The making of MAPLETRON
Steelers rookie sensation Chase Claypool takes the next step — with his B.C. home team and challenging past as fuel
Join Khul and Chel Sanghera in the basement of their Abbotsford, B.C., home for Sunday football and you’d be wise to bring earplugs.
It can get loud — as in American tailgate-party loud. Maybe just not so much cussing and smack talk.
Decked out in black and gold swag and clutching mimosas (“Sunday orange juice”), the couple and their handful of friends are here to cheer on one team and one team only: the Pittsburgh Steelers.
And they have their eyes on one player: No. 11 — rookie wide receiver Chase Claypool, 22, who signed a four-year, $6.6-million (U.S.) contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers this year. Haven’t heard of him? Just eight weeks into the NFL season, the six-foot-four, 238-pound Abbotsford native is already breaking records and has drawn comparisons to Calvin Johnson (a.k.a. Megatron), one of the greatest receivers in league history. In his second game against the Denver Broncos, Claypool scored the longest touchdown from scrimmage yet by a Canadian, with an 84-yard reception.
Two games after that, he scored four touchdowns against the Philadelphia Eagles, the most for a rookie in franchise history. His nickname is Mapletron. Those assembled at the Sangheras’ home on a recent Sunday — when the Steelers faced their archrivals, the Baltimore Ravens — are more than just Chase’s biggest and loudest cheerleaders.
They are part of a network of family and close friends who played critical roles in raising, nurturing and supporting Chase — including through tragedy — and who helped propel him out of obscurity, first to the University of Notre Dame’s famed football program, then onto the biggest sports stage in the world. Their interactions with him over the years have led to lessons in discipline, resilience and kindness — qualities that appear to have encouraged a huge fan following on and off the field.
Of course, there’s his mom, Jasmine Claypool, who created spreadsheets to help Chase whittle down his numerous college offers. She’s the one nervously
watching the game with her palms pressed against her forehead.
There’s his dad, John Mensah, who would frantically run up and down the sidelines when Chase was a kid. He’s the one now sitting on the couch, hands pressed together as if in prayer, eyes shut.
The Sangheras, Khul and Chel, were Chase’s football coaches and mentors growing up. Chel is doing her darndest this day to channel positive energy from the group through the television screen. The Steelers are trailing and Chase fumbled the ball earlier.
“DEEEE!!! ...” she screams, leaning in for maximum effect.
“…. FENCE!!!!” the others respond in unison.
Learning to take the hits
Chase’s first foray into football began when he was in elementary school, when he’d join in with his older siblings and cousins.
“We would play wherever we could: strip of grass, backyard, nearby schools, on the road, it didn’t matter,” says his older stepbrother, Jacob Carvery.
Jacob said he and Chase’s brother, Joey Claypool, would lay out the ground rules to Chase: “If you’re playing with us, you’re playing with us.”
Translation: be prepared for hits.
“We’re obviously not going to crush him, but he still had to play with older people who were three, four, five years older than him.” Chase was game. “He was a tough little kid. I don’t know why, but he was jacked at such a young age. He always had abs and biceps,” Jacob says.
To be sure, there was a lot of trash talk. Younger or not, Chase could dish with the rest of them.
“Now, I know he has that side of him, if someone starts trashtalking him,” Jacob says.
“Otherwise, he will let his skills do the talking.”
Learning to behave
At age seven, Chase came home with registration papers for football, Jasmine recalls.
Some of the other kids in the townhouse complex played for the Abbotsford Falcons community team. But she felt her son was just too young. So she shuffled the papers away.
The following year, he returned with the same request. She relented.
That’s how Chase came into contact with the Sangheras. Chel, better known as “Mama Chel” to the players, was on the executive of the Valley Community Football Association. Khul would be Chase’s coach for several years, from atom to bantam.
By year five, Chase’s talents were beginning to shine and he was generating buzz, Khul recalls, both for his physicality and for his speed.
“He was very competitive — just like me.”
Chase’s dad, John, didn’t live under the same roof as Chase but would show up to every game. He, too, was competitive and was known to march up and down the sidelines, yelling his signature line for everyone to hear: “Coach Khul, you know what to do!”
John readily admits he would “run up and down the field screaming.”
“Just give Chase the ball!” he would implore. “Because he would know what to do with it, right?”
Palmer Carvery, who was Jasmine’s boyfriend at the time, said some parents weren’t always happy how much playing time Chase got compared to their kids.
“When it came down to winning the game, of course you’re going to put your key players on there,” Palmer said. “He was the force.”
But there were times when Coach Khul needed to put away his coaching hat and become the disciplinarian if kids misbehaved, Chase included.
Jasmine remembers one occasion when Chase had refused to clean his room and needed to be taught a lesson.
She had grounded him and taken away his Nintendo video game privileges. But he still dug in.
So she asked the coaches to keep Chase out of the first quarter.
