'Puma' is Louisville's new quarterback. He's fierce and ready to pounce

Jake Lourim | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Courier Journal's Jake Lourim on Louisville's Jawon Pass Courier Journal's Jeff Greer talks with reporter Jake Lourim about the story he did on University of Louisville's quarterback Jawon Pass.

As he prepares for his first season as the starter, Puma Pass has always been eager for a challenge.

We spend four days in the new quarterback's hometown to learn about how he got here.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Three dozen members of Spirit Filled Ministries sat at round tables in a room surrounded by stained-glass windows, each with a dove at its center. In this church, as in the three others within a one-block radius, there is Bible study every Wednesday night.

On one muggy evening last month, the subject was purpose.

“If you don’t have a purpose for your life, if you don’t know what you’re doing,” pastor Wayne Baker said, “you may wind up anywhere.”

Spirit Filled Ministries has a playground outside and a basketball court in the next building. Baker had the gym built in 2002 to provide a place for Columbus kids to play. A few years later, the church’s teachings found a young boy named Jawon Pass.

He attended day care there after school and learned about faith in the youth ministry. He started playing organized basketball in that gym, then took up football and baseball.

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He went off to the University of Louisville to play football, waited behind Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson and is now set to take over at quarterback. Louisville is watching to see how Pass replaces the most decorated player in program history.

But Pass’ hometown offers a different view of his purpose in life. He does not talk about becoming Jackson.

“I’m just going to be the best Jawon Pass I can be,” he is fond of saying.

His church is where Pass discovered his purpose: “To be a blessing to others,” as he put it. “I really think that’s my purpose. I’d give a stranger the shirt off my back. That’s just me.”

From an early age, Pass was eager to separate himself, a goal drilled into him by those around him. He was not like everybody else, they told him. He was different.

This city raised Jawon Pass, and he gave back hope in return.

Puma

Jawon Pass started walking before he turned 1, welcomed by a big family of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins on both sides, almost all within an hour’s drive. His parents separated when he was young. Jawon and his older brother, Khane, a safety at Louisville, lived with their mother but remain close with their father.

By age 4, he tagged along with Khane to football practice and could memorize plays. His teachers wanted to accelerate him through a two-week kindergarten and start him in first grade. He started sports at 7 and played a year up for most of his childhood.

They called him Puma.

He was given the nickname at an early age. When he was in middle school, he met the man who would coach him in football at Carver High School. “I’m Khane’s brother, Jawon,” the boy said.

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“Oh, Puma,” Joe Kegler replied.

“Yes, sir,” Puma said.

Ask six people from Columbus how Puma got his nickname, and you’ll hear six different answers. Kegler has “not a clue” how it happened. Richard Reese, who coached Puma in football and basketball as a Carver assistant, thought it was because Puma had dark skin when he was born, like a black panther.

Puma’s mother, Kershena Thomas, said her cousin, Felecia, created the name because when he was younger, Puma was always “like a Puma cat, just running and climbing and jumping.” Maurice Pass, Puma’s father, said he thought the nickname came from Puma’s maternal grandmother, who got it from the character in “The Lion King.”

Carver High School principal Chris Lindsey said he assumed it was because of Puma’s speed. Puma himself said he did not know. It was a family nickname, and it stuck.

“I heard about him when he was in middle school,” Lindsey said. “Everybody kept talking about, ‘Puma, Puma, Puma, Puma, Puma.’ Who the hell is this Puma?”

'100 Questions'

Puma’s mother is from Manchester, Georgia, a rural town of roughly 4,000 people about 40 miles north of Columbus. Most of her family still lives in Manchester, so she traveled with the boys often when they were growing up.

The pastures alongside the road stumped young Puma. He wanted to know: How did cows eat green grass but then give white milk? The 5-year-old in the backseat would not rest until he had an explanation, until his mother showed him when they returned home.

“Your answers were never good enough,” Thomas said. “He would just dig, dig, dig.”

At home, he would demand that his mother make up math problems, hard ones, for him to solve. Puma’s cousin, Brittany, used to call him “100 Questions.” He ended up graduating high school with honors.

