Pottsgrove great Chestnut reflects on amazing journey from troubled youth to NFL and beyond

In 14 years at The Mercury, I’ve written and edited many stories of triumph and tragedy.

In all those years, there is one individual’s story that resonates loudest – for both reasons.

As assistant sports editor to the late, great Don Seeley, I’d read countless stories on Terrell Chestnut, Pottsgrove’s superb quarterback/cornerback who led the Falcons to a District 1 Class 3A championship in 2009, was the first area QB to surpass 3,000 career rushing yards (3,178 yards) and was twotime Mercury All-Area Player of the Year.

But in January 2011, following Chestnut’s final Falcons’ season as he was due to receive the David L. Freed Award at the PAC Football Awards banquet, Seeley shared the depth of Chestnut’s story, the one beyond the football field.

I was awed by the origin story of the West Virginia-bound football talent: born in Philadelphia, the third son and fifth of seven children of Charlotte Barnes; at age 3, because of legal problems due to the disappearances of his father, spent time in a group home and foster homes in Pa. and N.J. with brothers Don and Ron, respectively 2 and 4 years older; at age 8, endured the death of Don – Terrell’s best friend – from an asthma attack.

After a stint living with his aunt, Chestnut ended up taken in by grandmother Doris Chestnut in a two-bedroom home in Pottstown’s Rolling Hills.

He was headed in the wrong direction – poor behavior, fights, disengaged academically – until an awakening in 7th grade thanks to a motherly talk from Pat Hawthorne, a former Pottsgrove Middle School secretary and mother of current Falcons head football coach Bill Hawthorne, while waiting in the office to meet with the principal after a fight.

It signaled a turning point in Chestnut’s life, and triggered one of the great success stories, a star football player who doubled as an honor roll student and school leader with a special interest in special needs and younger students.

Chestnut’s journey continued in the years since the original account … with more triumph and tragedy than most have ever seen.

Chestnut endured injuries in his early years in Morgantown – he redshirted his freshman year after re-aggravating the shoulder injury that hindered his final Pottsgrove season, then, after earning a starting place late in the 2012 season he suffered a torn ACL in the season’s final game, the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.

A 2013 season spent as a special teams dynamo while he worked back toward 100 percent served as a springboard to a starting cornerback and leadership role in his redshirt junior and senior years, both winning seasons for the Mountaineers that turned him into an NFL prospect.

It all paid off when Chestnut became the most recent Pioneer Athletic Conference alum to ink an NFL contract upon signing with the San Diego Chargers on May 10, 2016.

Yet adversity never drifts too far from Terrell Chestnut.

His time with the Chargers was derailed by a torn hamstring and led to him being placed on injured reserve before being released … two weeks after the death of his grandmother.

The next two years were challenging ones even by Chestnut’s standards: he suffered anaphylactic shock from a shellfish allergy and lost 35 pounds in 2017, which effectively ended his NFL pursuit. Then, in 2018, Chestnut’s oldest brother, Ron Smith, who suffered from epilepsy and heart disease, died at age 31.

Yet through it all, Chestnut has come out on the other side and is still striving for greatness.

“Adversity has shaped me into who I am. If I wasn’t built for it, I would have crumbled already,” said Chestnut.

He still resides in San Diego and works in the financial industry while concurrently chasing the dream of becoming a motivational speaker to share his incredible story with future generations.

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HERTZOG » Throughout your high school career, I didn’t know your backstory until Don Seeley’s story when you received the David Freed Award as a senior at the PAC football banquet and it blew me away. I went back and re-read the story and I remember having a question then and I still have it now: at that age when things were going the wrong way for you, it’s easy to do the wrong thing and you more than anybody had reasons to carry negativity, but something clicked internally with you to take the right path. What was the conversation you had with yourself that made things click?

CHESTNUT » I had a lot of things happen to me young. It was really understanding - I was with my grandmother who took us in and allowed us to rebuild our relationship with my mom, and then my brother was doing a lot of great things, graduated from high school and put himself through college, so disappointment wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I was never a bad kid, but I often found myself doing the wrong things whether it was not doing school work or being around the wrong crowd.

