As Marquise Peggs reached for the door handle to take out the trash, he heard four or five loud gunshots. Someone was killed just yards from the trash bin Peggs was headed to, in an alley behind an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side.

Peggs’ mother screamed his name.

“She thought it was him getting shot,” said Peggs’ younger brother, Marquell.

His mother, Vanessa Morrissette, ran to the back of the family’s second floor apartment. She found out Peggs was fine. The body lay there for hours that Saturday morning in March 2014.

Over the next couple of years, Peggs heard several gunshots per week in what he described as a violent neighborhood. A gang territory lay two blocks from his apartment. Peggs’s mother refused to let him walk anywhere. Even when he had to walk to school a few blocks away, she made him drive.

Two and a half years later, Peggs plays at Yale (1-4, 1-1 Ivy), where the 5-foot-11, 176-pound sophomore defensive back has settled in. He’s overcome the crime-ridden, dangerous streets near Chicago’s Chappel Avenue.

Morrissette lost her job shortly after Peggs started ninth grade at Mount Carmel (Illinois) High School, a state power whose graduates include former Syracuse quarterback and NFL star Donovan McNabb. As a senior, Peggs dominated for one of the state’s top defenses and captained Mount Carmel to the 2014 state title.

But after Morrissette lost her job, there were questions. How Peggs could attend Mount Carmel, a private school, boost his SAT score and if he could even go to college were in doubt.

Morrissette didn’t know how she would pay for Peggs’ high school tuition, let alone college. Even with his 50 percent scholarship, she needed to cough up $5,000 per year.

So she took a leap of faith.

She worked toward her bachelor’s degree in 2012 and master’s degree a year later. She ended 18 months of unemployment by starting her own financial advisory and attended night weekend classes at Robert Morris (Illinois) University.

Every day, Morrissette cooked breakfast for her three children, worked from home, cooked dinner, volunteered at a school and church and took classes. A single parent, Morrissette earned only about $30,000 a year and was indebted $80,000 in student loans.

“How am I going to make it? What are we going to do?” Morrissette remembers thinking. “I was nervous, petrified to get through this. Me trying to go to school … I was paranoid.”

After a game in which he hadn’t played well during his junior year, Peggs broke down in tears at the kitchen table at 1 a.m. For the first time, he told his mother his goal of earning a full scholarship.

“I got to get to college, I got to get to college,” he told her.

“I was trying to reassure him he was going to college,” Morrissette said. “It hurt me because I didn’t want him to concern.”

You shouldn’t be stressed about a football game, Morrissette told him. You can’t get this time back, she said, adding that he should just focus on his studies.

“And I’ll handle the rest.”

Peggs’ mother continued to fund his education. But soon he evolved into a better player.

Joe Kubik, an assistant defensive back coach at Mount Carmel High School, saw Peggs’ quick feet and long arms in ninth grade. Peggs didn’t have a high football IQ and was very raw, Kubik said, but potential was there.

High-aggressiveness spurted his growth as a player, and as a recruit. Against some of Illinois’s top high school wide receivers, Peggs pressed at the line of scrimmage. He wouldn’t let receivers get free.

In the months that followed, Peggs received offers from Stanford, Northwestern, Harvard, Yale, most Mid-American Conference schools and a handful of Mountain West programs.

Yale doesn’t offer athletic scholarships, but the school’s generous financial aid programs provide students from middle- and lower-income households with little or no cost tuition. Peggs chose Yale over powerhouses behind the promise of Ivy League academics.

The culture shock of adjusting to life at Yale hit Peggs hard. There was not nearly as much noise or violence on campus in New Haven, Connecticut.

“My first night, I couldn’t sleep because it was so quiet,” Peggs said. “I was used to hearing ambulances and commotion. The first night, it was silent. I just couldn’t process it.”

He’s now settled in. Peggs wears a necklace he “literally doesn’t take off,” that he believes keeps him safe from injury. A friend from home gave it to him. It reminds him of his roots — the violence, his mother’s grit and his jump to college, something that seemed unattainable just three years ago.

Published on October 18, 2016 at 11:30 pm

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21