Gators' recruit always believed
By
Edgar Thompson
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 13, 2006
GAINESVILLE — The soft, sad voice broke the news to Buddy Quarles on the phone in June.
Wondy Pierre-Louis, a Haitian-born Florida Gators recruit from Naples-Lely High School, wouldn't be coming back to the United States.
Pierre-Louis' dream to go to college was buried in a tangle of red tape hundreds of miles away in Haiti.
Denied a new student visa by the American embassy so he could return to the United States, Pierre-Louis turned to Quarles, who is his legal guardian and special teams coach at Lely High.
Four years ago, Pierre-Louis, now 18, could not speak English and had never played football. So Quarles wasn't about to give up now.
"I told him, 'You have worked too hard to get this scholarship. You can't give up,' " Quarles said. "I said, 'If you don't get your visa, I'll come there and get you.' I was going to get a plane. Somehow I'd get President Bush involved. I didn't know how I'd do it."
In the end, Pierre-Louis' determination paid off. Stuck in Haiti, where he took a chance to return and visit his family, he found a way out.
Three days after hearing from his heartbroken player, Quarles' phone rang again.
Pierre-Louis had a visa. He had showed embassy officials another batch of paperwork, and Pierre-Louis' mother had assured them the rest of the family planned to stay put.
Last month, the 6-foot, 176-pound cornerback arrived at Florida to play on a scholarship.
Happy and free, Pierre-Louis, exhibiting the selective memory of a teenager, said he expected nothing less.
"I knew it was going to happen," he said.
It's easier to believe when so many people believe in you.
People had lined up to help Pierre-Louis get to Gainesville, from 10-year-old girls to grandmothers, from a hard-working high school counselor to highly paid football coaches.
The generosity of time, energy and spirit surprised Pierre-Louis.
"I didn't know that many people were going to get involved," he said. "I was shocked."
Pierre-Louis had touched the lives of a lot of people who believed no dream should be abandoned.
Mary Ellen Cash, a counselor at Lely, needed two weeks to fill out 15 pages of immigration papers Pierre-Louis needed with him in Haiti.
Mothers and players on Quarles' AAU girls basketball team started a prayer chain, asking for Pierre-Louis' deliverance.
In the most dangerous recruiting assignment of his 30-year career, Florida secondary coach Chuck Heater flew to Haiti for two days to lend Pierre-Louis moral support. Before he arrived, he'd done a little research on the war-torn Caribbean island nation, but Heater learned when he arrived that 20 Americans had been kidnapped in May.
"I had no idea what I was dealing with," Heater said.
Neither did Quarles.
The man who had felt an immediate bond with Pierre-Louis on the football field realized he needed to save him off of it.
A ride home from practice in September opened Quarles' eyes and touched his heart.
Quarles watched Pierre-Louis approach a duplex with a door hanging off the hinges. Inside, a mattress was on the floor of a dimly lit room, with no air-conditioning and no food in the refrigerator. Roaches crawled around everywhere.
"It wasn't condemned but should have been," Quarles said. "I wouldn't let my dog stay there.
"I said, 'Wondy, you can't do this.' I loaded up his stuff and took him home with me."
Pierre-Louis arrived in Naples in August of 2002 with his mother, Dessece, and older brother, John. Dessece returned to Haiti and left her sons behind so they could go to school.
The brothers lived together for three years until John left for New York before the summer of 2005. Pierre-Louis, who had no work visa, was left to support himself on a meager monthly check from family members in Haiti.
"I don't know how he made it, to be honest with you," Quarles said.
When asked about his remarkable story, Pierre-Louis offers few details, even to his new teammates at Florida.
"He says he won't talk about it," said Jacques Rickerson, a freshman cornerback from St. Augustine. "Or he doesn't want to talk about it."
Quarles didn't care how Pierre-Louis ended up in a roach-infested apartment. He just wanted him out of there.
"I called my wife and said, 'Please trust me on this,''" Quarles said of his decision to have Pierre-Louis move in with his family.
That move came on the night Quarles first saw where his player was living.
Within hours, Quarles, his wife Marisa and his three children welcomed Pierre-Louis into their home.
Within three months, Pierre-Louis had gained 15 pounds, mostly off of Marisa's hamburger pie - the new family member's favorite.
Quarles gave him a curfew and a cellphone.
Last January, Pierre-Louis joined the Quarleses on a trip to Disney World, where he rode his first roller coaster with Marisa's mother.
"He told my wife, 'This is the best time I've ever had in my life,''" said Quarles, 39. "That was neat.
"I raised the kid. When they talk about Wondy, that's my kid."
Still, a long road remained for Pierre-Louis.
When he first arrived in the United States, he spoke only Creole. Placed in a two-year program to learn English, Pierre-Louis was communicating better within a year, but he fell behind in the core courses needed for a football scholarship. Pierre-Louis needed to pass seven core classes last spring. Few, including a number of college recruiters, believed he could do it.
"A lot of naysayers were out there," Lely head coach Chris Metzger said. "They were saying, 'It ain't going to happen. He can't get it done.' "
Pierre-Louis couldn't hear the skeptics. His head was buried in the textbooks.
"He studied even going down the road. He'd be studying, reading," Quarles said. "It was hard for him. Sometimes, he couldn't sleep because he was so nervous."
Pierre-Louis also needed two shots at the ACT before he received a score that qualified him to play at Florida.
When he passed the test, Pierre-Louis celebrated with his new family at Carrabba's Italian Grill. But he knew one more major hurdle remained.
Pierre-Louis' student visa had expired and he needed to return to Haiti to obtain a new one for college. The risk factor was that he might not be able to come back.
"If you leave, there's no guarantee you'll have an opportunity to come back," Heater said. "There were a lot of unknowns there."
Pierre-Louis knew one thing: He couldn't remain in Haiti. The all-district wide receiver/cornerback had a scholarship waiting and he cherished the freedom of his new home.
"You have security. No one does anything to you if you don't do anything to them,'' he said. "I'm happy to be here."
Pierre-Louis has seen people shot and killed in the streets of Port-au-Prince. During the most recent civil war, in 2004, his family's clothing business was burned down.
"If you go outside," he said, "you have to know where you're going and just get there."
Now, his ability in the game of football gave him a chance to live a better life. Before arriving in Naples, he had never heard of the game. After his first experience on the field, it's a wonder he ever wanted to play again.
"I still remember the first hit,'' he said. "I was knocked out for, like, five minutes."
True to his persona, he got up and kept playing.
Blessed with speed and agility he said he developed as a kid while releasing and catching goats for fun, Pierre-Louis became the state 4A champion as a junior in the long jump (23 feet, 11 inches) and triple jump (48 feet). Quarles was most impressed with the teen's determination.
"Whatever he did, he never gave up," Quarles said. "If you ran a sprint, he'd be the first guy in line. If he got burned, he'd make up for it.
"He had that extra thing about him."
Two seasons ago, college coaches began to notice that Pierre-Louis, now listed at 6 feet, 176 pounds, had the potential to be special.
He just as easily could have become a casualty of the system. Florida coach Urban Meyer said he was told the odds were against Pierre-Louis getting back to Florida.
"One out of 10 get out of there," Meyer said. "He's the one."
Back in Naples, the saga of Wondy Pierre-Louis is one in a million. It won't soon be forgotten.
"Most people live a lifetime and don't see something like this," Metzger said. "It's a real American success story - about our school system, about the future of our country, about what kids can do if they put their minds to it."
If the staff likes him I like him.
