You’re not doing this.”

Lane stormed home. He was being recruited hard by Florida prep school IMG Academy at the time, another voice whispering in his ear, and he began texting back and forth with Enders. Lane was frustrated. Enders made clear he wouldn’t chase him.

“At that point,” Hernandez said, “I really didn’t think he was going to be coming back.”

He did. Red Mountain and Mesa were, after all, home.

The academic journey

It got quiet, sometimes, inside Dalia Garcia Starks and Laurel Moore’s senior English classroom at Red Mountain. Never for long. Often, sitting in his seat, Lane would simply blurt out a random noise to break the silence.

That’s Ja’Kobi, his teachers simply thought. They didn’t care. He was respectful and kind, and he could lay on the floor, for all they cared, as long as he remained engaged. He always was.

“We make kids like Ja’Kobi Lane, make it happen – with his big personality and stuff – to make sure he walks across that stage,” Garcia Starks said.

And Lane needed to make it happen his senior year. Academically, as Aviles reflected, he was “in a hole.” Even as USC showed interest, Aviles remembered, Red Mountain communicated to them that the likelihood of Lane becoming a Division I athlete was slim.

But after Huard came out to Red Mountain, and watched Lane play in person, he refused to let go. “This guy,” Aviles remembered Huard telling him, “could be the one.”

Head coach Lincoln Riley told Huard to pull Lane’s transcripts, seeing if there was any possible academic path to USC. There was, and the decision was a “game-changer,” Aviles said. In the meantime, Huard set out about learning every single detail possible to Lane’s long backstory, trying to find how USC could make the fit work.

“I kid you not,” Enders said – positively – of Huard’s thoroughness, “I’ve never seen some (expletive) like that.”

And Lane’s coaches and teachers saw a jump, in turn, in his maturity that senior year. He became a leader at Red Mountain. He retook – as Aviles pinpointed – about six to eight classes from his sophomore and junior years, as Moore helped him through one geometry class. He re-enacted the final scene of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” with aplomb, in that English class, for a final project.

“Seeing that growth as a senior, as a student-athlete,” Enders said, “was huge.”

In late May of Lane’s senior year, Red Mountain teammate Jeremiah Aviles was shot and killed. The community, shortly after, held a vigil at Red Mountain Park, adjacent to the school’s campus. And Lane spoke up, when the ceremony was opened to friends.

He spoke with sheer passion, as the larger group was flooded with tears, Garcia Starks remembered. He spoke with sentiments, Hernandez said, his teammates might have been too shell-shocked to express. It was the best of Lane, in a nutshell.

“Out of everything, taking the football stuff into account, his ability to just connect with people is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Hernandez said.

When Lane left Red Mountain for USC, his academic gauntlet successful, he signed his last pair of cleats and gave them to Moore and Garcia Starks. One for each.

Maturation at USC

During one Monday night run at USC last season, fellow receiver Duce Robinson remembered, Lane snagged a touchdown one-handed and then pushed himself up into a headstand.

Not a handstand, Robinson emphasized. A full headstand, inverted upon his helmet for maybe three seconds.

“That’s just Ja’Kobi for you,” Robinson smiled last week.

The worst thing he could do as a coach, Riley emphasized last week, would be to extinguish Lane’s passion. It was “a gift,” Riley called it. But there was a time and place, and the maturation has continued at USC.

At Red Mountain, longtime friend and former quarterback Carter Crispin said, Lane wanted the ball every play. Moss, now USC’s starting quarterback, echoed a similar sentiment in Lane’s development: understanding it wasn’t the end of the world if a play wasn’t designed for him.

“Not being complacent,” Lane said, asked last week about his growth. “Trying to get better in every area. Being a good teammate. Learning the playbook inside and out, things like that helped me over time just mold into the person that I am today.”

He had realized that selflessness, Moss said, and Riley praised Lane’s commitment to his development. He’s been supported, along the way, by a USC program that has come to support inside and out: counseling sessions, one-on-one academic help, diligent coaching. Simmons, Aviles said, will text him if Lane misses a math assignment.

“He’s the kind of kid that, as long as you can keep him engaged and invested into what’s going on, you’re going to be able to get – the sky’s the limit with him,” Hernandez said.

After one practice later in his high school career, Heap went over to Lane and caught his attention, the receiver sitting in a group of his buddies. He had all the talent in the world, Heap emphasized, critiquing Lane on a play he should have made in practice.

“I can either sit here and tell you you’re doing great,” Heap told a young Lane, “or I can tell you the truth and tell you what you need to improve on.”

Lane looked up at Heap.

“I think,” Lane replied, tongue fully in cheek, “I want you to keep lying to me a little bit longer.”

They all collapsed, Heap recognizing amid the laughter that something deep down had clicked in his pupil.

“All of us that have seen him go through all these things,” Heap said, “you wonder if a kid, if a young guy will ever figure these things out and reach his potential.”

“And I think he’s in the process of doing that.”

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