Nemea Hall Sr. and his son, Nemea Hall Jr., have had a lot in common during their lives.
It goes far beyond them having the same name, which is pronounced Nehemiah. There is a common thread they share that ties both of them to poor choices.
They both, however, accept the blame for their own bad decisions.
The two share a love of football and both men played at West Orange High in Winter Garden.
Neither finished his eligibility.
This past fall, during what was supposed to be Nemea Hall Jr.’s final — and best — season of his West Orange career, he sat on the sidelines, an academic casualty.
At the same time, his father sat in prison.
It was too late for either of them to do anything about their situations. If not for a few bad decisions, things might have gone much differently.
“There was a change of events that turned my life totally around,” Nemea Hall Sr. said while recalling his high school days during a March interview with the Orlando Sentinel at the Tomoka Correctional Institution, just west of Daytona Beach. “I played running back from Pop Warner on up, … but once I got in high school … I started hanging out with the wrong crowd and that was no more football for me.”
He is awaiting release from prison after being convicted in 2009 of conspiracy to traffic cocaine. He was sentenced to 25 years, with time off awarded for good behavior. By all accounts, he’s been a model prisoner. His current release date is Dec. 10, 2029.
Nemea Hall Jr. could have played football his senior year.
“Coming in [to high school] as a freshman and playing varsity, you get a little bit big-headed,” said the younger Hall, who turned 19 in November. “It’s like I felt like I didn’t have to do nothing; that everything was going to be given to me.
“Came around to my senior year and it wasn’t that way and I had to work even harder to get back on the field.”
He never made it.
Had he stayed the course academically, Nemea Hall Jr. could have had his choice of the best college football programs in the country. For now he will try to get his academics in order at tiny Jones College, a junior college in Ellisville, Miss. He is scheduled to report to school this week.
Learn from dad’s mistakes
Nemea Hall Sr. said he has always stressed to his son, “Don’t be like me.”
“I just don’t want him to make the same bad decisions I made. … Like, ‘This is what I want you to do so you won’t end up like me,’ ” said Nemea Hall Sr., who will turn 48 in November. “[I told him] if he decided to be like me, he won’t amount to much. … Be better than me. I’ve told him that, ‘There’s great things ahead of you, man, just keep going forward.’ … ‘Just stay focused, son.’ “
Nemea Hall Sr. started running into trouble with the law in the early 1990s. Counting his most recent conviction in 2009, he has 11 convictions on his record, six of them felonies.
He continues to profess his innocence when asked about this latest conviction, but he serves his sentence.
“In my case, I was not caught with any drugs. Pretty much they just picked me up one day and said I was being charged with trafficking marijuana, and then after about a month, I was in jail and they changed the charges to trafficking cocaine. I was sentenced to 25 years and I’m here today,” Nemea Hall Sr. said.
“I was tried in the Lake County trial court system. They didn’t have any evidence on me. … The only thing I knew was they placed some guy in my cell who said he knew me, but he didn’t know me and he came to court and testified against me.”
By the time he is released, Nemea Hall Sr. is hoping his son will be a veteran in the NFL.
More obstacles
That plan took a detour last summer.
Nemea Hall Jr., one of the best running backs in Central Florida entering the 2019 season, sat out his final year of high school after being declared academically ineligible.
His talent was so natural, he didn’t really have to work hard at football. He was a Pop Warner sensation and led the Ocoee Bulldogs to the Pop Warner Super Bowl championship in 2015. There were huge expectations ahead.
Jerry Middleton, Nemea Hall Jr.’s Pop Warner coach, is confident he will overcome the loss of his senior football season.
“He will step up and answer all critics going forward on this new journey,” Middleton said. “I’m just glad that Nemea found the will to continue to push through it all.
“He’s a special kid and a leader by nature. His testimony will change lives in the community once it is complete.”
