No. 5 in the Dandy Dozen
Tevin Carter becomes one of the most sought-after college prospects,
It was hot wings, not football, on Tevin Carter's mind the day his journey with PURE Academy began.
He was about 7 or 8 and there was a gym next to the restaurant his mother brought him to. That's where she spotted a couple of Carter's youth football teammates working out and told him he should work out, too.
So he and his older brother Terry began working out with Melvin Cole, the gym's owner. Eventually, the brothers began to live with Cole, who arranged for them to be homeschooled and taught them football.
A decade later, Carter has grown into a 6-foot-3, 230-pound quarterback.
He's the No. 20 prospect in Tennessee for the Class of 2022.
He's also No. 5 on The Commercial Appeal's Dandy Dozen, a collection of the top senior college football prospects in the Mid-south.
The coaches who are recruiting Carter hope he'll be a programchanging quarterback. At the high school level, Carter and Cole didn't just change a program, they built one in the middle of a pandemic.
Searching for a football home
Cole's vision for a residential homeschool program began with one child in 2011. The former Briarcrest standout briefly played college football at Bowling Green before spending two years in prison for trafficking cocaine. He made a pact with God while he was incarcerated that if he ever got out he'd turn his life around and save other young Black boys from making the mistakes that he did. So he began taking kids in to live with him and educating them.
"Tevin didn't necessarily have a rocky family life as some of the other kids." Cole said. "He has a real strong mom that is present. But he still needed a positive dominant role model, a male figure. It was just that. He saw what he wanted in me and I saw what I wanted in him."
Today, what was formerly known as PURE Youth Athletics Alliance is now PURE Academy, an accredited residential boarding school located on a five-acre campus in Whitehaven with about 25 students.
This year, PURE is about to embark on its first full season playing football against TSSAA schools. Previously, PURE students were homeschooled while playing for local high schools.
Carter, along with four other
PURE students, began his high school career at Freedom Prep. All five were were ruled ineligible by the TSSAA after transferring to Central because Freedom Prep is a charter school whose zone covers the entire city. Instead of sitting out a year, Cole moved the five to West Memphis so they could play in Arkansas. But Carter missed most of the season after tearing his ACL in his left knee. Once he recovered, Carter transferred to Kirby for his junior season, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused Shelby County Schools to decide against playing football in 2020. That's when Cole decided to start PURE'S football program. Nearly three dozen students withdrew from SCS to join.
"We put together a team in a month," Cole said. "You're talking about setting up tryouts, evaluating tryouts, ordering equipment and jerseys, making sure it gets here on time. Reaching out to all your resources to make it happen. I think the best word I can say to describe it is overwhelming. But it gave us a purpose and it gave the kids hope."
Carter's list is down to four
Carter, who began receiving Pow
er Five offers in the eighth grade, recently narrowed his college list to four schools; Memphis, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Georgia Tech. At one point, he was choosing between Memphis and Texas A&M, but he expanded his list after receiving more recruiting attention this summer.
He said Texas A&M has been recruiting him, even while he was recovering from his ACL tear. Chris Morris, one of the five PURE players who moved to West Memphis with Carter, signed with Texas A&M out of high school.
"I have a good relationship with Coach (Jimbo) Fisher and (offensive coordinator) coach (Darrell) Dickey, that's a school that I've been in contact with since I was in eighth grade," Carter said. "They even checked in on me when I was hurt. A lot of schools fell off after I got hurt my sophomore year and didn't play last year, but they kept calling."
Carter said that he's always had an interest Memphis because he wants to represent his hometown. He said he reached out to the Tigers' coaching staff and told them to recruit him harder.
"Memphis is high on my list now, but at first they weren't high," Carter said. "They're a school that if they think they can't get you and you have big offers they're not going to really come after you. And I was like, ‘dang, that's my hometown.' I reached out to Coach (Ryan) Silverfield like, ‘Come on, coach I'm interested in coming. I told (recruiting coordinator) Coach (Anthony) Jones, all of them. And they were like, ‘We're going to turn the heat up on you.'"
But first, Carter has his senior season ahead of him.
"It's one of those things where God has made a way and it's a storybook ending that the dream kid ends his senior year wearing his own jersey. PURE is his," Cole said.