Cheesehead
Well-known member
- Mar 19, 2019
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Just rent the room for two days and be done with it.
That’s all Nicole Clark heard in the days leading up to the 2016 NFL Draft. From every corner of San Bernardino, they made the same plea – plan a two-day draft party in the event her son, Kenneth Duane Clark Jr., should slip into the second round.
Nicole didn’t want to hear it. Not from Kenny. Not from anyone. It got to the point she started cutting people off before they could even finish their sentences.
There was an electronic billboard announcing Kenny’s draft party was taking place on April 28, so April 28 it would be. There was no point in booking the hall for a second day because it wouldn’t be necessary.
Her baby was going first round.
“I don’t want to hear any negativity,” Nicole would tell them. “You’re either on board with what I’m on board with or you’re not – and if you’re not, then keep it to yourself because I don’t want that energy.”
It wasn’t pride or prestige motivating Nicole’s optimism. It was faith – and maybe a little stubbornness – that everything her son had been through in his 20 years had brought him to this moment.
The pre-draft process introduced Kenny and his family to every team in the NFL. After the NFL Scouting Combine, their house flooded with T-shirts, hats and every piece of apparel imaginable. Family members picked the pile of 300 or so items down to a few parcels.
It was only then Nicole took something for herself, a small Packers beanie she noticed near the bottom. She brought that hat with her to the hotel on draft night and lingered on it for a few seconds after changing for the party.
“I’m standing in the door of my room and I looked back at that beanie and I said to Kenny, ‘What do you think that means, this is the only thing we have left from the combine stuff,’” Nicole said. “He said, ‘You never know.’”
The room was bursting beyond capacity, with more than 250 in attendance. Clark was calm at first since he wasn’t pegged to be drafted in the top 15, but that still didn’t stop Nicole from saying, “Who is that?” and “You’re better than him,” after every selection NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell read.
Finally, after the Packers went on the clock at No. 26, Clark’s phone rang with a call from General Manager Ted Thompson. As the gathered crowd began to roar, Nicole charged over to the oldest of her four children.
“I never saw her run so fast. I mean she sprinted toward the table,” Kenny said. “She just kept saying, ‘Who is that? Who is that?’ I’m trying to talk to Ted. I’m like, ‘Hold on, hold on.’ Everybody starts telling her, ‘It’s Green Bay, it’s Green Bay.’ She was the first one that started screaming. I couldn’t even hear Ted.”