Bombers defensive tackle Cummings had to give his mom the slip

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This article was published 18/06/2016 (3397 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The story of how Euclid Cummings started playing football is a complicated one.

At the age of 16, for four days a week in the summer Cummings would leave his modest home in Atlanta, making sure to hug his mom before heading to the subway. If the trains were on time, he’d make it to Roswell, the station closest to Centennial High School, in just more than an hour. There, one of his football coaches would be waiting and together they’d make the 20-minute drive to practice. Once practice was over, Cummings would return to the subway for the long trek back home.

It was a commute that would be challenging for any teenager. But it wasn’t the travel that complicated things. After all, he knew he was lucky. The three-hour round trip was a small price to pay to be part of a program that spared him from Atlanta’s inner-city school system. What made football difficult was having to lie to his mother each morning when he left, and every night when he got home.

“I was telling my mom I was going to basketball workouts but I was really going to football practice,” said Cummings, a defensive tackle for the Blue Bombers, after practice Friday.

Knowing his mother would never approve, but also knowing football was his only chance at earning a college scholarship —“You’re a 6-3 centre. I don’t know how good that’s going to work out for you,” his basketball coach would tell him — Cummings kept up the lie as long as he could.

It wouldn’t be until the school year began in the fall, when his mother tagged along with him to meet his teachers for the first day of classes that his secret came out. It didn’t take long before coaches started to introduce themselves, expressing their pleasure to his mother about her son’s decision to join the football team.

The news didn’t go over well. The next day Cummings was forbidden to play football.

“She was afraid of her baby getting hurt,” said Jeff Measor, Cumming’s high school football coach at Centennial, over a phone interview from Cumming, Ga., where he’s now works for an insurance company. “I didn’t want to get involved so I told him write your mom a letter and tell her how you feel.”

Cummings wrote how much he’d taken to the game and that he seemed to have a knack for it. He shared how much he loved being around the coaches and the players, many whom in a short time had become like family. Cummings already had two brothers — Omar and Jaysen — but they were much older, separated by 11 and 17 years respectively. With football, it was different. With football, he was with “a band of brothers.”

“I threw all of that in the letter and she had no choice but to let me play,” said Cummings. “And the rest is history.”

Well, not exactly. Cummings, who came equipped with the size and speed for the game, had never played football before and knew nothing about the game. In fact, Measor recalled the first time seeing Cummings at practice, knowing instantly he was a work in progress. Little did he know years later he’d be showcasing him to teams across the country.

“He came out and he had all his pads on backwards,” said Measor. “The first time he went to hit somebody he didn’t wrap up. He wasn’t a kid who used to watch football, he didn’t know anything about it. But he could run and he was big and he figured it out.”

It would be a few games into his junior season before Cummings would get some meaningful playing time. With the team not doing well, Measor couldn’t see the harm in throwing Cummings in.

“I said ‘who cares, he’ll find the ball,’ ” Measor told his defensive co-ordinator at the time. “He did and it all started from there.”

Measor would continue to work with Cummings, who was beginning to develop into one of the league’s better defensive ends. By his senior year, Measor would take Cummings and another player, David Yankey, a guard currently with NFL’s Carolina Panthers, and together they would travel by van to different combines in hopes of being noticed by a Division I college.

“We probably took them to 20 to 30 schools,” said Measor. “There had never been a college player come out of our high school. Nobody knew where our school was.”

Cummings would eventually help put them on the map. During one combine he dazzled in the 40-yard dash, running an astonishing time of 4.57 seconds — an incredible feat for his size, which at the time was 6-3, 230 pounds but “with a frame that could easily carry 280 to 290 pounds,” said Measor.

“He says, is that good?” recalled Measor. “He had no clue of his abilities.”

Then the offers started to roll in. First it was Indiana. Then another. And another. He would eventually accept an offer from Georgia Tech, becoming the first football player from Centennial High School to earn a scholarship at a Division I College.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without him,” said Cummings of Measor.

After a five-year career at Georgia Tech, where he started every game of his senior season at defensive tackle, Cummings would spend time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before taking his skills north of the border.

At 25, Cummings is entering his third season in the Canadian Football League, and will be leaned on this year to bring some stability to the Bombers’ defensive line. Cummings signed a one-year deal with Winnipeg in February, signing as a free agent after spending the last two seasons in Toronto.

Cummings is filled with passion. He dances after sacks, and after every big hit. That’s because for Cummings, celebrating the present is the best way to honour his past.

“Just a guy who loves the game of football and is just blessed to still be able to play the game,” he said, “Nothing complicated.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.catwitter: @jeffkhamilton