What kind of clicked for me was, there was a weekend where me and a few friends were supposed to go up to KMart, go steal a few things and come back and enjoy them. And I didn’t go that day.

That happened to be the day my group of friends got caught. It clicked to me. I could have been one of them. It could have really put me on the wrong path. Some of them ended up at Glen Mills and from there created a cycle for some of my friends being in and out of prison and having a negative light shine on them.

For me, living with grandmother, living with my mom and my brother, it was about not wanting to disappoint them.

I began surrounding myself with the right people, people took interest in me and for the first time I felt like I had some stability. It’s really easy to do the bad things, and it’s hard and challenging to stay on the right path. But every day I wanted to challenge myself and I had people challenging me. I became addicted to the great feeling of success and being a good person.

Mercury » Do you have a specific memory that gave you the great feeling of the positive path that made it more contagious?

CHESTNUT » You can date it all the way back to seventh grade and at the time I was playing eighth grade football and I was interacting with Coach (Jim) Algeo and Mrs. (Pat) Hawthorne.

Beginning of the year was fine, I was doing well, ran track, had a very successful season, and we had our track championships and that Monday I got into a fight. This is the first time where I went to Mrs. Hawthorne’s office before

I had to go meet with the vice principal and she really let me have it, gave me an earful, but she wasn’t degrading me, it was, ‘How can somebody so sweet and kindhearted like yourself put yourself in this situation?’ It was one of those motherly talks that I so desperately needed that wasn’t coming from my mom or my grandmother. It really opened my eyes, knowing that I’m not a troubled kid, I just made the wrong decisions.

From there it opened my eyes and from that day on until I left the middle school I was always in her office at the end of the day. At that point in time I really saw people truly take interest in me as a person, not as an athlete. That’s what really opened my eyes to see there’s a lot of really great people in this world and the only way I can thrive is by recognizing I can’t do everything by myself.

From there I was always open arms to new things, new ideas, new people. That just changed my outlook on life and changed my heart.

HERTZOG » I remember this from your time at Pottsgrove and I noted it from reading about your time at West Virginia that you have a natural leadership and a desire to mentor that has always rang out as special to me. How do you view leadership and where did that desire to raise other people up come from?

CHESTNUT » I’m a big believer in paying it forward. I had a great leader and role model in my brother (Ron), especially going through what we had gone through, and how he’s always had a positive impact on everybody’s lives. After he passed (in 2018), it reassured me when I looked at the church and saw how full it was, he did things the right way and it reassured me that I learned those things from him.

I always wanted to pay it forward. People taught me, and the only way you can truly show that you appreciate and learned anything is by paying it forward and reciprocating to the next generation. That’s what I always wanted to do to make sure that people knew me as a person and how genuine my heart was outside of a helmet and shoulder pads.

HERTZOG » Of course you’re a really good natural athlete, but where did you find your drive football-wise? It seems that it came natural for you, but to go far you really have to want it and want to achieve that high level.

CHESTNUT » It was all about staying present in the moment and having fun with my teammates. There was nothing more important than to win with my teammates. It was never about individual statistics or awards, because without your team none of it matters. It’s not track where you run a 100-meter dash and you win.

It’s about all 11on the field being on the same page, having the entire team on the same page and willing to do the work, so I didn’t have to worry about the scholarship offers or awards, I was just always present and wanting to be the best teammate I can be. It gave me that lead by example style because I always wanted to outwork the next person. And it was contagious.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself because I didn’t want to let my teammates down, let my coaches down. That’s what gave me that drive to get better and grow everyday.

HERTZOG » Is there a most-fond memory you have of your time suiting up for Pottsgrove?

CHESTNUT » For me, the district championship in 2009, because it was the first one we had in school history and to do it with that senior group of guys that consisted of Angelo Berry, Preston Hamlette, Isaiah Quick, Scott Madl, to accomplish that in my last year playing with them was huge. It was a feeling I’ll never forget.

And my time with Rick (former Pottsgrove coach Rick Pennypacker). He really made sure I didn’t decide to get arrogant and think I was above anyone else just because of the success I was having. From the times where he threw me off the field during a scrimmage because I got ahead of myself, those types of things make the difference. Imagine if he would have been content with me being an arrogant punk and walking around with my chest puffed out. We would have never had the success we had because I would have been putting myself before the team. To know that he saw bigger things in not only myself but the team, it really resonated about the type of leader and coach he is and the reason Pottsgrove was fairly successful every year.

