Story by Trent Brown
ALBEMARLE, North Carolina — Sitting in front of Stanly County History Center, RJ Prince can look at that building with pride. He knows it now – he’s a big part of that history.
Prince walks through town, flipping his dreadlocks off of his face, and a group doing yoga in an outdoor patio stops and stares. He smiles and nods; he’s used to it. He’s 6’6”, weighs over 300 pounds and is sporting Pittsburgh Steelers gear from head-to-toe. A behemoth of a man, coming home from the big city for a couple of weeks – easy to spot.
And folks do spot him, all the time. First, it’s an older lady taking an evening run down the street. “Hey RJ!” she exasperatedly yells, while she sticks her hand out for a high-five. “Hey there,” he replies with a smile, barely catching her hand. Then, it’s a man in a red pickup truck driving by. With his window down, almost as if he had spotted him far enough away to prepare for the moment, he honks his horn and yells, “RJ!”
Then, an older couple across the street notices him. Another does the same a few minutes later. Even a couple who passes by and doesn’t seem to know who he is still waves. It looks like they’re thinking: “Maybe we should know who he is? Honey, wave, quick!” Then, he notices a couple of young women across the street and loses focus for a moment, but hey, he’s a 24-year-old guy.
All of these honking horns and outstretched and waving hands, they’re all proud of him. He’s their RJ, the town’s RJ.
And he loves being that for them. But not in a selfish way, that’s not RJ Prince.
“There’s a lovely charm about this place,” he says. He wants to be a light for the town and the kids who see him play, because it’s guys like him who made him want to play in the first place.
RJ was one of the last members of an era of high school football pride that Albemarle – if not North Carolina altogether – might never get to see again.
Albemarle, this small city located between Palestine and Aquadale, loves its football. If you Google image search “Albemarle high school,” you’ll find a picture of its football team. One more click and you’ll find yourself on the school’s website. Stretched across the front page – the first thing that meets your eye – the very same picture of the football team.
And if you think people love it now, they used to love it even more. For almost two decades, Albemarle was the epicenter of North Carolina Division 1A high school football. Coach Jack Gaster arrived in 1993 and coached a 12-1 season in his second year. It was football heaven from then on out. They won game after game, and not only did they win games, they won championships.
Ever heard of a young man named T.A. McLendon? The guy who will go down in history as one of the greatest high school running backs to ever grace a field? He wore that Albemarle royal blue and white. He was a Bulldog, too. Remember that name, it’s important.
When these guys played, and Gaster coached, the town shut down. If you wanted to park for an Albemarle game, you had to walk a half-mile. At least a few thousand of Albemarle’s 15,000 people were going to come to watch the Bulldogs win. And they were going to win, Gaster was 219-57 during that stretch.
It wasn’t just a school system in Albemarle, it was an education-and-football system. Or rather, a football-and-education system.
The one problem: a young RJ didn’t get it. At least not at first.
When he was 6, his dad told him that he’d be playing football from then on. No ifs, ands or buts about it, football was going to be his life. He was too big not to.
So, every day when RJ got home from school he was instructed to do 1,000 jump ropes. One thousand of them. He would cry in protest. He didn’t even want to play sports, not to mention jump rope. I have enough problems already, and now I have to add on jump rope?
But then something clicked. Lady Destiny has her way of working these things out in the end. That something was a somebody. T.A. McClendon.
This guy, T.A., the illustrious young running back who happened to like going by his initials, too. Who carried a football up every field imaginable for 9,000 yards and 178 touchdowns in his three-year varsity career. Who was suddenly loved by the whole town and was making it look easy.
Maybe it only took a couple of plays – those plays where T.A. just simply ran by, through and past anybody he wanted to. All of a sudden, RJ knew it. He wanted to be like that guy.
. . .
What does it take to be that guy? Decisions. A lot of them, and not just about jump rope.
It means that you have to decide to get up earlier and lift. And then lift again in the afternoon. And then do it again at night. The weight room is your home, your personal fortress.
