The first call came around noon.

Caller ID: Lake Erie Correctional Institution.

“Why is he calling me?” Michael Roberts thought.

This was his father. But at the time, Roberts’ relationship with him was distant. He let it ring.

Then another call. And another. Soon Roberts had dozens, maybe 30, from his father. He missed all of them. Roberts couldn’t call back because his father was amid a seven-year, nine-month stint in prison for robbery and assault. Finally at 5 or 6 that evening, March 5, 2012, Roberts picked up.

His father told him that his brother took a single gunshot wound to the stomach and died. The shooting, later ruled an accident, puzzled Roberts. He was buried in disbelief.

“I wasn’t motivated,” Roberts said. “I didn’t feel like I had much. It was a lost family at the time … I didn’t even know if I wanted to go college. Life had turned down in two months.”

The year was becoming one full of grief. Roberts’ grandmother died two and a half months earlier. In August, a college rejection would pour into the mix.

But each downer fueled him. More than four years after losing his younger brother and grandmother, the senior tight end is a force in a Toledo (3-1) offense that averages 45.3 points per game — eighth in the country. Roberts has recorded five touchdowns and 159 yards receiving.

“It’s finally Mike’s turn to be the guy,” said Robby Discher, Toledo’s tight ends coach.

Years before he grew into a Division I offensive threat, Roberts was a below-average student who didn’t play an organized sport, ensnared in a project on the east side of Cleveland. He suffered from ADHD, ADD, hyperactivity and a speech impediment. Reading was difficult.

He attended a behavioral school, not a traditional middle school.

“Just a trouble kid,” Roberts said. “I had trouble all my childhood. A self-struggle, an inner struggle.”

He’d come home from school, refrain from homework and hang around outside with “poisonous people.”

One day when Roberts was 11 or 12, his mother grew frustrated with the family’s situation. Tired of working three jobs. Tired of looking into the bank. Tired of seeing her son struggle in school. Depleted, she ripped the door handle off the refrigerator.

“I didn’t even know the handle could come off,” Roberts said. “That stuck with me my whole life.”

As Roberts matured mentally, he grew physically. The summer before high school, he sprouted 6 inches to 6-foot-1. Heeding his grandmother’s advice, he signed up for freshman football at Benedictine (Ohio) High School.

He quickly progressed into a top player on the gridiron, garnering offers from No. 7 Louisville, North Carolina State, Buffalo, Toledo, Bowling Green, Kent State and Ohio. Roberts chose Ohio for the opportunity to get out of Cleveland and into the rolling hills of the southern part of his home state.

Then came a hit that rocked Roberts. His grandmother died of cancer during his senior year, four days before Christmas. What had pulled him onto the field was gone.

“When I lost my grandmom, football wasn’t really for me anymore,” Roberts said. “I didn’t really want to do anything after high school.”

A few months later, another hit — his brother’s death.

That summer, when his feelings subdued, Roberts prepped for fall practice at Ohio. Months earlier he had signed with the Bobcats and taken summer courses. Then came a call from Bobcats head coach Mike Solich.

A week and a half before Roberts was to report, Solich told him he hadn’t been accepted to the university. His grades weren’t good enough.

Fortunately for Roberts, Toledo coaches had told him he could walk on with the Rockets. Roberts made the switch. He sat out football the first year, instead focusing on grades and paying for school. (Toledo awarded him a scholarship his sophomore year.)

Still, Roberts had doubts in himself. He chatted with his grandmother before she died, promising to graduate college. But this — paying for school, proving himself on the field, keeping his word — seemed too much.

Roberts took out loans. He worked evenings and weekends moving pianos for a local moving company. He served at a Five Guys Burgers and Fries near campus. He worked as a DJ at house parties for extra cash. This summer, he sold knife sets for a marketing company and waited tables at an Outback Steakhouse.

“Just trying to stay above water,” Roberts said. “Kind of about survival.”

He emulated his mother, Maria Young, who worked three jobs seven days a week. When Roberts grows tired or wears down from class or training, he talks with his mother about all he, his mother and his grandmother have overcome.

“She made him strive for more,” Young said of Roberts’ grandmother. “Now it’s like when times get hard, no matter how frustrated he got in school, he always thought about his grandmother.”

Football helped focus him. He studied in former position coach Bryan Gasser’s office for hours each night. Some days, he didn’t leave until 9 or 10 p.m.

Several times, Roberts has earned a 3.0 GPA, a feat he hadn’t accomplished until college.

Roberts plans to graduate in December, four and a half years after arriving at Toledo. Four and a half years after pushing through a pair of denials to blaze his own path. And almost five years after losing his grandmother, the one who led him to football.

“She believed in me when I didn’t even have faith in myself,” Roberts said.

After she died, Roberts laminated six birthday cards she had written him. They sit in his locker and travel with him in his bag wherever he goes. He reads them repeatedly.

Her handwriting helps Roberts revive her spirit. He made that promise to her that he’d graduate college — a promise he intends to keep.

Published on October 5, 2016 at 10:41 pm

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21