Extended Family
Malik Antoine and Tom Hager
In Partnership with Athletes For God
I was just about two weeks into my first fall camp as a Stanford football player when I was pulled aside one day.
"Hey, is your family okay?" asked Duane Akina, our defensive backs coach. "There's a flood in Baton Rouge."
I had no idea what he was talking about...I was fresh into the Stanford program, so I had turned off my social media accounts before camp started, just to avoid any outside distractions. I had no idea what was going on outside of my own bubble, so when Coach Akina asked if my family was alright, I didn't know what to say. I grabbed a phone to call my mom, and the answer was both yes and no.
Everybody in my family was safe and sound, but there had indeed been a major flood in Baton Rouge. A storm had wiped through my hometown and unleashed three times as much rain on Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina had 11 years earlier. The flood claimed the lives of 13 people and caused more than $10 billion in damages. That financial toll included both my childhood home and my grandparents homes, both of which were destroyed.
Here was the worst part - neither my parents nor my grandparents had flood insurance. Everybody knows about New Orleans and its low elevation, but Baton Rouge is 81 miles away from the coast. It just doesn't flood here....until it did. So without insurance, the storm's impact was truly devastating.
My mom, being the caring person she is, had tried to not tell me about it so I could stay focused on football. So when I finally did hear the news, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Some of our most cherished items in the house - like our family photographs - had been destroyed. As she was telling me all of this, my mom was staying composed on the phone, but I could tell she was holding it all in.
I can't say the same for myself, because when I heard the news, tears came to my eyes.
When I got to Stanford, I wanted to prove myself and show my strength, but after hearing that news I suddenly found myself being vulnerable. Even if I wanted to go home, I didn't have one to go back to. But at what could have been my lowest moment, God showed up a big way.
When my teammates heard the news, they all stepped in to try and help. People like Frank Buncom IV, Justin Reid, and Quenton Meeks reached out to make sure I was alright. I might have been over 2,000 miles away from home, but I didn't need to fight this battle on my own.
I kind of knew that the guys in our secondary would reach out. They're all incredible guys, and even in our short time together we had formed a bond.
What I didn't expect was the entire Stanford community stepping up as well.
Somebody in the Athletic Department started an online fundraiser for my family, and even though I think I had heard about it, it was kind of put on the back of my mind. And just like my mom had done a few weeks before, she was on the phone with some big news to share.
"Malik, we have one hundred thousand dollars."
Her tone wasn't in the way like we had struck gold...It was in the tone of disbelief and shock in the generosity of people. And of gratitude. Overwhelming gratitude. So many people had pitched in a few dollars to help, but I still remember looking and seeing that the biggest contributions were from anonymous donors. These were people who might have met me, but they had almost certainly had never met my mom.
And yet these people wanted to give their hard earned dollars to help somebody, just because they felt like it was the right thing to do.
It reminds of the story of the Good Samaritan, where a man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. The thieves beat him before taking off, and he was left on the road to die. Two other people passed him on the road and did nothing before a Samaritan came upon him. Although he was from the land of Samaria and had never met the man lying on the road, he took pity on the man and bandaged his wounds.
And even though some of these donors had never known my family personally, they definitely helped bandage our wounds. Not just financially either, but emotionally as well. It makes you realize how many good people there are out there.
I think one of the other things that helped was having such a strong faith in God. I joke that my grandmother used to go to church eight days a week, but she was always there. And on Saturdays I would see her pray for four hours. Four hours! I would wander off when I was a kid, and when I would come back in to check on her, she was still there. The craziest thing was to realize she was often in there praying for me. It was that foundation of faith that helped me when the storm hit.
I firmly believe that God doesn't put anything on your plate that you can't handle. God puts difficult things in front of us, but He gave us the courage and perseverance to overcome them. And as strong as the storm was, my faith in God was way stronger.
My parents and grandparents were really helpful during that time. In fact my Dad gave me a cross necklace this past offseason that I still wear everyday. It's just a reminder for me of the example that he sets for me, and the example that Christ set for him.
As the waters began to subside, my parents and grandparents both began to put their houses back together. My parents were able to rebuild pretty quickly, thanks to the fundraiser, while it took my grandparents just over a year to get back to normal.
The resilience they showed in that time really helped me out, because a few years later I was going to encounter some adversity here with the Stanford football team.
I still remember that awful feeling as we walked into the locker room last year against Washington. It was only halftime of that game, but reality was starting to sink in.
Wow, our season is taking a huge turn. We're struggling.
We had already lost three of our last four games, and two quarters later it would be four out of our last five. We looked nothing like the team that started 4-0 and was ranked #7 in the country. Our program had averaged 10.6 wins a season between 2010 and 2017, and here we were, staring at a 5-4 record.
But the storm of 2016 gave me two things. The first was strength, and the other was perspective.
Okay, so maybe our season was going through a rough patch, but it wasn't the end of the world. It's football. That doesn't mean I wasn't going to do everything in my power to turn it around, but I also knew that life had bigger meaning than our football record.
Plus, I think we all came to Stanford because we didn't want to take the easy path. No other program in the country has a legacy of academics and athletics like we have at Stanford, and we all came here to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. It's probably the reason why nobody back in Baton Rouge could fault me when I chose to come here. They knew that I was striving for greatness.
I used to complain all the time about my workload, and how difficult it is here, but I just had to remind myself that this is what I wanted and that honestly it wasn’t about me. When I began to stare at our 5-4 record, I knew that complaining wasn't going to win our next game against Oregon State. We rallied together and won that game 48-17, then beat UCLA 49-42. A week later, on the road against our big rival Cal, we won 23-13.
I remember warming up for that game as the rain was pouring down, but during the first quarter the sun broke out. It kind of felt like the sign that the worst was behind us, and it only seemed fitting that the win over Cal qualified us for the Sun Bowl. We trailed Pitt 13-7 going into the fourth quarter of that game, but by this point our team was feeling confident. Our offense scored the go-ahead touchdown with 11:28 to go, and once we came up with the big turnover on downs in the closing minutes, we could all celebrate as a team.
If my teammates and this community have taught me anything, it's that you don't have to share a bloodline to be family. After what the people here have done for me and my parents, that word has taken on a new meaning.
I don’t know how to thank everyone at Stanford enough, other than just to say that your kindness was not lost on me. And down the road when I’ll encounter someone else in need, I’ll make sure to remember what family looks like.