Your mentality is simple: “Mad, stressed, sad, I go to the weight room.” That’s the way you, RJ, had to see it.
It means that when a player named Denico Autry comes up through the Albemarle education-and-football system, you go out every Friday night and be his team’s water boy. You make that relationship with him, because one day he’s going to be an Indianapolis Colt – and a Pro Bowl alternate – and you’re going to need that connection.
It means that after you win your first State Championship as a sophomore, you work your tail off during the summer at a golf course so you can save money for new cleats and gloves.
But wait– you hear about a football camp at Clemson University that’s going to cost you the money that you saved. What do you do? You go to that camp and you show them that you’re not just some big kid whose dad forced him to jump rope. You’re a guy who hits the gym three times a day. You’re a guy who’s already huge, will get even bigger and can stand to take hits from anyone.
And then you walk out of that camp with a full-ride scholarship offer.
But you don’t stop at one camp. You go to another at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and they like you a lot, too. So much that the guys at Clemson, well, they don’t like that very much. They might cuss at you – a high school kid – on the phone. No need to worry, you’re already shaping into a guy whose new motto is, “I don’t let anything get to me.”
So you end that phone call and think, Well, I guess Carolina blue would look all right on me, too.
And it does, but college is different. This time, you’ve got wake up at 4:30 every morning and work out three or four times a day. You’ve already prepared yourself for that though, haven’t you? The college schedule is hard, paced on a 15-minute clock of going from place to place, classroom to weight room to field. But you don’t let anything get to you.
And then one of your coaches might not like you too much. Maybe it’s because you’re only getting playing time because of an injury. Hell, he even might put you in a dorm room by yourself that has no central air conditioning. He might just try to run you out of town. But you hold your ground and you work harder. You get that starting position anyway. You don’t let anything get to you.
College comes and goes quickly, until you’re suddenly at draft day waiting on a call. You wait and wait and wait some more, but no calls come for three days. Turns out that coach – the one who didn’t like you – made his final play. He blackballed you, told teams that you aren’t worth the money. That’s all right, you won’t let anything get to you.
Eventually the calls come through. The Jets look interested, but it falls through. The Raiders look interested, but that doesn’t last. You get a mini-camp invite from the Packers, but you get food poisoning on the first night and then they don’t even give you an exit interview.
You won’t let it get to you. The Steelers come calling soon enough and turns out, they like you just as much as the colleges did. Even better: their Hall of Fame offensive line coach, Mike Munchak, likes you.
You’ll spend every waking moment in that practice facility for a year and prove to them that you’re made for this. So much time in the practice facility that one day, a team manager might look at you, two hours after Saturday walkthrough practice is over and say, “Damn, RJ, you live here! Go home already!” You won’t go home for another hour.
But then that offensive line coach takes a head coaching job in Denver and suddenly, you’re cut. Chopped from the roster. The new coordinator doesn’t need you.
You won’t let it get to you. Just two days later, the Ravens call you and you’re signed in Baltimore before the week is over. A new challenge, somewhere to prove yourself again. Not to mention the purple, your favorite color. You will look good in that.
. . .
What’s it like to be that guy? He must be one intimidating man, you might think, paid to crash into other 300-pound human beings over and over again. Paid to be ruthless and tough. Paid to not let anything get to him. Paid a lot, by Albemarle standards.
To a distant onlooker, he might just be that intimidating hulk of a man. Get a little closer and you’ll notice something a little different.
Walking down Second Street in Albemarle, he pauses for a moment and then bolts from a bee. Just a tiny bee.
Guess that guard doesn’t always stay up.
RJ’s friends Lindsey and Sam like to call him a big teddy bear, and maybe that’s the best way to put it. If his friends call, he comes over immediately, just to hang out. When he says goodbye, he shakes your hand and pulls you in for a brotherly hug. He has a lot of friends now, whether it be Ethan Morris – who grew up down the street from him in Albemarle – or Luke Maye, the other Carolina kid with the great underdog story.
