It was nearly the end of the school day when one of the counselors at Girard College, a boarding school in Philadelphia, approached fourth-grader Tyreek Peeples to tell him that his grandmother wouldn’t be picking him up from school to get his haircut.

Peeples became uneasy when his mother came to get him instead. They drove to his father’s house and when they arrived, family and friends were waiting inside.

He didn’t know what was happening until his mother told him the news. Peeples’ father, Terrance Brown, had died at age 28.

“It just hurt me from there,” Peeples said. “It was extremely devastating. Words can’t describe how bad it was.”

Eleven years later, Peeples is thriving as a junior guard for Keystone College (9-15, 9-8 Colonial States Athletic Conference). He’s only 5 feet, 3 inches tall, but leads Division III with a 4.1 assist-to-turnover ratio, as of Feb. 13. His father has been an inspiration to him, which has helped Peeples overcome challenges on and off the court.

“He’s the most exceptional kid I’ve ever met,” said Karima Peeples, his mother. “He doesn’t let anything stand in his way. If he wants it, he’s going to get it and he’s going to prove it.”

At the age of 4, Peeples started playing basketball on a makeshift net outside his house — a milk crate nailed to a tree.

His father taught him the fundamentals: how to dribble, shoot and pass. Not even a year later, Peeples was beating his father and older brother Trevor in games of around the world.

“That was his coach, basically,” Karima Peeples said of the father-son relationship. “… With basketball they bonded.”

In February 2004, Peeples and his father finished second in a two-on-two, father-son tournament sponsored by his AAU team.

“That was like the last greatest memory we had as a father and son,” Peeples said. “We took a picture afterward and he was just proud of me and that was the best time of his life.”

But it was the last time Peeples and his father ever played basketball together.

The day of his father’s death, Peeples walked in the rain past the spot where his father was killed.

“It didn’t stop him, it made him go harder,” Karima Peeples said.

Peeples turned to basketball as a coping mechanism, but had more challenges to overcome on the court.

Once, a player jumped over his head and opponents still heckle him with names like “Gary Coleman” and “baby.”

The nickname he earned from his friends, however, was Mighty Mouse.

“It’s not the height that defines a basketball player, it’s the heart that they have inside of them,” Peeples said. “A lot of coaches say that I have the heart of a lion out there. Small as a mouse, but my height hasn’t defined who I am as a player.”

With Peeples’ father gone, his high school coach, Nasser Eggleston took over as a primary father figure in his life. Their conversations first centered around basketball, but transitioned to focusing on school advice and life lessons.

When Peeples’ recruiting started, the entire process went through Eggleston, who he now refers to as his uncle. Eggleston talked to the coaches, arranged visits and offered any advice Peeples would listen to.

“I went from a mentor to a coach to a father figure all at once,” Eggleston said. “It means a lot. As a coach, when you touch somebody’s life, it makes it special.”

But when coaches came to watch Peeples play, many told him he was too small to play college basketball. He eventually landed at D-III Immaculata University for two years before transferring to Keystone.

Now, each morning, Peeples reflects on words that his father used to tell him every day.

“He said, ‘Go live your dreams, son,’” Peeples said. “‘Don’t let nobody tell you otherwise, that you can’t do nothing in life,’ and to always be a better person than he was.

“Hopefully I make him real proud, a father from above. His motivation, his words that he told me as a child, are what I use to grow up and to play basketball.”

Published on February 18, 2015 at 12:15 am

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus