A KC kid left high school without a Division I offer. Now he’ll play MNF at Arrowhead

A nondescript home sits in an inner-city neighborhood in Kansas City, its front porch separated maybe 50 feet from the street. A fence partitions the front yard’s north end, and a long driveway isolates the south.

The layout for a football field, it once served.

It was here, on Euclid Avenue, and places nearby that a young boy fancied himself as Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, his idol and the man he mimicked as he’d carry the football. Slender but shifty, Rachaad White would juke his brothers, friends or the neighborhood kids in the yard, all while envisioning the stakes were a bit higher.

The imagination endured because the imagination was all he had. Although the house resides just 10 miles south of GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, White never attended an actual Chiefs game. He never even stepped foot inside their venue. One of four boys to a single mom, his family couldn’t afford him a ticket.

But on Monday night, along with some 75,000 others, White is at last headed to a football game at the place around the block.

He’ll be in uniform.

White, now 25, will walk into the Chiefs’ home stadium as the starting running back for the visiting Tampa Bay Buccaneers on “Monday Night Football.” It’s a bit different than the childhood dream. But, you know, close enough, right?

The view of Arrowhead is imprinted in his memory from a childhood in Kansas City that included four years at Center High School, but he is on the verge of seeing it from a much different perspective: the inside.

“Just walking out of the tunnel and warming up, I’m pretty sure it will all hit me and soak in,” White told The Star in a phone call this week. “But as I look at it right now, the moment is just crazy — just crazy.”

He returns home.

He does not, however, return to the life he left behind.

The path to the NFL is improbable, and that goes for anyone. For White, though, at times it must have felt darn near impossible, even if he purposefully refused to acknowledge it.

He grew up the youngest of four boys in a neighborhood that required he grow up quickly. His account of gun violence is a first-hand reference.

His escape? Sports. He played basketball and football, and by his senior year at Center High School, he’d developed into the team’s best running back — and its best receiver. And maybe its best defensive back too.

If this is all news to you — if you didn’t know much about his time in Kansas City — well, you aren’t the only one. His senior season came and went without a single Division I offer.

He never stopped talking about the NFL nonetheless, even as those close to him reminded him he might need to consider a different path. Life told him to consider a different path.

He spent his freshman college season at Division II Nebraska-Kearney, but he had to redshirt because it was apparent he wouldn’t play much at a Division II school. He bolted for Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, about 25 miles east of Los Angeles, even after those close with him practically begged him to stay closer to home.

They knew the risk. He lived its reality.

In California, he couldn’t afford rent in many months and fondly recalls the times someone might buy him a pizza for dinner on some nights he wasn’t sure he’d eat. He picked up one job at recycling plant and another at a furniture factory that required overnight shifts before heading to classes in the morning and eventually football practices in the afternoon. And then he came home to an apartment he shared with nearly a dozen teammates.

It’s a grind several of them quit. Football couldn’t be worth this.

He saw it differently.

“It just helped build my character and made me appreciate football more,” White said. “It made me care more.”

A breakout season landed a scholarship at Arizona State. The Bucs called in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft. His rookie season lined him up in the backfield behind Tom Brady. The first touchdown of his career, ironically, came as the Chiefs visited Tampa in 2022.

He made it.

Improbable, but not impossible after all. And didn’t lose the recollection of the journey.

White had plans to meet with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office Sunday night while he’s in town for the game Monday, with the hope to find ways to get involved in his community, because he hasn’t forgotten.

A visit here this summer had the same objective, with a football camp at his former high school. Underprivileged kids hold a particular place in his mind, an obvious reason why.

“God said (to) give so much that it hurts,” White said. “He just always puts us in this world to leave an impact. I’m in a prime position to do that. That’s what I should believe I should do.”

It’s a lesson he learned from someone close: his mother.

Rochelle Woods didn’t have much, but she shared what she did have. That home on Euclid became home for more than her own. She held multiple jobs to support her four boys, all while attending school to pursue a master’s degree. As White recalled, there were some months in which his mother had to choose between bills because she didn’t have the money to pay them all.

She had help, too. Her mom. Brothers and sisters. A village, White termed it.

And that village included a unique bond.

‘Broski’

John Waller, the youngest of four kids, grew up in the states of Iowa and Washington, the latter nearly 2,000 miles from KC. But a couple of older siblings attended the University of Kansas, and he became a fan of the Jayhawks. It was the only school at which he applied to study.

After graduation, Waller secured a job in sales, and although it progressed as expected, he sought something more fulfilling. One afternoon, he walked into a Big Brothers Big Sisters location in Kansas City and put his name in the hat. Why not?

They eventually provided him the resume, of sorts, of an 8-year-old kid looking for a mentor. It came with a description: outgoing, active, the youngest of four. Oh, and one more: obsessed with sports.

A match, he figured.

Waller, then 25 years old, drove up to a house on Euclid and 74th, less than a mile east of Prospect, and knocked on the front door. When he walked in, as the family tidied the home, White sat idly on the living room couch, “grinning ear to ear,” Waller recalled.

“He was giddy. A little nervous, but I was a little nervous too,” Waller said. “I sat down next to him and we started talking, and it just clicked.”

Their differences were apparent, White an 8-year-old Black grade-school kid who didn’t know the world much beyond the inner city; and Waller, a 25-year-old college graduate and transplant to the metro.

But they sought the same thing from the Big-Little relationship:

Perspective.

“I tried to offer him something to learn from, but I learned so much from Rachaad and his family,” Waller said. “He’s had to overcome adversity his entire life. I learned what it takes to have real grit and real perseverance and real belief in yourself.”

White and Waller lead completely different lives than when they met, but there’s a similarity.

They talk almost every day — some 17 years later.

“Broski,” they call each other.

It was in 2007 that White’s mother had signed him up, same as her three older boys, in search of male mentorship. She wanted them to seek experiences outside the bubble of their neighborhood.

Waller took White to local libraries, to Loose Park and to breakfasts and lunches in the most Kansas City of locations: Minsky’s Pizza and Gates Bar-B-Q. They frequented different spots in the city, but none more than the gym to shoot some hoops. The Cleaver Family YMCA off Troost Avenue became such a staple that White returned last summer for a charity event.

“John came into my life, pulled up to my house on Euclid, and I was ready,” White said. “There were just a lot of different aspects of my life that John brought that helped me out. He fit right in with my family, and he’s been with me for the toughest times of my life.”

The relationship became easy. Waller now serves as a business advisor or business partner or, well, there isn’t really a title for it — it’s just long graduated past Big Brother.

We could just use their title: Broskis.

The youngest Broski is 25 now, same as the oldest when this relationship began. Neither one of them had considered that, by the way. White has two kids of his own now, daughters aged 3 and 6 months.

The bond endured big-city moves, career changes, kids and pivotal business decisions. It’s been more than a decade since they shared an address in the same metro.

Waller regularly attends Buccaneers games, but Monday offers a first in a relationship that has spanned nearly two decades.

They will reunite just 10 miles from where Waller walked into the home to spot White smiling on a sofa, waiting for his mentor.

Home.