HERTZOG » One of the things that keeps sticking with me as I’ve been talking lately to athletes at the end of their college careers or beyond is that being a successful athlete is not so much about the wins, but more about how you handle the injuries and the losses and how you’re able to come out on the other side from them. I know your West Virginia career started with some of that injury adversity.

CHESTNUT » It was difficult. Especially when you’re highly recruited. I had scholarship offers from everywhere in the country and to know that you have that much hype going into college and then it’s derailed by a recurring shoulder injury that happened my junior year of high school. I didn’t get surgery until my senior year and to see it happen again, it can really put a dampener on your confidence. To see how hard I worked in the offseason to get my shoulder strong enough and miss your freshman year, then to come back the following year, start your last six games of the season until you tear your ACL, it’s really difficult. The injuries and adversity, it tests your mental capacity. I learned so much about myself during that time. You appreciate the game and it also allowed me to take care of everything else outside of football, academics, being involved in the community. So for me it was definitely frustrating, but it also opened a lot of other doors for me.

HERTZOG » As I track the local athletes from high school to college, it often bums me out the number of transfers I see. So I appreciate the ones that stick, and in those first couple years with the injuries, you could have said, ‘forget this, I’m outta here.’ But that wasn’t it for you.

CHESTNUT » My coach my junior and senior year put it into perspective. Coach (Brian) Mitchell, that’s one of my favorite coaches of my career. He took interest in us as a person, not just in football, but as men. He was a technician, played six years in the NFL. The way he looked at it was, you’ve got an arsenal of tools and you’ve gotta go out and play and use so many different things.

In 2014, my first full season back, my first game starting was against Alabama. I was so ready because I prepared so hard for that.

A lot of people don’t know, I could have started all 2013, but after coming off my knee surgery (from his ACL tear in Jan. 2012) I went to my coaches and wanted to put my team before myself. I didn’t want to go out there and be a target coming off my ACL and not being quite 100percent. I asked them to put me on every special team and I embraced my role. That year we had the No. 1kickoff and punt team in the country so it gave me more time. It was the hardest decision I made in college, but I can’t be a benefit on the defensive side of the ball, but I’ll do all special teams, be on scout team and make sure all the receivers are ready. And I went out there and worked my butt off.

HERTZOG » Fast forwarding to the sum total of your career at West Virginia, how satisfied with it were you?

CHESTNUT » To me my growth and maturation going from my freshman year to my senior year was night and day. Going from not being considered to being a 2-3year starter and making plays, being amongst the elite in the Big 12was big for me. I’m never one to be satisfied, but I was definitely happy with how far I’ve come to being a starter, being a leader, and going out there to display the things I could do to give me opportunities to go live my dream out.

HERTZOG » What’s the grind like at that level?

CHESTNUT » The grind is essential to your growth. If you don’t embrace the grind, there’s no way you’re going to be prepared to go play on Saturdays. People don’t look at what student-athletes have to do. In high school, you go to school, go to practice, go home. In college you wake up for 6a.m. weights, go to class, watch film, practice, you’ve gotta take care of your body, go to treatments, stretch, the extra stuff, then go to study hall, eat and do it again the next day.

It’s a grind, a mental grind, a physical grind, emotional grind, but it’s necessary if you want to breed success. It’s not for everybody.

Not everyone can handle the pressures of being a college athlete at any level. It takes a lot of special people to do that, to accept coaching because these coaches spend more time with you than your family. If you can put into perspective how invested they are in you, you’ll invest more into yourself, your team and the program.

HERTZOG » After West Virginia, what was your plan?

CHESTNUT » Honestly, I was content with being done with football. My body went through a lot and as a leader and mentor with that team I always thought my path was to coach or in some way interact with people.

I was fine with giving it up. I always looked at it like my greatest blessing was having my opportunity, getting my degree for free and I was able to go into grad school and get that done and allow my grandmother to see me graduate. I was happy.