That’s come with time though, those comfortable relationships. When RJ was a kid, crying about jumping jacks and idolizing T.A., he was dealing with being an outcast, too. After being a normal kid, who read to the class every Wednesday through kindergarten and first grade, zoning laws made him move schools.
At the new school, East Albemarle Elementary, he was different. He was suddenly the kid who was too fat. The kid who stuttered.
It made him anxious and nervous to even be around his peers. He couldn’t read in class anymore. His words started and stopped like the sport that he grew to love. A couple seconds of hitting and running – stop. A couple words and phrases – stop. In eighth grade his anxiety peaked – he couldn’t talk to his peers at all.
But that motto came to him eventually, “I don’t let anything get to me.” Those scholarships came in, his body grew and fat turned to muscle. He had a group of core friends who loved RJ for who he was. Those starts and stops turned into phrases such as “bruh like.” He might repeat it a few times, but just give him a few seconds and he’ll get to his point. They didn’t frustrate him anymore, he was growing comfortable. It was just another thing that he had to work on, another thing that he could lift weights and figure out.
Now, it’s barely noticeable, if it even happens at all. No, instead of the stutter, he’s proud to speak. When a police car passes by on Second Street, followed by another, and then one more, he lets out a loud and goofy “Yee yee!” under the deafening sirens.
He’s a big, goofy teddy bear. Maybe that explains it a little better.
That’s what that confidence will get you. Not to mention the way he decorates his apartment for Christmas. In every nook and cranny of his living room and kitchen – every imaginable Christmas decoration. Delicately placed porcelain Christmas villages. Garland along the shelf tops that only he could reach. Those Christmas mice. Tiny singing Christmas figures. Christmas candles. And of course, a Christmas tree.
RJ, is that a Hallmark Christmas movie on the TV screen?
“I don’t know how that got on there,” he says, turning it to the Rams game immediately.
Yeah, sure, RJ.
A big, goofy, Christmas teddy bear? We’re getting close.
Hop in his big black, brand spanking new, NFL money truck in late December and you might just hear a Kelly Clarkson Christmas song. And he might just yell, “Sing it, Kelly!” at the top of his lungs, because who cares? Any other time of the year, RJ will be singing – rather, shouting – any and every song by a man named Prince Rogers Nelson, Prince for short. Even his favorite color is purple, just like the rain. “This is a bad dream…” he tweeted on April 21, 2016 – the day Prince died. On his wall, a giant portrait painting of the man. Fitting, for Roger Prince Jr.
A big, goofy, Christmas, Prince-loving teddy bear? We’re getting closer.
And have you heard about his name? Yes, he goes by RJ instead of R.J., but that’s not the one. No, he doesn’t go by his dad’s nickname of Crush either, you’ve got to go a little bit further down the line of RJ interests to find this one.
DD Blaze, the wrestler. Ask him about his life interests and possible career paths and you’ll get something along the lines of, “Well, I’m committed to football, but if that doesn’t work out then I’m going to go for the WWE.” He’s even in the final stages of writing a novel about it.
A big, goofy, Christmas, Prince-loving, wrestling teddy bear? That has to be it, right?
Well, almost, but not quite – just wait until you see him at the games. It’s not about his playing ability, he doesn’t play yet; still hidden down the depth chart on the practice squad. So what does he do in those few hours of pregame warmups? He walks around most of the lower bowl and talks to people. He introduces himself, he signs autographs, he takes pictures.
Then, when the game is over, he might just stand outside in that player parking lot for another hour and talk to the couple dozen fans that have been waiting all day for the chance. Sign more autographs, take more pictures, even ask them questions about themselves. At training camp, RJ will walk down the line of hundreds of fans outside of the practice facility, sign more autographs and take more pictures. And then, he’ll turn around and walk down the line again, in case he missed anyone.
“I’m not a selfish person, you know what I mean?” he says. “I value those types of relationships… in my mind, if there’s a kid there and it’s his dream to play football. If I could be the inspiration that changes his life, then you know, I’d like that.”
He’s starting his first camp for kids back in his hometown soon, the Stanly Elite Youth Football and Cheerleader Camp, with Denico Autry as his co-coordinator.
A big, goofy, Christmas, Prince-loving, wrestling teddy bear who just cares about the kids. I think we’re getting pretty close. As close as descriptions can go.
Back on the side of the road in downtown Albemarle, after the cop cars have passed and the yee yee’s have been yelled, an unidentifiable flying bug zooms at RJ and hits him in the chest. He screams, jumps up like the nimblest of tiny men and bolts 10 feet forward, almost as if he suddenly had to block 11 men.
Upon further investigation, it was just a butterfly. And it wasn’t even moving that fast.
. . .
Something else about this RJ guy, he prays. It’s right there in his Facebook bio, “All glory to the (emojis symbolizing most high)!” It’s on his neck, a gold chain with a delicate cross at the end of it. On a normal sized neck, it might look huge, on his it’s tiny. But his friends remind him of it, “Just remember, RJ, no matter what happens, He’s got you,” they say, pointing at that sliver of gold dangling above his chest.
On Oct. 1, 2016, he was praying even harder.
His junior season, his first year as a starter, and the Tar Heels are playing in Tallahassee against a Seminoles team that had beaten them 15 times in the past 17 matchups. But this was a different era for UNC football, they won 11 games the season before and were already 4-1 in 2016.
Carolina had dominated Florida State most of the game, up 28-14 going into the fourth quarter. Then, the Tar Heels gave up 21 points in 11 minutes. Carolina was down, 35-34, with seconds left on the clock. Those damn tomahawk-chopping Florida boys were going to do it again.
RJ stepped onto the field with the team with just four seconds on the clock and got ready to line up in his stance at right tackle. Normally, he was a right guard, but this was his spot long before he was a starting offensive lineman. In special team sets, he lined up one place over, right in the line of fire of multiple smaller and quicker men.
Stopping at the 34-yard-line, he gets into his lineman’s stance – legs squatted, both massive hands on the ground and his head slightly raised so he can look at the guys in front of him. Damn, there’s three of them.
Right before he had to throw all 300 pounds of himself at those men and keep them away from a small leather ball, RJ prayed. He prayed to all that is holy in the heavens above, to God and all of the angels that could possibly help him in the moment.
Lord, please don’t let me fuck this up.
The ball was snapped and two men in garnet and gold gave him everything they had, pouncing at him with the force of at least 5 or 6 G forces. That’s twice as much as it takes to slap a kid to the wall of a Gravitron ride at the State Fair. Around the same that a fighter jet pilot feels when they make a fast turn.
RJ took on those two men – and then another that got past his teammate – and he took one step back with them pressing on him. One step back, then he stood up straight and held his ground like a wall. Three men, trained hitters and tacklers and smashers, and he took them on like they were children.
Tar Heel kicker Nick Weiler’s foot went through the ball smoothly as it was set on the ground, kicking it into the air just a little wide right at first. Oh God. Then that brown dot in the air curved right back in and hung between the uprights. Thank God.
Those three guys hitting RJ turned around as the kick went up and their shoulders dropped like bags of bricks. A weight off of his shoulders, a weight onto theirs. The camera immediately set its eye on Weiler, who tomahawk-chopped his way 50 yards down the field into Carolina history books.
But right before the camera turned away to the kicker, you might have noticed number 71 in Carolina blue and white take off. RJ saw that ball curve and started running like a maniac. He didn’t have to throw off the FSU players because they had already begun sulking away. They knew it. And oh, he knew it.
Things were just starting to get really good for the kid. The kid who was bullied because he couldn’t read a book to his classmates. The kid who just wanted to be the man that every kid could look up to. You could hear the cheers all the way from Albemarle. The kid who didn’t let anything get to him.