The Sangheras obliged, but reluctantly.
“Oh Jas, isn’t there another way?” she recalls them saying.
Learning from tragedy
One of the most formative moments in Chase’s life happened when he was just 13. His older sister, Ashley, killed herself. He took it hard. “He went through a period where he wasn’t making the best choices, and he was acting out a little bit,” Jasmine says.
At times, it became too much to handle and Jasmine turned to the Sangheras for help.
Maybe he was late to get up for school or he hadn’t done his homework, Chel recalls. For a time, he was a bit withdrawn.
“Khul and I would knock on the door and say, ‘Chase, open up,’ ” she recalled.
“(Jasmine) was firm with household rules. To back her up, Coach Khul and myself would support her and present the situation differently to him. Ultimately, we were saying the same thing, but addressing it differently … She has always shared Chase with us as a football family — allowed us to enjoy his journey, but she also allowed us to share our life experiences with him.”
Chase also leaned on his teammates for support, Jacob said.
“I’m truly grateful football was a part of our family when that happened. That’s another family you can get distracted in and lost in and console your thoughts. They always have your back no matter what. … That was a great thing for him to have. As soon as school ends, you have something to go to right away, and you can run and get out all your anger and frustration and whatever and just leave it on the field.”
In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Chase said his sister’s death gave him extra drive.
“I just think it gave me another thing, another reason to push that much harder,” he said.
No question, it was a turning point in his life, Chel said.
“Eventually, he bounced back. It gave him strength.”
Before he graduated high school, Jasmine gave Chase permission to get a tattoo on his right arm. He chose a poem to honour his sister.
“A thousand words won’t bring you back. I know because I tried. Neither will a thousand tears. I know, because I’ve cried. Until we meet again.”
Learning his people skills — and how to hustle
His sister’s suicide wasn’t the only challenge to confront Chase growing up.
This summer, in an interview with former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez on his podcast 4th and Forever, Chase shared some of the financial strains his family faced.
“We weren’t, like, poor, but there was definitely times where my mom struggled. There was a time when we went to the food bank. We had food stamps, all that, for a short period of time. We moved around here and there trying to find a good spot,” he said.
Jasmine worked in the carnival circuit as a concession operator and would be away for short stretches. But on occasion, during Chase’s teenage years, he would join his mother on a few trips and become immersed in carnival life.
Jasmine recalls that he ran a fish pond game and a basketball toss game, among others.
“He’d come and work and everybody loved him. He was a hard worker and made money and he was engaging with the customers,” she said.
Chase definitely picked up people skills, which may explain his comfort in front of the camera.
“It’s weird when you first get into it, to be going, ‘Hey do you want to come spend some money with me?’ He was a little bit shy at first. But it’s a commission-based earning, so he had to decide if he was going to be shy or go home with money.”
In his retelling of events, Chase went so far as to create his own side hustle.
“I was making side bets with the parents. ‘Oh, your kid isn’t going to win this game,’ ” he would tell them.
“I did well there.”
Learning to go with his gut
When Chase reached his junior year of high school, he had to start making some critical decisions: choose between his passions for basketball and football.
At one point, he leaned toward basketball. Chel would have none of it. “I was in his ear. ‘You’re not doing it … We know you’re going to get a full ride somewhere in the States.’ ”
Looking back, Chel acknowledges she may have been harder on Chase than other teammates, but “my dream for him was NFL and I told him that the whole way.”
Jacob says he also nudged Chase to stay focused on football.
He was blunt with him. Yeah, you’re a good basketball player. But your height? “You’re average.” There are tons of basketball players just like you. But football? “At this stage now, you’re a freak. It’s a mismatch from day one. You’re huge. You’re fast.”
Chase ultimately stuck to his first love.
But then there was the question of how to get people to start noticing him.
Jacob at the time was playing under Eddie Ferg, who operates a regional football training academy. He says he leaned on Ferg to take a look at his stepbrother.
Eddie recalls stumbling across a couple of video clips that Chel had posted on Facebook: one of Chase on a punt return … another showed a tackle he made. He was impressed. “I’d never seen a six-foot-fourplus individual move so smooth and so fast. To me, it looked like he was moving like a five-footnine athlete,” he recalls.
“One thing led to another. He started to train with us and play seven-on-seven with us.”
In early 2015, in the middle of Chase’s junior year, Eddie called a friend at the University of Nevada. Three hours later, the school made an offer to Chase.
Buzz surrounding Chase started to spread.
Other schools followed, including Michigan, Rutgers, Oregon, Washington and Notre Dame.
Chase ended up with a box filled with offers, according to his family.
“Holy crap,” Jacob remembers thinking. “This is so cool. That’s something, like, every Canadian kid dreams of.”
Eddie and his wife, Karen, accompanied Chase on one of his visits to Notre Dame. He had been struggling with which school to choose.
