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Duquesne All-American running back A.J. Hines poses for a portrait on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, at Arthur J. Rooney Athletic Field in Uptown.
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How A.J. Hines, one of the most decorated players in college football, found a home at Duquesne

Steph Chambers/Post-Gazette

How A.J. Hines, one of the most decorated players in college football, found a home at Duquesne

The young mother was in search of answers, looking for something — anything, really — into which her son could channel his endless reservoir of energy.

For some time, Sophia Fate had heard the stories about her young boy. He couldn’t sit still in class. Teachers would tell her as much, though she saw enough of it herself. He was a gentle, affable soul, but he was, as many children are, rambunctious at times. She did what seemed like the best, most constructive solution and signed him up for an array of sports, from tee-ball to basketball to flag football.

He took an intense liking to the last of those three, perhaps too much of one, as his parents and coaches had to explain to him why he couldn’t tackle players. He was gifted, though. That much was evident. Shortly after he took up flag football, when he was just 5 years old, his coach, a local lawyer in their town in eastern North Carolina, pulled his mom aside one day.

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“You’re not going to have to pay for his college,” he said. “What I see in him, you won’t have to pay for his college.”

What had started as a diversion had become a chance at a new life, a way out of a small southern town. Those restless, unrestrained tendencies belied a larger truth — Austin Jasper Hines was destined for something great.

The route so many foresaw for Hines — known to teammates, coaches and fans as A.J. — is now his reality, perhaps in an even bigger way than many of them once imagined. In his three seasons at Duquesne, he has established himself as one of the most accomplished players in program history and one of the best players at the Football Championship Subdivision level. As the Dukes begin their 2019 season Saturday, the senior running back has the kind of expectations the broad shoulders on his 5-foot-11, 225-pound frame were built to carry. Coming off a junior season in which he finished eighth among all FCS and Football Bowl Subdivision players in rushing yards, he is a preseason FCS all-American and is among the top contenders for the Walter Payton Award, the FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, an honor for which he was a finalist last season.

Given those achievements, it’s fair to say the best college football player in Pittsburgh doesn’t play under the lights of Heinz Field, but rather a cozy, 2,200-seat facility perched atop a hill two miles to the east. It’s a fitting destination for someone who, for all the potential those close to him saw from a young age, has made a career out of excelling in the shadows and proving wrong all the bigger programs who overlooked him years ago.

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“They see what they could have had and what they missed out on,” Hines said. “I enjoy that. They slept on me and I’m still doing it and being successful where I’m at right now. I’m here for a reason.”

He arrived at Duquesne, a school he never knew existed until a football coach there contacted him coming out of high school, only after traversing a burdensome path.

Hines grew up in Wilson, N.C., a town of about 50,000 nearly an hour east of Raleigh. It’s a place nicknamed affectionately and not-so-affectionately as “Wide Awake Wilson,” a crucible of a town where, as Fate put it, “everybody knows everybody.” That intimacy grounded Hines, but it also presented dangers.

“It’s easy to get trapped in Wilson,” Fate said. “The opportunities for a young person in general are somewhat limited here. I always tell my nieces and nephews to get out of Wilson, to go somewhere bigger and somewhere to broaden your horizons. Wilson can become stagnant.”

The selling and use of drugs was relatively common, as were some of the other trappings that came with it, all of which could swallow the lives of those who crept close to it. Hines avoided whatever temptation they provided, but felt the brunt of it when, while a freshman at Duquesne in 2016, his older brother, David, was sentenced to an eight-year, four-month prison term.

He shielded himself in ways some people he knew didn’t, in part because he had football. He excelled at Fike High School in Wilson, attracting the attention of FBS programs, some of which began speaking with him as early as his sophomore year. There was a caveat to that interest, though — they wanted Hines, a two-way player at Fike, as a linebacker, not as a running back, his preferred position. While some players in such a situation would jump to the biggest program, regardless of where they would line up, Hines wasn’t so easily swayed.

“I just followed my heart,” he said. “I’ve been playing running back and linebacker all my life. But my heart has always been with the ball in my hands. Whoever gave me the chance to do that, I was going to take that route.”

He thought he found that school in Richmond, a top FCS program with whom he signed in Feb. 2016. Four months later, however, he was informed that his ACT score was one point shy of what he needed to qualify, leaving him without a home fewer than three months until the start of the season.

“At that time, when I found out about that, I was kind of lost,” Hines said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. It kind of scared me. Where I’m from, you can get in the streets just like this [snaps fingers].”

Feeling poorly about how everything transpired, one of the Richmond coaches who recruited Hines reached out to colleagues he knew at Duquesne, who called the running back the next day. He visited campus that weekend and by Sunday, he had committed.

“We just prayed a lot,” said Fate, who is a minister and whose husband, David, is a pastor. “God, what do you want us to do? Where do we go from here? When we went to Duquesne and I spoke to the coach, I got a sense of peace when I was in there. I said, ‘This is it. This is the place.’”

From virtually his first practice with the Dukes, Hines was turning heads and making an impact. In 2016, he rushed for 1,291 yards and 13 touchdowns, both freshman program records, and earned the Jerry Rice Award, presented annually to the most outstanding FCS freshman.

“You knew he was really good, but it was tough to see just how good he could be until we got him live here practicing,” Duquesne head coach Jerry Schmitt said. “Once we did, we knew we had someone special.”

A torn labrum sidelined him for two games as a sophomore and caused his numbers to dip, though he still finished sixth in the country in rushing yards per game. If that could be classified as a step back, he more than made up for it as a junior. He ran for 1,520 yards, the third-most of any FCS player, and averaged 126.7 rushing yards per game, the fifth-most of any player in the country. He saved his best for the biggest moments, too, racking up 246 scrimmage yards and two touchdowns in the Dukes’ FCS playoff win against Towson, the program’s first-ever such victory.

Entering his final season, he is first among active FCS players in career rushing yards (3,849) and rushing touchdowns (38). Barring something unfortunate or unexpected, he will leave Duquesne as the program’s career leader in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns. Maybe most notably, he’s among the favorites to win an award previously captured by the likes of Steve McNair, Tony Romo, Brian Westbrook and Jimmy Garoppolo.

They’re feats he’s not pursuing alone. Even as his brother is incarcerated, the two speak frequently, with the older sibling providing both encouragement and guidance. Hines also has a son in North Carolina who is about to turn 5, who he sees in person every so often and with whom he video chats every day. He’s now getting to an age where he realizes exactly who his dad is and what he’s doing on the field, so much so that he will run with a football around the house pretending to be his father, even mimicking some of his touchdown celebrations. For Hines, it adds another layer of meaning to every carry and every snap.

“That’s what I tell A.J. all the time — it’s not just about you anymore,” Fate said.

Given his production in college, questions about the next level naturally arise. A physical runner with quick feet and a controlled competitive zeal, Hines has garnered interest from “a number” of NFL scouts, Schmitt said. His future is largely an afterthought right now — after all, there is a season to prepare for — but for a player who has gotten to meet the likes of Jerry Rice, Jerome Bettis, Mike Tomlin, James Conner and Dak Prescott over the past several years, it’s almost impossible not to dream about what football could potentially provide for him one day.

What he needs to get there is relatively simple, the very thing Duquesne and his mother once provided him.

“I just want to get a chance,” Hines said. “If I get that chance, I’m going to take it and run with it.”

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Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG

First Published: September 6, 2019, 11:00 a.m.

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Duquesne All-American running back A.J. Hines poses for a portrait on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019, at Arthur J. Rooney Athletic Field in Uptown.  (Steph Chambers/Post-Gazette)
Steph Chambers/Post-Gazette
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