Role models put Rodgers brothers on right track

Early guidance, sports helped keep OSU pair in line

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Sep 30, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

OSU’s Jacquizz Rodgers (1) dives for the goal line in a recent victory against Hawaii. Sports helped Jacquizz and brother James avoid the drugs and crime scene prevalent in the Houston suburb where they grew up.

CORVALLIS — If you have an interest in James and Jacquizz Rodgers — and just about everybody in Beaver Nation does these days — a primer on the pair’s upbringing in Richmond, Texas, serves a purpose.

The key figures in the lives of Oregon State’s talented brother duo include Tasha Williams, their mother and a single parent of four; Rodney Williams, their uncle and father figure; Michael Lewis, another uncle and a safety for the San Francisco 49ers, and Mike Zierlein, offensive coordinator at Lamar Consolidated High who was close to the boys in their high school years.

James, a sophomore slotback, and Jacquizz, a true freshman tailback, are polite, modest and academically oriented — they were both honor students in high school. It’s a credit to them, but also to those providing guidance during their formative years.

Missing most of their lives has been their father, James Rodgers Sr., incarcerated in the Texas Prison System since 2004 on drug charges.

“He got in with the wrong crowd,” says Tasha, whose other two children — daughter Carcarsha, 16, and Michael, 11 — came from different fathers.

James Sr. and Tasha never were married and never lived together. He has been in and out of prison over the years, leaving the child-rearing to Tasha and her oldest brother, Rodney, a former basketball player at NCAA Division III Texas Lutheran.

Rodney, a year older than Tasha, “played a major factor in raising the boys,” she says. “He stepped in and was like a father to them. We did a lot with them to keep their heads on straight.”

Drugs and crime are prevalent in Richmond, a suburb of Houston, and temptations were always there for the Rodgers brothers.

“Sports helped keep them in line,” Tasha Williams says, “but I want to say the boys were very strong. Some of their friends turned another route. Someone would tell me to tell (James and Jacquizz) to stop hanging with the kids geared toward trouble, but I let them pick their own friends. I saw they could manage their lives. They knew right from wrong.”

The Rodgers brothers say little about their father, but seem to hold no malice. They say they learned from his mistakes.

“He made some bad choices,” Jacquizz says. “We didn’t want to go down that road.”

“He’s still my dad,” James says. “I can’t worry too much about it. Everything happens for a reason. That’s how I see it. You just have to move on, get stronger so you won’t end up in that predicament.”

They had a role model in Rodney, who became the first member of their extended family to graduate from college.

“I don’t think (their father’s incarceration) had an effect on the way they turned out at all,” says Rodney, 37, who has a degree from Houston’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law and does project management work for Sprint Telephone. “They don’t know any other way.

“We detach ourselves from it. My father’s in prison, too. That’s not anything to do with me. That’s his grave; he has to dig himself out of it.”

Other family members have come and gone from prison, Rodney says.

“I got tired of seeing celebrations over that,” he says. “I kind of went anti- on all that. I mean, we have kids in our family graduating from high school, going to college, and no one makes a peep. Those are kids who can be saved, who are doing positive things, and you want to celebrate somebody getting out of prison?”

James and Jacquizz Rodgers are at Oregon State, building on their success stories. It could easily have gone another way.

•••

For the past 15 years, Tasha Williams has been a mental health aide at Richmond State School. James and Jacquizz visited her at work many times through the years, and “the kids love her,” James says. “She takes care of them real well.”

In reality, Tasha works with “mostly adults who are like kids,” she says. “It’s a challenge, working with the mental. But it’s a job I have grown to love.”

At age 16, Tasha had James. Fourteen months later came Jacquizz. Why the name Jacquizz?

“It was just something I came up with,” says Tasha with a laugh. “I decided to start it with a ‘J’, like James. Originally it was going to be ‘Sir Princeton Rodgers.’ Glad I decided against that.”

From age seven, James and Jacquizz were into sports. Football. Basketball. Track and field.

They were also into plenty of mischief, as little boys are wont to do.

“They were bad as hell,” Rodney Williams says, chuckling. “Unruly. Playing with matches, that type of stuff. Never any police trouble, mind you, but they were two of the worst kids around.”

Zierlein, one year behind Rodney Williams in school, didn’t meet the Rodgers boys until James was in ninth grade and Jacquizz in eight grade. But, Zierlein says of Rodney’s assessment, “that might be a little of the pot calling the kettle black.”

There were plenty of squabbles between the brothers in those early years.

“We used to fight when we were little, but as we got older, we learned to get along and have a better relationship,” Jacquizz says.

“We were real competitive with each other until we got to high school,” James says. “Then we eased it down a bit, because we were teammates then.”

“When they were young,” Tasha recalls, again laughing, “there were times when I had to make sure they were on the same team. If they played against each other, it would be a fight in the car all the way home.”

Now, of course, they are best friends.

“You could say that,” Jacquizz nods. “We’re always around each other.”

After Rodney graduated from law school in 1998, he returned to the Richmond area, when James and Jacquizz were nine and eight years old. Half-brother Michael Lewis, nine years Rodney’s junior, had a mostly absent father.

“My mother calls Michael my son,” Rodney says. “Part of the reason I came back was to give Michael some direction, to be there for him. After he left for college (at Colorado), James and Jacquizz became my next project. They were always good athletes, very competitive. It was just time to channel it in the right direction.”

“Rodney was a big influence on us,” James says. “He was our mentor in high school. He still does it now. We look up to him like a father figure in our lives.”

“He was over a lot of nights and just about every weekend,” Jacquizz says. “He paved the way for both of us.”

•••

Students from Richmond and neighboring Rosenberg pool into Lamar Consolidated High. When James and Jacquizz grew up, they lived in Richmond. Tasha, who turns 36 in November, and her two younger children have moved to a house in Rosenberg. Rodney — divorced and with a seven-year-old daughter — lives in Katy, a 15- to-20-minute drive away. All three surburban towns are within a half-hour of Houston.

Though short — today, both are listed at 5-7 — the Rodgers made an immediate impact at Lamar Consolidated. Jacquizz started all four years in football, James the final three. In basketball, both were three-year starters, James winning district MVP honors as a senior.

“I was point guard; he was shooting guard,” James says.

“I was a defensive specialist,” Jacquizz says.

Were they the shortest backcourt in the conference?

“Probably so,” Quiz says, “but the quickest.”

James made the biggest impact in track and field, finishing second at state in the 100 meters as a senior with a best of 10.33. The Rodgers brothers ran on both relay units.

There wasn’t a lot of extra money in the household during their formative years.

“Things were kind of tight, but they had everything they needed,” Tasha says. “If I couldn’t do for Jacquizz this paycheck, he’d get it the next paycheck. James was always the one who had to have the latest. Jacquizz was the understanding one.”

Asked in what others ways the boys were different, Tasha pauses for a few seconds.

“James is a person who can hold a conversation on anything,” she says. “Quiz is low-key and more quiet. You would have to start a conversation with him. But they’re both good kids.”

James and Jacquizz are appreciative of their mother.

“She’s a great woman,” James says. “As a single parent, it was hard, but she made sure we had everything we needed. I love her for that.”

“She kept our heads on straight, so we could get to this point in our lives,” Jacquizz adds.

Tasha, with the help of her brother, kept all of the children focused on academics.

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