St. Joseph’s Prep quarterback Samaj Jones received a wake-up call at the right time

Samaj Jones wouldn’t have to wake up to see him. He could hear him. It became a morning ritual. The percussion of his life unfurling in heavy, angry feet rising up rickety, wooden stairs, accompanied by the high-pitched Marine wake-up call: “Samaj, get up! Come on Samaj, you’re killing me, get up!” A groggy Jones would be greeted in his bedroom by the beaming face of St. Joseph’s Prep offensive coordinator Tom Sugden, heated once again that he had to make a detour in his schedule to come through the back door of Jones’ home to fetch this freshman with a penchant for oversleeping on school days.

Jones first thought was, How did Coach Sugden get in my house?

His second: Here we go, I’m in trouble again.

Jones was often in trouble his freshman year at the Prep. He missed a lot of school. He was failing numerous courses. He was blowing the chance of a lifetime. Everyone around him saw star potential — Sugden, Prep head coach Tim Roken, his father, Tenoli Jones, his mother, Shawntel Hall, his team, and the Prep community.

Everyone, that is, except Samaj Jones. He wanted to disappear. He’d pity himself under a pile of tears, telling anyone willing to listen, “I can’t do this, it’s too hard.”

One day, late in the spring of 2021, the second semester of his freshman year, Jones got up on his own and went to school.

On Saturday, the 6-foot-1, 210-pound junior quarterback will be leading St. Joe’s Prep’s drive towards another PIAA Class 6A state championship, when the Hawks (8-1) play Northeast (8-2) for the District 12 6A championship, at Northeast High.

» READ MORE: Northeast’s Naquil Betrand was ‘a late bloomer’ as an offensive tackle and is now a coveted recruit

Jones is a dual-threat quarterback who reminds college recruiters of a high school Jalen Hurts and Russell Wilson. He has completed 93 of 154 passes for 1,721 yards and 20 touchdowns, while rushing for 533 yards and 10 touchdowns on 80 carries, averaging 6.6 yards a carry. He was voted Philadelphia Catholic League Red Division MVP. He has received offers from Louisville, West Virginia, Penn State, Tennessee, and Temple among others. The list promises to grow.

In the Hawks’ second game this season, Jones shattered the school’s single-game passing record by throwing for 420 yards and seven touchdowns, while responsible for eight total touchdowns, in the Hawks’ 55-20 rout of St. Peter’s Prep (Jersey City) on Sept. 3.

He smashed the previous mark of 370 yards set in 1989 by Frank Costa, the star of the late-1980s who went on to play for Miami. Another Hawks star, Kyle McCord, now the backup quarterback at Ohio State, owns the other 300-plus yard passing games, which he did four times. Not even former NFL MVP Rich Gannon, a 1983 Prep grad, threw for over 400 yards.

Gradually, Jones is becoming the star everyone envisioned.

He just needed to wake up.

“I had to do a lot of growing up,” said Jones, who at 17 sounds like he’s 47 with his deep-toned Barry White voice. “Everything that happened to me was no one else’s fault but my own. I have to own it. I need to be held accountable. Everything takes time. I didn’t believe in myself; I did have doubts. My biggest problem was that I had help available and I didn’t ask for it. I started in a hole, and I made the hole bigger, thinking I could deal with it by ignoring it. That the problem would fix itself. I made progress over time that I could do this. By the end of last season, everyone let me know I was their guy.”

» READ MORE: St. Joseph’s Prep linebacker Cole Nilles found success as a two-sport athlete

Then, Jones recounted a story of a meeting this past summer. Sugden had gathered the skill-position players together after a film session to let them know no one had a guaranteed starting spot — except one guy. He pointed at the kid who he used to wake up — Jones. If anyone had plans on getting on the field, they had to gain his trust.

Sugden, a Roman Catholic grad, has been at the school for 10 years, starting there under legendary Hawks coach Gabe Infante. Sugden was Roken’s center when they played together at East Stroudsburg. He laughs at the recollection of morning runs to get his quarterback.

“Samaj’s freshman year was the COVID year, and he played on varsity as a freshman to shadow Kyle, and learn under him, but since everything was virtual, he didn’t get that chance,” said Sugden, who drives from North Philly to Collingdale each morning as a program director in the Southeast Delco School District. “When it came time for Samaj to take over, it was a culture shock. I took it on myself to wake him up, give him a nice ‘Coach Sugden’ wake up. Some mornings when we had to get going, it was, ‘Get your ass out of bed,’ and other mornings it was more subtle. Samaj is a great kid. Everyone loves him. Anything Samaj wants to be good at, he’s good.

