about Mistral Raymond

 Mistral Raymond (born September 7, 1987) is an American football safety for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Vikings with the 170th overall pick in the sixth round of the 2011 NFL Draft. In a computer class, Mistral learns to make spreadsheets and he creates one listing every FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) college team, scouring the Internet for phone numbers and emails until he has the contact information for every head coach, defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach. Nobody tells him to do this but he senses that if he doesn¡¯t, he is done as a football player. He sends emails to every coach, attaching a link to a highlight tape a friend has made for him. He prays that at least one of these coaches will see his letter, be curious enough to watch his video and then call back. But none do. So now he is asking a friend to borrow her car. He tells her he wants to use it that night to go to the nightclubs and will return it in the morning. In reality, he has plans to leave immediately for Detroit with a handful of teammates to attend a junior college combine. Maybe there someone will notice. And it turns out somebody does. The coach from Temple takes his information and promises to stay in touch. But nothing ever happens and he wonders if his chance will ever come. As a student at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa, Mistral Raymond met with then-Senator Barack Obama. (Courtesy of Mistral Raymond) He is standing now, early in 2008, in an Iowa Falls house about to shake hands with a man who will soon be famous. This was his mother¡¯s idea. ¡°Always keep your dreams.¡± How many times had Valencia Raymond said those words? Her husband, also named Mistral, had stayed around long enough to have four children with her, then left, abandoning three girls and a boy with his first name. Lymphedema and diabetes made her sick, swelling one leg to 100 pounds, eventually keeping her from work. For a few years the family lived in a public housing complex. And yet in the bleakness of the apartment building, her unit sparkled. The furniture might have come from Goodwill but it was clean and all the pieces, put together, looked like they belonged in a design magazine. Valencia was forever telling stories about great men, people Mistral should study. Martin Luther King. Muhammad Ali. Follow their paths, see what they did, she¡¯d say. Lately, she has become infatuated with a man she keeps seeing on her television. She loves the way he talks, the things he says. And she tells Mistral he needs to listen, too. ¡°Don¡¯t you see what¡¯s happening?¡± she says to her son. ¡°He¡¯s going to make it and so can you.¡± Before meeting the future President, Mistral Raymond met soon-to-be First Lady Michelle Obama. (Courtesy of Mistral Raymond) The previous night she called, her voice excited. ¡°I heard on the news that the man I¡¯ve been telling you about is going to be in your town today,¡± he remembers her saying. ¡°You should go see him.¡± And so Mistral got up the next morning and walked the four or so blocks to the house where this man named Barack Obama is holding a fundraiser before the Iowa Caucus. Mistral stepped in the door and started a conversation with the candidate¡¯s wife, Michelle, who he¡¯s now been talking to for several minutes. He thinks her perfume has the sweetest scent he has ever smelled. Her pearls glow. And when her husband comes down the stairs after speaking to the crowd in the house, she waves him over, introducing him to this football player she just met. Obama smiles. ¡°What¡¯s a guy from Florida doing all the way up in Iowa?¡± he asks. It is not long after Mistral met Obama and he is holding his cell phone, listening in disbelief. Just a couple of hours ago he fell asleep to the Halle Berry movie ¡°Things We Lost In The Fire¡± and here Valencia is telling him her house had been firebombed. Everything is gone. The best he can understand is someone was seeking revenge on a cousin who lived next door and threw jars of fire into the wrong house, waiting with guns to shoot those who came running out. The gunmen hit his sister Nanise seven times with bullets, injuring her. It will take more than a year for her to learn to walk again but she survives. Nanise eventually escaped the house through another entrance, along with her children, Valencia and another sister. Mistral Raymond, pictured with, from left, mother Valencia and sisters Nanise, Ronique and Misha. (Courtesy of Mistral Raymond) Valencia¡¯s voice sounds hopeful on the phone. It seems incongruous to Mistral given the disaster that¡¯s just happened. But this is her way, never wanting to disrupt the football dream she¡¯s always encouraged Mistral to pursue. She says she is fine but it will soon become clear she is not. She has inhaled a great deal of smoke and her breathing ¨C which had not been good before the fire ¨C gets worse. There will be trips to the hospital, the search for a new house and the horror of that night will scar his sisters in ways none of them could have imagined. Valencia makes Mistral promise he will stay at Ellsworth where he finally got to play the previous fall after redshirting for a season. But he will not remain long. Within three weeks it is clear he is going to have to return home. His grandmother, Jean Moreland, worries about him. She is concerned that as the lone male in the family he will want to find out who did this and the cycle of insanity will continue. She tells him everyone needs to stay within boundaries and that the worst thing that can happen is revenge. ¡°Believe in the Lord and the law,¡± she says. And in the end she is sure he listened. ¡°He didn¡¯t want to know [the identity of the attackers] because he didn¡¯t know how he would feel,¡± she later says. But now Ellsworth is gone. He is not in college. He has no next school, no plan, nothing but the belief that some football program is going to be interested in him. The University of South Florida has just finished a spring football practice and Mistral Raymond is standing on the other side of the fence, looking through the chain links, waving. This is probably his last chance at football and so he has come to the FBS school closest to Palmetto to plead for an opportunity, begging to be a walk-on even though he isn¡¯t even a student at the school. He¡¯s scoured the spreadsheet, memorizing the names he needs to know. He clutches a DVD of the highlight tape his friend made and he¡¯s certain he sees USF¡¯s coach, Jim Leavitt. ¡°Hey, Coach!¡± he screams, ¡°Coach!¡± Leavitt stops and walks over. Only it¡¯s not Leavitt, it¡¯s the offensive line coach Mike Simmonds, who has nothing to do with safeties. But there is something about the desperation in Mistral¡¯s longing for a chance that touches Simmonds. Later he will realize he coached against Mistral in a high school playoff game, but for now he is taken by Mistral¡¯s desire. He tells Mistral to wait outside the football offices and he will try to have the defensive backs coach come talk to him. The taste of a bowl victory is sweet for Mistral Raymond and USF. The Bulls defeated Clemson in the Meineke Car Care Bowl last year. (US Presswire) For two hours Mistral lingers outside the building, the DVD in his hand. Finally he is summoned inside. Probably for the first time college coaches will examine the highlight tape he has sent everywhere and they will be impressed with his ferocity, the way he dives into ball-carriers. ¡°You could tell he was a good player,¡± Simmonds will later say. ¡°There were highlights.¡± Mistral will come to stand in front of the building several more times that spring, waving to the coaches, calling Simmonds, begging for a chance. Several years later, Simmonds will explain that it is almost impossible for a player to talk his way onto a team at the level of South Florida. Coaches never have time to read the emails. They rarely watch the tapes. Unless you find a way to get yourself in front of the coaches, they will never consider a blind request for a chance. ¡°The only thing that works is persistence,¡± Simmonds tells Mistral. Mistral figures he can do that.dunk sb