2015 ALL-AREA DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Greene's thoughts never far from brother during state title run

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary
The 2015 Telegram All-Area Defense Football Player of the Year, Sherrod Greene, of Rocky Mount High School.

Ask Sherrod Greene about specific games in which he’s played, and the Rocky Mount High junior linebacker will struggle to recall details.

Game-changing, fumble-return touchdowns against Wilson Fike and Southern Nash in conference play?

Both faded into a haze of adrenaline and pent-up aggression.

The entire NCHSAA 3-A state championship game, a 24-21 Gryphons win in overtime over Belmont South Point on Dec. 11? Greene mostly remembers crying happy tears on Kenan Stadium’s north sideline, after the dust had settled.

Even in postgame interviews all season, Greene, ranked by at least one recruiting service as one of the top 150 players in the country for the class of 2017, would offer little detail about specific plays, but he would always have a wide grin plastered on his face – a stark comparison to the laser-eyed, see-through-you stare that marked his gameface.

Football has always been – from when he started playing in the backyard and when he joined the Rocky Mount city league at nine – where Sherrod, the Telegram’s 2015 Football All-Area Defensive Player of the Year, has gone to relieve stress and to release anger without fear of repercussions.

The 120-by-53 1/3-yard football field is where Sherrod, who led the Gryphons with 134 tackles and added 11 tackles for loss, five sacks, four fumble recoveries and two forced fumbles, goes to think of nothing but football. No thoughts of his struggles in English class, or doubters at school, or girls, or that he’s grown up in a city where guns and drugs are easy to find and not-so-easy to avoid, as he has seen firsthand. No thoughts of trying to get his mother, Chanda Underwood, a better life, and no thoughts of a brother who passed away in the blink of an eye in 2013.

Just before midnight on February 20, 2013, Justin Alston, Sherrod’s 22-year-old brother, was crossing railroad tracks in Battleboro when the car he was driving became stuck between two downed crossing arms that had dropped as an Amtrak train approached.

The speed limit for Amtrak in the area is 79 miles per hour, authorities said; one of Alston’s passengers escaped, but Sherrod said his brother panicked and did not move as the train struck the car’s passenger side. Alston passed away at the scene.

“I looked up to him a lot, our bond was tight,” Greene said. “It really hurt when I lost him.

It happened at night, and I found out that next morning from mom. Waking up to something like that…”

Greene’s voice trailed.

“I don’t ever let any of my anger get out to people,” Greene continued. “So I’ve let all that anger from the past build up inside of me. I know that’s bad, but that’s just how I am, I don’t like to talk my problems out. But a big one is the fact I lost my (Justin), I’m still angry about that. Justin was the only brother I really talked to my problems about, so I haven’t had him around for that.”

Justin gave Sherrod the tough love and advice that only an older brother with experiences could. Alston had seen others in the Parker community succumb to Rocky Mount’s seedier element.

“Justin always was trying to tell him to keep his head straight and stay out of trouble because Justin had seen it, had been affiliated with those types of people and didn’t want Sherrod to get in with that,” Rod White, one of Greene’s oldest and closest friends and a junior linebacker for the Gryphons, said by telephone. “He was a good big brother. He wanted Sherrod to go somewhere in football because he saw how good and how big he was.”

What’s more, Alston had seen another brother, Rodquez Greene – who Sherrod said was bigger and more talented – star for Rocky Mount High earlier this decade. But Rodquez never took football past the 252 area code.

Rodquez lives with Sherrod and Underwood now, and White said he’s taken over the role in Sherrod’s life that Alston once played.

“(Quez) is hard on Sherrod like Justin always was,” White said. “Certain stuff Sherrod might wanna do, Quez won’t allow it. Say Sherrod wants to hang with somebody, if Quez knows them and knows they ain’t good people, then he says, ‘nah, you’re staying in the house.’”

Sherrod, for the most part, keeps to himself. He plays football, and goes home. On the field and on the sidelines, he’s not particularly vocal or in teammates’ faces after a bad play or series.

But the looks on teammates’ faces after some of his bigger plays this year spoke volumes. Most were too busy giving each other wide-eyed, knowing glances, to celebrate, as if to say, ‘glad that guy is on my side.’”

Sherrod was a big target for all of the Gryphons’ opponents this season, and he knew that would be the case. Teams see an opposing player with Division I-talent – Sherrod has verbal offers from UNC, N.C. State, Virginia Tech and East Carolina, among others – and know where to focus their scouting attention.

One Rocky Mount High playoffs opponent, to remain anonymous, took it a step further, taking any opportunity to step on Greene’s legs and, well, nether regions, trying to force him out of the game.

Sherrod played through that. He injured his left shoulder in Rocky Mount High’s third-round win over Eden Morehead but returned to help force a huge fourth-quarter stop. He played through a high ankle sprain in the state championship game suffered just one week prior at Eastern Alamance.

Given the support system around him, there might be no stopping Sherrod from becoming the next star athlete to leave the Twin Counties for bigger and better things. Some will talk about wanting to make it out, but Sherrod, with the early college offers and, as of now, the grades to qualify, can almost touch his route out.

“I feel like I’m not stopping until I gets my mom what she wants,” Sherrod said. “I’m not stopping until she doesn’t have to work anymore. I want to do well for her.”

By FOSTER LANDER

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Wednesday, December 23, 2015