I always said the NFL would just be a bonus, the icing on the cake. It was a very hard decision to decide to give it a go and see what happens. A lot of people were telling me I had a mid- to late-round draft grade so it changed by perspective and told me to get back to work. I stayed at West Virginia so I could still go to school and I was training every day.

HERTZOG » As that all takes shape and you ultimately sign a free agent deal (on May 10, 2016) with the Chargers, what was that feeling like? For many, the ones who aren’t ready to hang it up, that would be the highest of highs. Was it for you?

CHESTNUT » It was amazing, definitely an amazing feeling mostly because I was able to share it with my friends and family. That was one of the last memories my grandmother got to have with me was fulfilling that dream.

If I didn’t get the chance I would have been fine. But it was icing on the cake.

I watch a video of that pretty frequently just because you see the elation in my grandmother’s eyes, you see how proud my family was. That’s what it was always about for me, continuing to make them proud.

HERTZOG » It seems like that was supposed to be the best year of your life but that’s not exactly how it played out. Can you share the back story on how the rest of the year played out?

CHESTNUT » It was rough. Adversity found its way back - I tore my hamstring up. … It’s a business so they put me on IR and brought in another corner, which is just the nature of the business. It was difficult because I was ready, I felt great, I was in the best shape of my life and then something like that happens.

Then as I’m going through the rehab process, I’m feeling better, I reaggravate it a little bit during

HERTZOG » How the heck do you keep bouncing back?

Chestnut » They say God will never give you more than you can handle. For me, I always look at the bigger picture. There’s a rhyme and a reason why things happen. I’ve always wanted to be a mentor, shed light on life and be a person that people can lean on to go to in their walk through life. I think my life experiences would resonate with anybody.

Me having that opportunity in the NFL could shine light to put me on a different platform that my voice can be heard.

What if I wasn’t meant to play football? What if I wasn’t meant to work a 9to 5? What if I was meant to do something way bigger than that? That’s what keeps me going because I know there’s a higher purpose for me being here. I need to use my platform to give back and make a difference in this world.

HERTZOG » What’s life like now? What are you doing professionally?

CHESTNUT » I’m still here in San Diego, living with my girlfriend (Anitra) and our little puppy.

I work for LPL Financial on their business solutions team dealing with different advisors and clients and helping them manage their money. I’m studying to get my Series 7.

(I would like to be) teaching things that I never knew coming out of college, financial literacy, learning about credit, teaching athletes who sign a contract how to create generational wealth, how to put their money in places where if they play two or three years – you can’t live your full life off of that – they can duplicate their wealth without having to really struggle.

What I truly want to do is get into public speaking, transformational speaking, where I can use my life experience and life story to share how I’ve overcome the foster system, gone through all this adversity, and still found success, making it to the NFL.

My plan is to get into speaking or some kind of mentorship or leadership to speak at universities and high schools and speak and share my story and my ups and downs. There’s always a bigger picture and for me it’s about giving back and instilling what I’ve learned into other people. treatment and that’s when my grandmother passed away.

Not only am I battling my body, now my mind and my emotions are out of whack because that’s someone who took us in, raised us, gave a new perspective on life; she’s the anchor of our family and now she’s gone.

It made me question my faith, my will, my desire to want to play.

Two weeks after that the Chargers waived me so now you’re dealing with a whole different set of emotions. Something you worked so hard for is gone, your grandmother’s gone, what do you do next? It was a big test. 2016was a very rough time for me.

The next two years were rough. I had a workout with the Cardinals the following year and a few other teams were there. I felt great, ran a decent 40, but right after I got super-sick. We were in Las Vegas and I’m allergic to shellfish and

I ate something that contained some kind of shellfish residue and I went into anaphylactic shock and it attacked my thyroid. Within a month I was down 35pounds. It was rough also because I had a really good chance of being invited to OTAs and camp for one of those teams. It challenged me again. It took six months for me to finally get back to full health with my thyroid.

Then you think, ‘Do I want to give it another go?’ I started training but at the same time I felt I needed to bring in a source of income because I can’t continue to live off of what I made in the NFL because it wasn’t 20millions dollars is the truth of it so you have to figure out life.

The next 2-3years were rough because I lost my grandmother, I got sick and then in 2018I lost my brother.

Adversity on top of adversity on top of adversity ...