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When he was little, he could watch football plays and recite each player’s responsibility. Zeph Baker, his youth minister, football coach and basketball coach, recalled Puma always wanting to know why the plays worked that way.

“Anything you provided, if it didn’t click for him, then he would just keep going at it,” Thomas said. “It used to frustrate me when he was younger because I couldn’t understand, ‘Why did this kid keep doing that?’ But he just genuinely wanted to know the root of everything.”

At one point, Puma’s intelligence developed into a bad habit. Advanced in some ways beyond his peers, he would sometimes grow upset if classmates were confused, his mother recalled. If a teacher asked the class for an answer to 3+5 and a student responded wrongly, Puma would shout, “It’s 8! You didn’t know that?”

His teachers would let him in classes with older kids, to show him that he didn’t know everything and still had to learn. They taught him to channel his intensity. But the fire never went anywhere.

Those at Carver remember Puma demanding the best from those around him. If you slacked off, you would hear from him. Puma would tell Kegler to make everyone start over if one player’s effort faded.

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When Puma was a sophomore, in his first season as the starting quarterback, Carver was entering a game that would decide the regional championship. Puma saw his best receiver lacking effort in practice.

“Coach, this man don’t want to practice,” he called to Kegler. “Get him off the field.”

Shocked by the outburst, Kegler benched his best receiver. During the game, Puma threw his first touchdown of the game to the receiver’s replacement. Carver won, 44-9.

Reese also remembered Puma, then a freshman in his first basketball season at Carver, asking coaches to bench an older player. “He don’t want to play?” Puma said. “Take him out.”

The player he was referring to was his brother.

“And he loves his brother,” Reese said.

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Seeking challenges

Puma sought out 6:30 a.m. workouts with Kegler and his receivers. He seemed to want the challenge. Highly touted high school quarterbacks often seek out colleges where they can play immediately. Puma didn’t care for that. He chose to wait behind Lamar Jackson, to see what made Jackson succeed and to use that experience.

As a result, Puma will make his first collegiate start against Alabama, one of the most powerful dynasties in the history of the sport. The game had already been scheduled when he chose Louisville.

“I wouldn’t change it if I could,” Puma said. He said he expects his team to go undefeated and win the national championship.

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He has gone through life by imploring his mentors to demand the most difficult possible math problems, workouts and opponents and seeing if he can conquer them.

The honors student with the big arm was not accustomed to failure. He thrived in football, basketball and baseball but did not care for soccer because, his mother said, “he thinks you need to use your hands.” She told him he could never drive a five-speed car, “because he overthinks everything.”

Those around Puma sometimes struggle to read him. Kegler has said before that it was impossible to glean the score of the game by looking at the quarterback. Thomas sees the same thing and sometimes wishes her son were more expressive.

Recently, a man with Thomas’ uncle’s name won the lottery. Thomas called Puma to try to trick him and then pull the rug out from under him. But she told him the news, and Puma was calm. “Oh, OK,” he said.

They have conversations like that often. Only if Thomas asks will Puma admit he could use extra money for food or his cell phone bill.

“Everything’s good,” Puma will say.

“Jawon, everything is not always good,” his mom answers.

“Well, it is for me,” he says. “If it’s something that I can’t change, it’s still good.”

“Jawon, really,” she pleads. “Really.”

But he is hard to break. Almost four years ago, Thomas was diagnosed with cancer during Puma’s junior year of high school. The following summer, he attended the Elite 11 quarterback camp in Oregon. Thomas wasn’t going to visit, but after she went through treatment, she flew out to surprise her son.

In a video documentary about the camp, Thomas told her son, “So I got a report back from my doctor, and I’m cancer-free.” Puma was almost unfazed. “That’s good. I love you,” he said softly, and he put his arm around her and kissed her on the forehead.

“Like, ‘Jawon, did you hear me?’” Thomas recalled later. “Jawon don’t show emotion like that. You don’t know if he’s happy or sad.”