To his credit, Nemea Hall Jr., like his father, only blames himself. His lack of academic progress didn’t suddenly creep up on him. His grade problems followed him from the moment he got to West Orange.
While it wasn’t shocking, it was difficult sitting out his final season of high school football.
“I got a lot of help from a lot people who wanted to tutor me and help me with my academics and stuff,” Nemea Hall Jr. said in November. “My main process is to get my academics right so I can go [to college] anywhere I want to go. Everyone knows I can go out on that field and play football. I’m just out of time to get my stuff done in that classroom.”
At least he wasn’t completely out of time. He did earn his diploma despite coronavirus interrupting his spring semester.
“Everything God has done for me, I just appreciate,” he said. “It’s a blessing.”
There was always help
Bob Head was the West Orange coach during Nemea Hall Jr.’s first three high school seasons. He was anxiously anticipating the Pop Warner star’s arrival as a freshman.
“We were super excited. I watched him all through Pop Warner and then when I had an opportunity to coach him, I knew he was going to be amazing,” Head said of Nemea Hall Jr., who rushed for more than 3,000 yards and nearly 50 touchdowns during his first three seasons at West Orange.
“He was getting recruited by Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame … every big-time school in the country wanted him and it was just a matter of him getting eligible.”
Head said if he were still at West Orange, Nemea Hall Jr. would have gotten his academics in order and he would have played his senior year. Head, however, was fired in February following a domestic-violence allegation. The charges against him were eventually dropped.
“We had a plan for him,” said Head, who teaches at Prairie Lake Elementary School. “But when the new coach [Dee Brown] came in, the plan went bye-bye. The plan was that we weren’t going to let him play spring ball last year. To me, he had to get his grades in order first or else there would have been no hope for the fall.
“But I know we would have gotten him eligible.”
‘That’s my boy’
Nemea Hall Sr. is a proud father in his prison cell at Tomoka, a medium security facility. During his son’s first three seasons, he was able to watch TV sports highlights on Friday nights and brag to the other inmates.
“Wow … it was every [Friday] night, high school football highlights, Channel 9. … Everybody in the whole compound, they wanted to stay up late, 11:30, to watch that because they know me,” said Nemea Hall Sr., who did not graduate from West Orange and instead earned his high school diploma while incarcerated.
After the first three years, however, the highlights stopped.
In 17 months since Hall’s exit, three different men have led the West Orange football program. Current head coach Mike Granato is looking to provide more stability for players as he enters his first season.
Nemea Hall Jr. played spring football last year and he never focused on improving his grades. By the time Aug. 1 rolled around and preseason camp was about to start, he was informed he was ineligible after failing to post at least a 2.0 GPA.
His mother, Natasha Corbett, said it was a surprise to her because she thought he had taken the necessary steps to remain eligible.
“It was very, very, very hard to see him sit out this year,” Corbett said. “And to be honest, I tried everything I could.”
Her son went to summer school to raise his grades and then took an online class in an effort to make up half a credit he needed, but West Orange officials said it was too late.
Accepting responsibility
Regardless of whether the online course was not accepted, Nemea Hall Jr.’s academic troubles started much earlier.
He knows all too well about how his lack of focus early in his high school career cost him an opportunity during his senior year.
“When it first happened … he was about to give up and drop out of school,” Corbett said. “I told him, ‘Nemea, you can’t drop out of school because of football. If it’s for you, if it was meant for you, God will guide you through this.’
“Nemea’s dad went to jail when he was 7 and he’s doing 25 years. That took a toll on him … I’m proud of him because of how he is. Nemea has never been to jail, he’s never been to juvenile, he’s never been to 33rd [Orange County jail]. Nemea has never talked back to me in his life. He has never disrespected me. I’ve been a single mom for most of his life, and I think I did a great job.”
Not only did he stay in school, Nemea Hall Jr. did not quit the team. He remained an inspirational leader to his teammates, attending most every practice and every game. The athlete and his mother even walked with the other West Orange seniors on Senior Night.
