Akrum Wadley's route to Iowa: Nylon nets, hokey pokey and duct tape

IOWA CITY — Akrum Wadley always was going to be freestyle.

When you're 8-years-old and somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 pounds and determined to knock on and/or knock down doors in football, that's how it's got to be.

'They had to put duct tape on him because he was so skinny,' said John Wadley, Akrum's dad and a retired corrections officer in Willingboro, N.J. 'We had to duct tape the uniform every game. Every game.'

They had to duct tape his uniform.

'I was little,' Akrum said. 'I used to have to tape my pants up so they would stay up. Those were the days.'

These were the junior Pee Wee Pop Warner football days. Once Akrum got snug with the duct tape, defenses were reaching for something with adhesive to hold Wadley in place.

Duct tape. Nets. Dynamite. Choppers. Defenses still are looking to keep Wadley down.

The fun question here is when did you know it? When did you know Akrum Wadley would work?

'All I remember was a bolt of lightning,' Weequahic head football coach Brian Logan said. 'A guy creating like, you know, like he had God-given talent.'

You're not going to believe this, but in those Pop Warner Panthers duct-tape days, Wadley started as an offensive lineman.

'My mother and father went nuts,' Wadley said. ''He's not this and that.' And then when they moved me to running back, my first carry was a touchdown.'

Of course, Wadley's gear fits now. The Iowa senior running back goes into Saturday's game against No. 6 Ohio State (7-1, 5-0) sixth in the Big Ten in rushing. Yards from scrimmage (yards rushing and receiving) probably does a better job of showing how much Wadley means to this offense. He sits fourth in the league with 113.9 yards a game.

Some other 'did you knows' with Wadley's career:

— Since he first stepped on the field in 2014, Wadley has split or shared time with as many as six other running backs (Mark Weisman, Jordan Canzeri, LeShun Daniels, Derrick Mitchell Jr., Damon Bullock and Jonathan Parker).

Despite the time share, Wadley has 30 career touchdowns. He's two TDs from moving into the top five on Iowa's career TD list. The dudes he'd tie with two more? These guys Tim Dwight and Ronnie Harmon. You don't even need Google for them.

— This would probably make for great debate, but has any Hawkeye skill player been as clutch as Wadley? OK, quarterback Nate Stanley was supremely clutch in the Hawkeyes' 44-41 overtime victory over Iowa State this year. But who was Stanley throwing to?

DETERMINATION September 9, 2017

DETERMINATION pic.twitter.com/nRA1L8X0Hr

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow)

Wadley scored on a 46-yard pass to tie the game, 38-38, with 1:09 left. There was the big breakout in 2015 against Northwestern, when Iowa's O-line, battered and injured, summoned a massive effort that helped Wadley deliver a 204-yard, four-TD performance.

Last season, Wadley finished Rutgers with a 26-yard run in the fourth quarter of a 14-7 victory. Two weeks later, Wadley knocked out Minnesota with a 54-yard run in the fourth quarter in another 14-7 win.

— Wadley has 2,406 rushing yards in his Iowa career. This season, he's passed Harmon and Shonn Greene (2008 Doak Walker Award winner). Next on the list are Owen Gill, Tony Stewart and Weisman.

Pretty good for a kid who probably should've been a basketball player.

Sharonda Phelps is a physical education teacher at Cleveland Elementary in Newark. She coaches basketball in the district and was a great basketball player herself in high school. Her 1983 Malcolm X Shabazz prep team went 29-0 and was inducted into the Newark Athletics Hall of Fame.

Naturally, basketball was a thing with Akrum. He played high-level AAU youth circuits. At a tournament in Maryland, Wadley's team faced off with the top seed. At halftime, the score was Top Seed 30, Akrum Wadley 30.

This caught the attention of legendary St. Anthony prep basketball coach Bob Hurley. That name? He's the father of former Duke guard Bobby Hurley. The St. Anthony program has launched a ton of basketball careers.

  A post shared by Akrum Wadley (@topdogwadley) on

Oct 26, 2017 at 1:36pm PDT

'Bob Hurley walked over to me and said, 'Is that your kid?' I said, 'Yes,'' John Wadley said. Akrum ended up going to St. Anthony for his freshman year.

That was a commitment. St. Anthony is in Jersey City. Akrum, who's actually from Willingboro, had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to catch trains into Jersey City. That just wasn't going to work.

Then, it was to University High School in Newark, just down the street from Wadley's house. He played basketball. He played in one scrimmage of football his freshman year at St. Anthony to this point. Basketball was the ride at that moment.

Then, one day, Akrum was hanging out at University.

'Before practice, I was chilling with my girl,' he said, setting the scene.

University didn't have football, so the kids who were interested hopped in a van and trucked over to Weequahic. Coaches drove the van. Logan saw Wadley and just kind of threw football out there.

'They said, 'Why don't you just come through? Come and give it a try,'' Wadley said. 'I said, 'All right, let's do it.''

