Early Life and High School
Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a biracial child whose birth parents both stood 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m). His blonde birth mother, Heidi Russo—19, unmarried, and almost broke—took care of him for five weeks while looking for an adoptive couple. His African-American birth father was out of the picture before he was born. Russo wanted to find a couple that was financially set, had kids, and loved sports. She chose Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, a white couple who had two kids already–son Kyle and daughter Devon—and were looking for a boy after having lost two other sons to heart defects. Kaepernick became the youngest of their three children. He lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, until age four, and attended grade school in Turlock, California. Kaepernick began playing youth football at age eight as a defensive end and punter. He then became his youth team's starting quarterback at age nine, and he completed his first competitive pass for a long touchdown. He went on to win several punt, pass, and kick competitions mainly on his passing ability.
A 4.0 GPA student at John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, Kaepernick was a three-sport star who passed up a promising baseball career as a pitcher in order to play football. Kaepernick was nominated for all-state in football, basketball, and baseball in his senior year. He was the MVP of the Central California Conference in football leading his school to its first-ever playoff victory. In basketball he was a first-team all CCC selection at forward and led his 16th-ranked team to a near upset of the Number 1-ranked Oak Ridge Trojans in the opening round of playoffs. In that game Kaepernick scored 34 points, although that was not enough as Ryan Anderson scored 50 to best the Pitman Pride.
Read more about this topic: Colin Kaepernick
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, high and/or school:
“It is so very late that we
May call it early by and by. Good night.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Ephesians, 6:12.
St. Paul’s words were used by William Blake as an epigraph to The Four Zoas (c. 1800)
“...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)