here is one from ESPN
http://insider.espn.go.com/colleges/michigan/football/recruiting/story/_/id/7495834/jehu-chesson-keeps-michigan-wolverines-commitment-perspective
It's an insider page but I cut and pasted the article below on the chance you're not an insider. I don't think anyone on here will mind me sharing an insider article or two about a UM guy.
Admin... put me in time out if I'm wrong ha ha.
If you ask 2012 Michigan wide receiver commit Jehu Chesson (Chesterfield, Mo./Ladue Horton Watkins ) what he's good at, he'll say juggling and singing, though not at the same time. He'll quickly follow that up with the admonition that it's probably in his head, because his hands aren't that great.
Says the kid who spent most of his time at wide receiver in double- or triple-coverage.
"OK, yeah," he'll agree when pestered about his skills. "But it's just football."
He could talk for an hour about anything without mentioning that he's an athlete, let alone a two-time state champion in track or the MVP at most of the football camps he has been to.
In many ways, he's the antithesis of most highly touted Division I recruits.
But, that's the way he likes it.
On most summer days before Chesson even picks up a football he can be found running around a park with 8-year-olds in the midst of an epic shaving cream battle or chasing children around the St. Louis City Museum.
And when that isn't keeping him busy, he's at the St. Louis Crisis Nursery, a place that brings in homeless infants and children, giving them a place to stay and eat.
He makes sandwiches and plays basketball with the kids, not for the show or to check off a box for a community service class, but because it's where he feels he should be.
"I wake up in my bed in Ladue every day, and I go to a wonderful school," Chesson said. "But there are children born into poverty and hardship. They get the short end of the rope for no reason at all. I thank God it wasn't me, but I wonder why it has to be like this."
The thing is, it could've been him.
In 1993 Chesson was born in war-torn Liberia in the middle of its first civil war. The country had broken into factions, and by the time the war was over in 1996, nearly 200,000 Liberians had died. Chesson moved from Liberia to the Ivory Coast, and from the Ivory Coast to St. Louis when he was 5.
He doesn't have many memories from that early in his life, but he saw on TV when Liberia fought its second civil war and the unrest that has come from it.
He could be angry. He still has family in Africa. His grandmother is there.
But Chesson said the kids have taught him how to forgive. He laughs when he talks about two young kids at the camp who fight and punch one another, but 10 minutes later they're playing with each other again.
He said that even though some of those kids have very little, they have the capacity to forgive, which some adults -- who've been tarnished by money or pessimism -- can't do.
"The best and worst part of it all is that I can ponder a question about why some are born into greatness and others never get a chance," Chesson said. "I'll probably never get an answer. But I can give of myself, which is sort of like working toward an answer."
When Chesson began getting recruited to play college football, he refused to look at it as flattery or an ego-booster like so many other 15-year-olds would have done.
"It was all good that I was noticed," Chesson said. "But it's almost like coaches saying thank you for working so hard, and that's how I took it. In a way, I was like, this is all for me because I was the one going to the school. But in actuality, it's for my parents too, and my coaches and my friends and younger brother. Because it's never just about me."
Because of his humility, it was Jehu's father who had to put the receiver's name on the recruiting radar. Chesson Sr. compiled game tapes and took calls. He was on the high school coaches about stats and made sure that Jehu was at all the right exhibitions.
"He just didn't care about that stuff," Chesson Sr. said. "He's more, 'Let me show you what I can do and everything will be fine.' But in marketing, it doesn't work that way, you have to try and sell yourself and your skills."
But it took very little "selling" for the Chessons. Offers began rolling in -- Northwestern, Iowa, Purdue, Indiana, Missouri.
People began recognizing him, and he felt that football recruitment could easily change a person. So he did what he knew best: He threw himself into volunteering and working with children more.
"Place someone on a pedestal because they changed someone's life or a city," Chesson said. "Not because they caught a pass."
On the first day of football practice of his senior year, Chesson spent six hours at the school for Link Crew leadership training before putting himself through his first two-a-day of the 2011 season.
The program is set up to give 11th and 12th graders leadership positions within the school. Each upperclassman is given a homeroom of freshmen and they take interest in Ladue's new students.
Chesson had gone through high school without a real mentor other than his parents. His older teammates had blown their talent for other routes, and he had watched drugs and alcohol turn a perfectly good person into a nightmare. He saw Link Crew as an opportunity to mentor the younger students.
But, like most things Chesson does, he went above and beyond. On the weekdays, he would call his freshmen to see how their homework was going and on some weekends he'd invite them over to his house to watch a movie with him and his girlfriend.
"I am who I am all the time," Chesson said. "Around Link Crew, my parents, my younger brother, the football team, I have to be myself. Because, especially in this recruiting process and football world, it's so easy to lose who you are and what you find important."
Sometimes when college coaches called Ladue High School to inquire about Chesson, they were put through to David Tabscott, the school's counselor, instead of the college counselor. Tabscott would forward the call, but not before taking five minutes of the coach's time.
He would tell the story about the summer before Chesson's junior year, when the football team was having its annual Blue Light Night -- a bonfire/pep rally event that kicked off the fall sports calendar.
Each season teams were picked by two players, not coaches or by depth charts. Everyone would line up and the two select captains would stand in front and point to whomever they wanted for their team.
That summer, Chesson was a captain. For his first and second pick he chose two skill players, two players that could help him win. But, in the corner, he saw Trey Reiser standing at the end of the line. Reiser had played football for Ladue for three seasons and never contributed much. He was entering his senior year and was expected to do the same.
So, on Chesson's third pick, he chose Reiser.
"It meant everything to that kid," Tabscott said. "The fact that Jehu didn't let it get down to the final two or three picks, the fact that the popular kid, the star of the football team chose Trey, it just shows how Jehu's a special kid. He really is a once-in-a-decade kind of guy.
"But he would never tell a coach that, so I figured I would."
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Tue Feb 14, 2012 10:40 pm