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'That perfect vision'

In Puma’s three seasons as Carver’s starting quarterback, the Tigers finished 28-7. They made three straight playoff appearances from 2013-15. Since Puma left, Carver is on its fourth head coach in less than three years and has gone 10-13 in the past two seasons.

There is a hallway sign at Carver that reads, in all caps: “One athlete with character will improve a team; one team of character will improve a school; one school of character can impact an entire community.”

Lindsey is confident now in saying Puma was that one athlete. Kids looked up to him. They wanted to follow him.

When he graduated, “that perfect vision of what a student-athlete should be and how they perform in the classroom, as well as off the field, that diminished,” Lindsey said. “That went away. And you got to look for someone else to get to that point.”

Carver’s new coach, Corey Joyner, spoke of “getting (kids) out of Columbus.” Thomas hopes her boys do not come back, that they make a better life somewhere else. She talked about “a huge increase in crime.”

“Coming from around here, there’s a lot of stuff going on around here lately,” Maurice Pass said. “Just a lot of murders and stuff, that’s never been. It feels good to see somebody away from home, doing what they’re doing. A lot of kids get lost out here, man. It feels good to see your child away and doing their thing.”

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Last summer, however, that environment devastated Puma. One of his best friends was a boy who lived across the street named R.J. Cummings, who was one year younger than Puma. They played football together at Carver, but the bond extended much further.

“R.J. was Jawon’s shadow,” Thomas said. “That was his little brother, for real.”

Cummings graduated from Carver in 2017 and was set to start his own college football career at Waldorf (Iowa) University last fall. But on a Friday night last July, with Puma and Khane in Louisville, Cummings was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car in Columbus when a gunshot was fired through his seat by a passenger in the back, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

The bullet lodged in Cummings’ chest. He died at 18.

It “broke down” Puma, his mother said. She had never seen him so emotional.

“Of course, tears,” Thomas said. “He was just wallowing, very sad, withdrawn, he wasn’t speaking much. He would just be sitting, shaking his head like he just couldn’t believe it.”

His mother would ask if he was OK, and Puma would say he was fine.

A bigger purpose

Kegler is now in his first season at nearby Jordan High School, where he’s after the same mission. Many of his players come from single-parent homes in families struggling to get by. Football can be a gateway for the kids to get to college.

“I have a bigger purpose in my life,” Kegler says he tries to teach his players. “So what am I going to do to get to my purpose?”

Neither he nor Puma attended the Bible study at Spirit Filled Ministries that week. But the coach had the same message, one Puma took to heart.

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For most of his life, Louisville’s newest football star has been most skilled at basketball. He played all through high school and excelled as a 6-foot-4 swingman who could handle the ball and shoot. His high school coaches agree he would have been a mid-major basketball recruit, if not a Power Five talent, had he pursued it.

He started in the church league at Spirit Filled Ministries, and when Zeph Baker, the youth minister and coach, saw the talent the boys had, he took them on the AAU circuit. Puma and Khane once carried the team all the way to the national tournament.

But while Zeph Baker, son of pastor Wayne Baker, and the kids traveled to tournaments, they’d take detours. Zeph led the boys on tours of the academic and athletic buildings at all of the college campuses along the way.

When the kids saw colleges, they received repeated messages: This is the level that you are preparing for now. You are not like regular old kids. You are not competing against the kids in Columbus.

All along, Puma’s laid-back appearance belied his drive. He seemed quiet to everyone until he admonished a teammate’s effort. But the coach who knows him better than almost anyone saw the truth.

“I think he’s quiet because he’s observing everything,” Kegler said.

It’s deceiving to everyone. Since last winter, there has been a refrain from Louisville coach Bobby Petrino to his new quarterback: Walk faster.

“Guys that walk fast know where they’re going,” Petrino likes to say. He has nagged Puma about speeding up, but the quarterback will not.

Told of Petrino’s instructions, Lindsey smiled.

“Ain’t gonna happen,” the principal said. “He’s thinking about what his next step is.”

Jake Lourim: 502-582-4168; jlourim@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jakelourim. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/jakel.