There was some sweet talking. Logan is a longtime New Jersey prep football coach. He gets right to it.

'He was a basketball guy with a football heart,' Logan said. 'He knew we were there. He wasn't exactly sure what we were all about, but he knew we were there. He did the hokey pokey a little bit, but when he saw who we were, he started to get a little confidence in us and he came around.'

At first, Wadley didn't like Weequahic (pronounced Week-way), which also has sent wide receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette to the Hawkeyes. Weequahic is on the west side. This was a different neighborhood. Wadley knew people, but ...

'I wasn't really comfortable in that kind of area, it's rough over there,' Wadley said. 'I didn't want to be there. A lot of things went down, but I stuck with it. Just like here. A lot of stuff went down earlier in my career, but I stuck with it.'

Logan has a quick answer for the Weequahic 'tough neighborhood' question.

'Newark is a rough neighborhood.'

Wadley stuck it out. As a senior, he rushed 105 times for 1,548 yards and 25 touchdowns (school record).

'We all had a little bit to do with this,' Logan said. 'We all just wanted to make a good kid, man. That's what we aim to do.'

Iowa doesn't hit New Jersey recruiting like it used to. Former Barringer High School coach Frank Verducci taught and counseled Hawkeyes Andre Tippett, Norm Granger, Sedrick Shaw, Keith Hunter and George Person at Barringer. Bo Porter, a two-sport star at Iowa and former manager of the Houston Astros, also is a Weequahic alum.

Verducci contacted Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, who visited Newark twice to see Wadley.

Parents fight for their kids. It's pure instinct. Going to Iowa City was a departure. It was time to be an adult.

'I remember me wanting him to travel alone to begin to be independent,' Phelps said. 'Then, I thought about Iowa City and thought of cornfields. I said there can't be cornfields in the city. Then, I thought of the movie 'Children of the Corn' and I said, 'That's it, I'm going with him.''

Akrum always has said his mom has jokes. She grew up in a house of 11 sisters and four brothers. 'There were 16 of us in one house,' Phelps said. 'Why did my mom want me to go to college? There were 16 of us in one house. She wanted to get rid of me.'

But seriously ...

'Akrum deserved to be playing big-time football,' she said. 'I knew Iowa was that, but I had to make sure it's doable for Akrum (for) four years.'

It's been five years. We've been over the football. Wadley will graduate this spring with a degree in sports and recreation. He needs a semester of Swahili to graduate.

The degree is a huge deal.

'I'm going to be a little late getting mine, but I'm still going to get it,' Wadley said. 'That was the goal when I decided to come back last year (Wadley considered making the jump to the NFL last season).'

He had to work his tail off for this.

'Every semester for me, for me, is hard in college,' he said. 'I don't really like school like that. Not one semester was easy for me.'

Huge deal, the degree.

'His college degree means the world to me,' Phelps said. 'It means he has a blank check and now he has to decide the amount on the check by putting it to use.

'His degree allows him to be a role model, and a productive citizen. I call him 'Happy Feet.' 'Happy Feet' was different. He left home, left his family on a journey that prepared him to prove folks wrong.'

'Role model' means something. Akrum, 22, is the second of four brothers. Patrick, 26, is the oldest. He's named after their dad. Then, there's Donovan, 14, who was named after Donovan McNabb. There also are twins, Trevor and Blake, 12, who got their names because they sound like characters in a soap opera, Phelps said.

Things are starting to take off for Donovan. He's a freshman at Willingboro High School. Mom said he's a copy of Akrum except a little more into image. 'He's different,' Akrum said. 'He's a little bit better than I was.'

'My little brother is having the same problems in school that I went through,' Akrum said with a bit of a laugh. 'It's funny, I've been through it and then just seeing him go through it. He's pretty hardheaded, but he listens when I come home. Not over the phone, but when I come home, he listens.'

Akrum laughed through most of that answer. Laughs don't always mean funny. You can kind of picture this one. Akrum sees his brother doing some of the silliness he went through. His laugh means business.

  A post shared by Akrum Wadley (@topdogwadley) on

Jun 10, 2017 at 6:12am PDT

Wadley's size always was a thing. Even now at 5-foot-11, 190-ish, it's still a thing. Everyone could see it was going to be a thing when Wadley started riding this football wave.

Coming up, Wadley was a kid who played 'up,' meaning as a third-grader, he'd play hoops against fifth-graders. He always played sports above his age group. Size always was a thing.

He'd laugh going against size. It wasn't a funny laugh.

'He had a big heart and didn't care about how big a guy was, he used to laugh,' John Wadley said. 'He still laughs. Everyone is big, but not everyone has the heart. That's just how he is.'

Sharonda Phelps is a part of the Newark community that, as Logan said, is trying to make good kids. There was trouble in gym class on Thursday. That'll have to wait until Monday. Phelps' trips west to see Akrum play are fading fast.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com