“St. Joe’s Prep is a different school. It’s a high-end academic school, with a national-level football program. Compound that by being the quarterback at St. Joe’s Prep, it would be a lot for anyone. The best thing for Samaj is he recognized his faults and it made things easier to get him on the right path. If he wasn’t willing to change, there would be no change. Samaj wants to be coached. He wants to be coached hard. Everyone believed Samaj. Samaj just had to believe in himself. I would say he does now.

“We’re not even close to what Samaj can be.”

A big moment came one morning when Sugden had it with the wake-up calls. Driving to school, he ripped his future quarterback, yelling at Jones that he was not about to let him fail. Jones, as he did many times the previous two years, shed tears that the Prep was too hard. Another time came last year when he entered Roken’s office, again doubting himself, overwhelmed by carrying the mantle of the team.

Then there was the time Hall received his first report card in January 2021 and threatened she would enroll him in the nearest public school if he didn’t get his act together. Or the time Tenoli entered his bedroom talking on the phone one morning after Samaj had missed a series of school functions. Tenoli handed him the phone. It was Roken. After the Hawks coach spoke to him, Tenoli lit him up about failing himself and wasting the sacrifices both he and Samaj’s mother were making.

Tenoli has worked at Temple for the last 20 years. He handles the laundry there. His workdays require him to get up at 3 in the morning and sometimes don’t allow him to come home until 9 at night. An 80-hour work week is the norm. The games he can’t make he stays with over the Prep streaming network. When Samaj showed Tenoli the PIAA 6A state championship ring he received his freshman year, the father told the son he better not see that ring on his finger, because he did nothing to earn it. The championship ring sits somewhere in one of Samaj’s bedroom drawers, never worn.

When Samaj, who lives with his father, was missing school, Tenoli would leave the back door unlocked so Sugden could stop by and wake him.

“Samaj knows right from wrong, and he knew better than to miss school, and that really pissed me off,” Tenoli said. “St. Joe’s Prep is a special place. He needed to know he couldn’t ruin this opportunity. I cursed at him that everyone was working hard for him. He was ruining that chance. He wants to play college football. He knows the value of hard work, because he sees me doing it every day. I’m very proud of my son, because he saw the mistakes he was making, and I know grown men that don’t face their mistakes. It clicked in his mind how many people really believed in him. I’m willing to die to get him in the right position. There were times I didn’t eat so he could have lunch money and the clothes he needed.”

Hall quit numerous jobs so she could watch her son play on weekends. A Temple graduate with a degree in business administration, she’s constantly on her youngest about his education. She and Tenoli vowed their son would never walk through a metal detector to go to school.

Last October, it almost happened. Fearful Samaj was drifting back to his old habits, she called Roken in a rage. She was taking him out of the Prep. Samaj had hurt his left foot and missed some games. He was sinking into a depression.

“I told Coach Roken that I was going to kill him,” Hall recalls now, laughing. “If he wasn’t going to get himself up for school and do the things that he’s supposed to do, I told Coach Roken I was going to take him out. I was going to transfer him. If he wanted to go the easy route and sleep in every morning, if he wasn’t answering his phone in the morning to go to school, I wasn’t going to go off and track him down. Coach Roken told me he would handle it.”

He did.

“Samaj needed to hold himself more accountable, and he has a different sense of confidence in himself,” Roken said. “But yeah, he sat there in my office crying last year because he didn’t think he could do it. The funny thing is the only one who didn’t think Samaj could lead this team was Samaj. He was the quarterback. He needed to lead. He has. He wasn’t about to let anyone down. It bothered him that he felt he let the seniors down when we lost the state title game. He’s very mature in a lot of ways. Who he was then and who he is now are almost two completely different people.”

On the field last year, Samaj admitted he winged it about 75 percent of the time, that “I had no clue what I was doing.” The coaching staff would get on him about what he saw, and he says he was seeing ghosts. He has a greater grasp of the offense, which has obviously translated into the kind of games he had against St. Peter’s.

» READ MORE: St. Joseph’s Prep football players to watch

“I cry when I see him play, because I remember the times he drove me crazy and where he is today,” Hall said. “We were out to dinner a few weeks ago when Samaj asked me if he could call the West Virginia coach. When he got off the phone, I looked at him and told him this is why I did what I did and everyone around him did what they did to push him.”

Each morning, Samaj wakes up around 6:30. He sleeps with his cell phone alarm under his pillow. He takes the No. 4 bus down to Broad and Girard Streets, and takes the three-block walk to school. He changes into his school uniform every day at his basement locker. He currently carries three As, a B, and a C. Sugden, Roken, Hall, and Tenoli haven’t had to call him in over a year. He’s missed one day of school this semester.

Samaj Jones has woken up.