Here was a man who they aspired to be. Here was a millionaire. A local legend. An NFL star. A man who’d sat in their same seats and made it out.
And so they watched as this man wearing a T-Shirt and a diamond-studded Egyptian cross sauntered to the forefront of the Carol City Senior High gymnasium to speak on Saturday morning. It didn’t matter that Saturday night was prom. Everyone — about 150 students, coaches and administrators — was there by 11 a.m. to see and listen to Allen Hurns.
Hurns, who graduated from Carol City in 2010 before starring on the football field with the Miami Hurricanes and Jacksonville Jaguars, was back at his alma mater to give its current athletes things he never had as a high school student: A $7,500 donation to the athletic department and boxes upon boxes of arm sleeves and headbands striped in Carol City colors and bearing the Chiefs’ logo.