“It was very difficult and very emotional,” Nemea Hall Jr. said of watching from the sidelines. “But I don’t let my emotions get over on me. I know my brothers look up to me and they want to keep playing if they mess up, and I can’t get down because then I make them get down.
“I needed to keep them motivated and keep them playing. It’s not all about me. It’s about the team. There is no ‘I’ in team. It’s a group of men that come together and play together.”
His teammates appreciated his efforts. Tyler Jones, a cornerback who was a senior last season and is now at Missouri preparing for his freshman year of college, said it was difficult to learn Nemea Hall Jr. was ineligible.
“It was tough because obviously he was a key factor on the offensive side of the ball for us, and he was playing both ways, but mainly on offense, so it was disappointing and sad — especially since we had been playing with him since we were growing up,” Jones said. “You would have at least thought that he would have gotten to finish his high school career.”
The team was just happy to at least have him on the sidelines supporting them.
“It just showed how much he cared about the team and it wasn’t just all about him,” Jones said.
Head said Nemea Hall Jr.’s peers always loved him.
“Nemea, he was always a really, really good teammate. I never had one of his teammates dislike him or not want to be around him,” Head said. “I had him in class and he is so much fun to be around. He’s a great kid. Even non-football players love him.”
It was important to Nemea Hall Jr. that football and his friends on the team remain a part of his life.
“I feel like I have more space being around the players and being around football,” Nemea Hall Jr. said. “Outside this football life, there is a lot of stuff going on that you don’t know about.
“That’s why I like being inside those lines and being around my brothers, so I can have a better thought-process in my mind. That’s the main reason.”
His mother said his new junior college coach, Steve Buckley, has had a big impact on his life.
“They’ve already had him doing online classes and the coach said he’s doing great with it,” Corbett said. “He’s really nice and we talk all of the time.”
No looking back
Of course Nemea Hall Jr. missed his father during the early stages of his life, but as time has passed, he’s grown accustomed to his absence.
It hasn’t gotten easier, however, for his father.
“It’s been terrible, man. He had no father figure in his life,” Nemea Hall Sr. said. “I tried to do the best I could for him, making what little money I could in here [as a painter]. … It’s kind of hard with his father not being there.”
Nemea Hall Jr. does not hold any grudges against his father.
“When you’re a kid, you really wish that he was there,” Nemea Hall Jr. said. “Now that I’m getting older as an adult, I have a lot more going on and a lot more situations that I’ve got to take care of.
“I’d be screaming happy if he was out right now … but I always had a strong mom who was there.”
For father and son, there is no time for worrying about what went wrong.
Nemea Hall Sr. knows he has nine years left to serve. Nemea Hall Jr. knows he must stay focused on his academics if he wants those big-time football schools to come around again.
The NFL is the goal.
“Hopefully,” Nemea Sr. said when asked if he hoped his son would be playing at the pro level when he was released from prison, and it was suggested that his son in the NFL would be a great homecoming gift when he is finally released from prison. “Yes, that would be a good one. The best.”
Head, too, has faith in the young Hall, He compares him to another West Orange running back, Dexter Williams, who was drafted out of Notre Dame by the Green Bay Packers last year.
“I think he’s just that good, physically, and I think he could play in the NFL with no question,” Head said of the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Nemea Hall Jr. “Now, mentally, he’ll have to make great decisions off the field … and commit to academics.
“Then there’s no stopping him.”
Nemea Hall Sr. does get to see his son during occasional visits, but it’s not nearly enough to tell him what he wants to say every day. But he has a message for Nemea Hall Jr. as he heads off to college.
“‘Son, I love you. You know I do,'” Nemea Sr. said. “You’ve done heard this many times before, but all I want to do is get out and show you how much I love you and hug you. … Whatever you choose [in life] your dad loves you, man.'”
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Chris Hays at chays@orlandosentinel.com.
