Imhotep standout Enai White wants to use football to make a ‘generational change’ for his family

It’s three days before the state semifinals and things aren’t going well at Lonnie Young Recreation Center, the football field with no goalposts where the Imhotep Charter Panthers practice.

They’re learning Strath Haven’s Wing-T offense on this night, and there’s a lack of focus. Players are talking while coaches are explaining gap assignments. On more than one occasion, two players nearly come to blows.

At this point, Enai White has seen enough.

The senior defensive end and second-year captain, who isn’t dressed for practice due toa sore ankle, tears into them.

“A lot of that stuff happens,” White said later. “You can’t control a lot of things, but at the end of the day we’re brothers. We fight, we shake hands. And it’s not a beef that’s going to go off this field. We’re going to have disagreements and we’re going to fight, it’s football.”

Three nights later, Imhotep shut out Strath Haven, 36-0.

This is the busiest White has ever been. The 6-foot-5, 230-pound prospect, 19, is among the most touted edge rushers in the country. The recruiting website 247Sports ranks White the No. 4 edge rusher in the country and the 38th overall prospect. With the early signing day approaching on Dec. 15, White has narrowed his list to Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas A&M.

He plans to announce the decision on Dec. 15, but first he has a state championship to try to win Friday night in Hershey against Penn-Trafford, a high school east of Pittsburgh.

“This is one of the most exciting times and important times for sure,” White said of the last few months. “And one of the hardest times, too.”

White is arguably the top prospect in the state. His ability is a big reason why Imhotep, which has become a local football powerhouse, is one win from its second state title in six years. But it’s his leadership that separates White from the pack, Imhotep coach Devon Johnson says.

It’s a mentality White learned when he was younger, as he helped his single mother guide a family through a time of crisis.

“It was forced on me,” White said. “Someone told me, ‘You’re going to be a role model without you asking to be one.’ So I just took that on.

“That’s one thing playing at Imhotep taught me, that I have to lead. And I really love doing this.”

Adrienne Ellington spends some of her days doing ministry transportation. She’ll shuttle people from Stenton Family Manor, a faith-based homeless shelter, to Mount Airy Church of God in Christ.

It’s only a mile drive down Stenton Avenue, but Ellington, White’s mother, knows the route well. It was only a few years ago that she and her five children, White included, were passengers in these same vehicles.

For about eight months, the family lived at Stenton Family Manor.

“As a mother, to me that was my worst time,” Ellington said during a recent phone conversation. “To have to bring your kids to a shelter … I felt I had failed at motherhood.”

Stenton Family Manor helps find its residents permanent housing. Eventually, Ellington and her children were placed in a home in North Philadelphia. It was around that time, Ellington said, that White left to attend The Pennington School, a private school in New Jersey. White was a talented basketball and football player, and Pennington offered a chance to excel at both in a more stable environment.

White stayed there for only a few months during his freshman year as life came calling back home. He enrolled at Imhotep, joining a program that has put nearly two dozen football players in Division I FBS programs since 2015.

Freshman year wasn’t the last time Ellington wanted White out of Philadelphia. She wants him out of the city as soon as possible.Philadelphia last month reached a grim milestone, topping 500 homicides in a calendar year for the first time since 1990. Dozens of those killed have been children or teenagers.

“Being a single parent, having a young Black male out here in the streets of Philadelphia … As a mother, don’t think that it doesn’t enter my mind,” Ellington said. “Yeah, it does. It’s just scary. What will happen from now until June or July [when he leaves for college]?”

If you’ve been paying attention to Pennsylvania football in recent years, you know Imhotep, as the school has sent multiple players to Power Five schools.

The list of alums currently on NFL rosters include Carolina Panthers receiver D.J. Moore, New England Patriots guard Yasir Durant, Washington defensive end Shaka Toney, and Denver’s Andre Mintze, a linebacker.

While those players were highly-rated prospects in high school, none of them reached the top of their position group before graduation like White has. He’s the highest-rated football prospect to come from the Public League since Sharrif Floyd left George Washington for Florida in 2010.

“From a pure measurable standpoint, we’ve never had someone that type of athletic, legit 6-6, 230 or 240 [pounds], arms down to his knees [at Imhotep],” said Johnson.

White’s rise has been rapid.

He began playing football for the Northwest Raiders, who share a field with Imhotep, as a young kid. Imhotep’s associate head coach, Cyril Woodland, coached White to two national titles before White was a teen.

White always had the size, Woodland said, but it wasn’t until he was 11 or 12 that Woodland realized “he’s got some stuff with him.” It didn’t all come together for another five or six years. White’s sophomore season was ruined by a concussion, and his junior year was lost to the pandemic.

Still, you can’t teach size. And White’s skills and athleticism meant that colleges wanted him. Badly.

On Sept. 1, the first day coaches were allowed to contact prospects, White estimates he received about 200 text messages shortly after midnight.

He remembers being nervous the first time he FaceTimed with Alabama coach Nick Saban.

“I didn’t want him to look at me a certain way,” White said. “I used to get butterflies, but now it’s normal. Anytime he calls it’s still like, ‘Damn, Nick Saban is calling my phone.’”

He’ll have to get used to the attention. White’s play has him on a trajectory to the NFL.. Johnson hopes White’s announcement brings the likes of ESPN to the East Germantown school.

“I think it’s definitely shifting to a football town,” Johnson said of the Philadelphia area.

“The national spotlight is on the city,” Woodland said. “We’ve had talent here. But now the country is starting to acknowledge it.”

The first time Ellington rode on a plane was for White’s visit to Georgia. Since then she’s been on three additional trips, with a fifth coming this weekend, when White visits Texas A&M.

Woodland, who Ellington calls “more than a coach, he’s a father figure,” has joined White and his mother on every trip.

No matter what happens next, White said, he won’t forget where he came from. He wants to return to Imhotep each year and help guide the next generation into the future.

Those who know him best laud his maturity. He wants to incorporate Stenton Family Manor into his announcement video somehow.

“He’s not ashamed of his story,” Ellington said.

Or his mother. Ellington said White calls her his mother and his father. White knows his father, but the man who Ellington used to be married to has never been around much.

“Sometimes you’d think he was my father,” Ellington joked.

White called his mother and siblings his motivation. The NFL, he said, is where their lives could forever change.

“It lights my world up knowing that I’m showing my mom a different way of life,” White said. “Just for me to be able to do that, and to see her proud of me, it motivates me. I think about it every day.”

The future can be enticing.

“This is going to be a generational change,” White said. “I want to change how my family lives and the way my kids are going to see life and the way my grandkids are going to see life.”

Said Ellington: “I just want Enai to be able to experience it. He deserves it.

“This is all new for me. In a million years — not underestimating my son — I never imagined it would be what it is now.”