“I always told him, ‘Chase, these coaches are going to tell you everything you want to hear,’ ” she said.
“My tidbit to him was: silence your mind, listen to your gut. Your gut will tell you where home is.”
At one point, as they walked through campus with fireflies buzzing around them, he grew quiet.
“He was like, ‘You know that feeling? I’m feeling it. This feels like home.’ ”
He committed to Notre Dame before the start of his senior year of high school.
“He was the force.”
Learning about kindness
When Chase moved to Notre Dame for college, Jasmine decided to give up her apartment and travel.
Debra Benning, who knew Jasmine from the carnival industry and had met Chase for
the first time at his going-away party, agreed to open up her basement to him so he’d have a place to stay when he came home during breaks from school.
“From that point on, every time he came home, he came and stayed with me. I gave him a place to sleep, a car to drive, I gave him whatever he needed. I cooked for him,” she said.
Because his football commitments prevented him from being home on Christmas, they would celebrate the holiday on Dec. 22 — a ritual that came to be known as “Chasemas” complete with turkey and Dr Pepper-glazed ham.
“Deb was a godsend,” John now says. “She has to be his biggest fan or one of them, her house is Steelers Nation.”
Learning to be a good ‘guest’
Distance, a global pandemic and Chase’s rigorous schedule have made it tougher for this core group of family and friends to stay in touch with him.
But they manage to get quick calls and texts when they can.
One thing they haven’t stopped doing is sharing bits of advice with Chase.
As news of George Floyd’s death by Minnesota police spread in late May, sparking waves of protests across the continent, Chase chose not to stay quiet and posted a series of tweets in the days that followed in support of Black Lives Matter:
“Let our voices be heard … #BLM” ... “All lives matter is a protest to my protest.”
During his NFL debut against the New York Giants on Sept.14, Chase raised his fist in the air during the national anthem while players held up a banner decrying racism.
“Being Canadian, being a visitor here, I don’t feel completely comfortable taking a knee,” he told reporters, “but I wanted to hold up a fist to show unity.”
Jasmine says she couldn’t have been prouder of her son. But she says she has had to remind him that he is still, at the end of the day, a “guest” of the United States and to be mindful of not going too far when it comes to sharing his opinions.
“Just because you’re an NFL player, you go into a corner store, not everybody knows who you are, not everybody is awed by your presence,” she recalled telling him.
“Be true to yourself. But don’t put yourself in harm’s way.”
On Aug. 26, weeks before the start of the season, John gave his son even more explicit advice: Do not run afoul of law enforcement.
“Chase please don’t drive fast don’t get pulled over the cops might kill you,” he texted his son.
Chase shared an image of the text on Twitter with the caption: “The world we live in …”
Learning how to give back
Chase could not be reached for comment through his family or through the Steelers organization for this story, but it’s evident through his actions that he has not forgotten his roots.
A few weeks after being drafted in April, Chase showed his appreciation to his mom and dad by presenting each of them with new vehicles: a Jeep Grand Cherokee for her and a Dodge Ram for him, both in gun metal grey.
Chase later explained in a YouTube video that when he was a sophomore at Notre Dame, his dad told him: “‘When you make it big, I won’t ask for anything. But if I were to ask for something I’d ask for a truck.’ So I wrote that down in my notes three years ago and I didn’t forget.”
“I know as thankful as I am, he’s at least as happy to have been able to do that,” his mom says. “He’s very giving and thoughtful.”
Earlier in the spring, Chase learned that one of his friends and former Abbotsford football teammates had died, apparently by suicide. Media reports say Samwel Uko had sought mental health support at a Regina hospital but was turned away.
Chase wrote “UKO” on his wrist tape for the first game of the season and later tweeted: “The best high school football player I’ve ever played with/ against and an even better kid. Miss you, brother. The system failed you.”
Jasmine says her son’s openness to talk about the deaths of his sister and friend to suicide inspired her to be more open. She has recently started a fundraising campaign to create a suicide awareness and prevention program for local schools.
“It has only been in the last couple of years that I would speak beyond our family and very close friends about it. And even then, it was very, very personal. Now we can make it public so people don’t feel that way,” she said.
“So he’s actually inspired me.”
Learning to win
The mood in the Sangheras’ basement is upbeat. The Steelers have rallied back after trailing Baltimore 17-7 at halftime.
Jasmine is rubbing her hands together.
Chel is yelling at the television as if she’s watching the final leg of the Kentucky Derby. “Push! Push! Let’s go! C’mon!” Seconds later, Chase catches an eight-yard touchdown pass from Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to seal the victory and the team’s unbeaten streak. Pandemonium erupts. Jasmine jumps up and down, wiping tears from her eyes.
John stretches his arms up in the air as if thanking a higher being.
Debra waves her Steelers towel.
There are high-fives and hugs all around.
Palmer claps his hands vigorously.
“We’re all right,” he says. “We’re all right.”