Livermore football player learns from hardships, inspires others

LIVERMORE, Calif. (KTVU) - A Bay Area high school football player is being called an inspiration.

The17-year-old boy who attends Livermore High School is setting an example on and off the field.

Mekhi McElroy has turned personal hardships, into life lessons. He’s a teen who is playing to win, and not just on the football field.
　
Mekhi says he tackles life the same way he plays football. He's faced many obstacles off the field, but he's learned to cope.
　
“Keep calm under stressful situations. It's taught me to be a man about bigger things. Not everything is going to go your way. Everything is not about you,” he said.

Mekhi plays safety for the Livermore High Cowboys. He’s helping lead the team to its first playoff since 1999.
　
“Mekhi is the heart and soul of the team. You know he's a leader,” said his coach Ryan Patridge.
　
Patridge says Mekhi does this without a hint of the troubles he's dealt with at home.

Mekhi says his father was never in the picture, and his mother struggled with drug addiction.

In October of 2010 Mekhi's older brother Larry was shot and killed in Berkeley, where the family was living at the time.
　
“We lived in a house that was filthy – no water - not a lot of food,” he said.

The high school junior left Berkeley to live with relatives in Livermore. Then his mother died last year.
　
“No matter what my situation was...I know she loved me and she tried her hardest for me,” he said.
　
There is sadness that his mother didn't live to see him graduate high school, so he wears a locket with her ashes.

His football coach from last year started a trust fund with anonymous donors to help Mekhi.
　
The fund has paid for Mekhi's braces with the ultimate goal of paying for his college education.
　
Mekhi says a college education is important to fulfilling his ultimate goal - being able to provide for his family one day.

He says he wants to be the husband his mother never had, and the father he wished he had.

“Yes I want to be a man. I want to smile and tell stories to my kids and look up and say Mama, ‘I did it.’”
　
Mekhi and his teammates will be playing against the Ukiah Wildcats on Saturday in their second playoff game.

The high school junior tells KTVU despite what he's gone through, he feels fortunate for what he does have - wonderful coaches, teachers and teammates.

For more on the Mekhi McElroy Trust click here.