Mason Alexander’s light dimmed when his dad died. Football reignited it.
FISHERS – Mason Alexander had a special routine with his father, a tradition he looked forward to every Friday.
“He would pick me up from school, then take me to the barbershop,” Mason said. “We would get something to eat, go to my granny’s and go to sleep. It was like that every Friday.”
Until, one day, it wasn’t. That day, June 14, 2015, is forever etched in his memory. It was not until the following day, the 15th, that the then 8-year-old Mason found out his life had been flipped upside down. He remembers all the cars in front of his dad’s house, thinking it might be a party.
His mom, Kelly Harris, broke the news. His father, Johnny Alexander, had died of a heart attack at age 43. Mason, after a few silent moments, told his mother he wanted to go fishing, another routine he shared with his father.
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He carried his baby sister's casket. Then Martinsville senior played the game of his life.
“It was the most heartbreaking thing,” his mother said. “He had a really tight connection with his father. As he’s taking in that news, you could see the light in him dim.”
It took some time for that light to flash again. The three years after his father died were difficult. Mason quit playing football, a sport he had enjoyed previously. Some of his earliest memories of football were of his father watching him at practice at the Lawrence Township Little League.
“I remember his first little game,” said his oldest brother, Jordan. “Mason was playing running back. The quarterback gave him the ball and he took it and broke one. My dad says, ‘Mason’s going to the NFL.’ I was like, ‘Dang, really?’ But he might be right. Mason took off like lightning.”
Mason, now a junior at Hamilton Southeastern, is one of the most sought-after defensive back recruits in the Midwest. His combination of size, speed and power add to his attractiveness to college coaches, who prize versatility in the secondary. Mason's scholarship offer list is unusual for Indiana prospects, including SEC programs like Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Ole Miss and Tennessee, along with Miami (Fla.) and Big Ten programs like Indiana, Purdue, Michigan State, Nebraska and Wisconsin, among others.
“The fact that he can play nickel, safety and cornerback — a lot of DBs can’t do that,” said Jamill Millz Smith, a defensive backs coach at HSE who also trains receivers, defensive backs and tight ends. “He also plays violent. He’s physical. And I think the SEC schools love that he has real track times. They value speed and Mason has it.”
Mason is not necessarily in love with the recruiting process. “I can’t wait for it to be over,” he said with a laugh. “I’m never at home.” He will likely whittle down his list in the next several days, though he admits he is still unsure of which schools will make the cut. But that he is in this position at all is something of an upset, given where he was mentally in the years after his father’s death.
“Those are supposed to be your years where you’re like not worried about school and just having fun,” Mason said. “But after (my dad died), I just didn’t care about anything. That’s something an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old should not have to do. I was depressed all the time.”
He did not always show it. Mason masked his grief with “being goofy and playing around.”
“Say if there was a topic about dads at school, I’d start joking around and try to make people laugh,” he said. “Not that I wanted the attention, but I’d feel like if I made them laugh, I did something.”
Due to circumstances out of his control, Mason’s life was in flux. Not long after his father’s death, his mom, older sister, Kennedy, and younger sister, Jai, bounced around a bit. Though they were never without a roof over their head, they also did not have a permanent home. They went from hotels and Airbnbs.
“We were still grieving, but I wanted to show my kids that regardless of the circumstances we are going to stick together,” said Kelly Harris, brought to tears as she recalls that time. “It was like, ‘We’ll get through this and get out of it and this will be your biggest strength. This will be your story to tell.’”
Mason, who went to Raymond Park in Warren Township in sixth grade, transferred to Riverside in Fishers in seventh grade when his family moved there. He hadn’t played football since his father died, but his mother and oldest brother, Jordan, convinced him to give it another shot.
“After the passing of his dad, he didn’t want to do anything,” Kelly said. “When he first started seventh grade, he’d come every day and say he wanted to go back to Raymond Park and be with his friends. But I told him, ‘Just hang in there and tough it out.’ His whole attitude changed once he started playing football.”
Mason could sense it, too. He played running back in middle school, where he could outrun just about anybody on the field. He also developed a stronger relationship with Jordan during that time. Jordan taught him how to drive, how to fix his tie —things his dad would have been there for if he was still around.
“Mason was his favorite,” Jordan said of Johnny Alexander, a 6-6 forward who was named all-sectional at Warren Central as a senior in 1999. “(My dad) always said he saw himself in Mason. That was his guy. They were always together, so when that happened, it took a toll on Mason. I wanted to make sure I was there for him. Not too many people knew my dad better than me so I wanted to make sure Mason kept his head on straight because stuff like that can throw you off.”
Kelly called the years after moving to Fishers “coming out of the storm.” Her oldest daughter, Kennedy Murray, went to Indiana State for college. She fully transitioned from her job as a dental assistant to real estate and began growing her business starting about five years ago.
“I’m mostly proud of my mom,” Mason said. “She’s so strong about everything. Any average person would have broke down and not know what to do. She put us first before anything, then she fought through it all. It was her birthday a few days ago and she just broke down, crying tears of joy. It was like she was realizing how much she had to go through in 10 years.”
There were times when Mason went back to play football again that she caught herself crying, too. It was when she would look around in the stands and see proud fathers watching their sons play. Johnny Alexander would have loved to see Mason running up and down the field, eventually moving to defense as a freshman at Hamilton Southeastern. He probably could have predicted the onslaught of scholarship offers, even when no one else did.
Mason was on spring break, in Florida, when he received his first offer from Pitt last spring.
“Offered what?” was his mother’s reaction when Mason relayed the news. But a link from Millz Smith to a colleague with connections in the south helped open the door for Alexander to get his sophomore film seen by coaches. The offer from Pitt was followed by Florida, Purdue and then many others. It did not hurt he ran a 10.71 in the 100 meters in the spring track and field season.
“I was just trying to get Ball State to take a look,” Millz Smith said with a laugh. “But once we got his film out there, everything just blew up.”
The hard part for Alexander is letting go of the bad plays and focusing on the positive. It is nearly what kept him from coming back out for football as a sophomore — as crazy as that may sound for a player with his potential.
“I’m just now getting over making mistakes,” he said. “Mid-game I’ll go up to Millz and say, ‘Did I do this right?’ He’ll just say, ‘Play the game. Be you.’ I think me and my mom are the same that way. We hate mistakes. But in football, I have to realize that the receiver is going to have their moment sometimes. If I do make a mistake, I learned to get back up and don’t make another one. When I did that, football became fun again. It didn’t feel like a job.”
Alexander makes it look fun. He returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the season-opening win against Fort Wayne Carroll, avenging a loss in last year’s semistate. He had a third interception in the 30-28 loss to Westfield two weeks ago.
It belies Alexander’s speed on the field, but his journey to where he is now has been more marathon than sprint. He wears the jersey No. 15 and the same number on a necklace around his neck to remind him of the date he found out his father was gone — June 15, 2015. It was that day, too, when Kelly looked into 8-year-old Mason’s eyes and saw that light diminish. She still sees that kid now, nine years later, growing into a man.
“The job is never done,” Kelly said. “But I think the world of him.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA football: Mason Alexander is among Midwest's most-recruited DBs
