At the beginning of the season, cornerback Julian Joonie Posey was playing well for a freshman. Now he's been playing well by anyone's standards.
In the past five games, Posey has averaged just under five tackles a game, with 1.5 tackles for a loss, two forced fumbles and an interception.
He is tied for the team lead in interceptions (two) and forced fumbles (two). He has five pass breakups, which is second-best on the team.
But the fact that Julian, 19, is playing Division I football at all right now may be his biggest accomplishment yet.
Julian had to deal with his father's drug addiction while growing up in Redwood City, Calif., with his brothers, sister and step-sister. Posey's mother, Julie, tried to help her husband through his addiction, but it became too much for her to handle after he went through a number of relapses. She decided it would be best for her and her four children to move to Cincinnati to live with their 76-year-old grandmother instead of growing up in that environment.
You can't live with drug addiction
and somebody had to raise the kids. Somebody needed to love them and provide for them Julie said. We didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I had 50 bucks four kids and a car.
Life wasn't always easy for the family in its new home. Julie, who had decided to put her own education on hold, went back to work so that she could put food on the table for her children, but even that didn't always work out. They lived in an apartment for a short time, but were forced to move back with their grandmother when roaches from the apartment below them infiltrated their home.
In the midst of his mother's struggles to provide a good home, Julian was having struggles of his own. In the third grade, Julian decided to play football, but by his own admission, wasn't very good. He played football one more year, but when fall came around the next year, Julian decided that he had had enough with the sport and quit.
During the first couple of games, Julian anxiously watched his brother, DeVier, play, while his cousins teased him for not being on the field. After the third game, Julian had enough and begged his mother to let him play, but Julie told her son that he had made a commitment and that he was going to sit out for the rest of the season.
The next year, Julian went back out for the team and was markedly better. The game of football had started to click for Julian.
That may be the best thing I've given to Ju
is to not give in when he quit
Julie said. It killed him to watch everybody play but him
and when he went back out to play
he played. He played and he was hungry.
Meanwhile, Julian's father had become deathly ill with AIDS, which he had contracted from a heroin needle years before.
While Julian had known for a couple of years that his father was going to die, the news that he didn't have long to live was still devastating.
Julian and his brothers and sister went to go see their dad in his waning moments, but only Julian confronted the doctors. He wanted to know why they couldn't cure his illness. At the age of 11, Julian was forced to confront the reality of life without a father.
I was mad at the world. At first
you feel like somebody took something away from you
Julian said. People that you know have fathers somewhere else in the world
and mine's not even around at all. So if I wanted to find him
if I wanted to have a relationship with him ' I can't even do that.
It took Julian a while to get over the death of his father, but going to see his father had helped take a lot of weight off his shoulders.
A few years later, Julian got a scholarship to attend St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, and the decision to go there seemed like a no-brainer. His uncles had excelled in football and baseball at the school, and his older brother Kendall Holmes had graduated from there.
Julian, though, was not happy at St. Xavier. He played football his freshman year, but had come to dislike the school so much that he didn't want to participate in much of anything. His grades were slipping and he decided not to go out for the football team his sophomore year. It was becoming glaringly apparent to his mother that Julian was not himself.
I felt like he was slipping away from me
