Grant motivated by late mom’s influence

TUCSON — Nights were the cruelest.

Samajie Grant would lay his head down on his bed and struggle.

“When I was in high school, I used to try to go to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I would just see my mom laying on the floor,” said Grant, a UA freshman wide receiver from Compton, Calif. “So I’d go outside and I’d just walk around and cry, and then I’d come back in the room and I’d just go to sleep. “That was like every night.” Every night Grant’s mind would take himbackto that early April morning in 2011 when his life was turned upside down. The night his mother died.

Sadness and hardships already had crept into Grant’s life, but nothing like this. Nothing like losing the woman he loved most in the world.

Grant will take the field Saturday for arguably the biggest game of his life: a showdown with in-state rival Arizona State at Sun Devil Stadium.

He will have his mom, Natasha, on his mind. He always does.

Football often was what brought the two together. Natasha rarely missed one of his games. She watched as he became a breakout star for Colony during his sophomore season.

“When I first met Samajie, I was pleasantly surprised,” Colony coach Matt Bechtel said. “At Colony High, we had some good athletes, but most struggled in the classroom. He didn’t. He was a very good athlete, who did well in the classroom, and that’s what made him different and made him stick out.”

Grant said that was his mom’s doing. Coming home with a bad grade wasn’t acceptable.

Natasha and Samajie lived in a small house in Compton with three of Grant’s 12 siblings.

That April morning in 2011, Samajie’s little sister Melissa woke up in a panic. Natasha wasn’t waking up. She was on the floor next to her bed.

Samajie rushed in and saw it for himself. The details aren’t important: Samajie said he still doesn’t know the cause of his mom’s death and hasn’t asked. In fact, he doesn’t want to know.

“That day, I wasn’t even sad; it was just anger,” Grant said. “I went inside her room, and she was just laying there, and I just started thinking about my little sister who just found my mom dead and had found her dad dead a couple years earlier on Christmas Day. She’s only 11 or 12 now.

“Really, all I was thinking about was my little sister.”

Hours after Grant’s mom died, Bechtel and Miguel Reveles, Grant’s position coach at Colony and now an intern at UA, drove to the player’s house. The coaches were there for support.

Grant refocused himself during his junior year; he released his anger on the football field. When he wasn’t playing football or studying, he was in the gym, determined to get better and hell-bent on getting a major-college scholarship.

“He has an amazing work ethic,” Bechtel said. “Once he gets his mind to something, he’s going to do it.”

Life has been good since Grant moved to Tucson.

Just a freshman, he leads UA with 44 catches and has 353 receiving yards and a touchdown.

“He’s gone through things in his life that most people just don’t have to deal with,” Reveles said. “When he scored that first touchdown, I was on the sideline, and it was hard not to get emotional. I was just so happy for him.”