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Dean plays by the rules

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Times Staff Writer

All Aundre Dean needed was the direction. That made playing running back easy as a kid.

“They told me to run right, I ran right,” he said. “They told me to run left, I ran left.”

The straight and narrow was a little harder.

Dean, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound tailback from Katy High outside Houston, signed a letter of intent with UCLA on Wednesday, part of an ongoing journey where he could have easily gone wrong instead of right.

He never knew his father. He remembers his mother leaving when he was a kid, but little else. The age of his youngest sister is a guess to him.

Yet, Dean almost giddily talks about being blessed, a young man with a future instead of a past.

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Adopted by Michael and Jennifer Dean, whose cousin was the principal at the elementary school Aundre attended, he was given direction.

“I was rebellious and got into trouble at first,” Dean said. “I wanted to do my own thing. I was so used to doing my own thing. But they took care of me.

“I had to clean my room. I had to do chores. I had to get good grades. I was doing things normal kids did. I had never had that before. Once I learned to trust them, everything turned around.”

Being a high school football star is big. Being a high school football star in Texas is enormous. Dean and his mother learned that sitting in the emergency room last fall at a hospital on the night he broke his hand.

“There was a lady with her young son sitting there, wearing a shirt with Aundre’s number, and I heard her say, ‘Don’t you know who that is?’ ” Jennifer Dean said. “She said, ‘That’s Aundre Dean, the player whose poster you have on your wall.’ ”

After seeing the doctor, the Deans were riding down in the elevator, “When the doors opened, there were all these kids standing there waiting for Aundre,” Jennifer Dean recalled. “They stood there with their mouths open. I knew Aundre was in pain, but he took the time to talk with them.”

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Katy knows good football. The school has won four Class 5A Division II titles in the last 11 years.

But Dean was a little different. His play on the field was exceptional -- 5,420 yards rushing and 61 touchdowns in three seasons -- his demeanor off it impressive.

“I think he’s struck by how kids look up to him here,” Katy Coach Gary Joseph said. “I don’t think he realizes he’s like a folk hero to them. He just goes to the elementary schools as our captain and speaks with the kids, telling them the importance of school. That’s how he was raised.”

Dean downplays his difficult past, saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” Yet, he also knows the path might have been different.

Dean lived in foster homes or with his grandmother until the fifth grade. He and his older sister, Shannon, would trade off missing school to remain at home with his younger sister.

“Mom leaving and not coming back was a weird experience,” Dean said. “Everything else is just shut out.”

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Then Kimberly McLeod, the principal at his school, got involved. “She took care of me, made sure I got to school,” Dean said.

McLeod also got the Deans involved. They adopted Aundre and Shannon. The younger girl, Danielle, was adopted by another family in the Houston area.

The principal “said he was a great kid with a great heart and he would eventually get mixed up in the wrong things,” said Jennifer Dean, who has four children, three of whom are adopted. “She believed in him.”

She added, “We never talk about it with him. No one calls us his adoptive mother or father. We’re his mom and dad.”

That’s not to say life immediately smoothed out for Dean.

“I wanted to see how far I could go,” Dean said. “I wanted to see how they would treat me. I didn’t like the rules and wanted to go back to the foster home. They would ground me, but no matter what I did they accepted me. Once I found that out, the tide started to turn.”

By then, he had found football.

“He was pretty hyper,” Jennifer Dean said. “He needed an outlet.”

Dean admits to Texas-style treason -- “I had no interest in football,” he said. But boys will be boys, and boys in Texas play football.

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“Running back seemed the easiest position,” Dean said. “You just ran.”

Dean was a made-for-TV-movie trampling over a used-for-TV-team.

Katy’s team was struggling, tied 7-7 against Pflugerville, the Texas school used as the backdrop for “Friday Night Lights.”

Unfortunately for Pflugerville, no one was around to holler “cut” during the state championship game at San Antonio in December.

Dean burned across the Alamodome turf on a 66-yard touchdown run in the third quarter and Katy capped a 16-0 season with a 28-7 victory. Dean finished with 221 yards rushing and was named offensive player of the game.

No one was surprised.

“I watched him some when he was in junior high and you could see the drive,” Katy Coach Joseph said. “When he got to high school, I learned he was a kid of character. By the end of his freshman year, you knew he was going to be something special.”

In Texas jargon, Dean has a big hat and plenty of cattle. Big and powerful, he can cover 40 yards in 4.48 seconds and he finished his senior season with 2,498 yards rushing and 27 touchdowns.

A small recruiting range war developed.

Dean orally committed to Texas A&M;, but changed his mind after visiting UCLA. Then, when Bruins coach Karl Dorrell was fired, Dean became apprehensive about his decision.

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He considered Arkansas and Louisville while UCLA scrambled to keep him, sending three coaches to town at different times.

Dean made his choice after doing what has benefited him for a decade, leaning on his parents.

“I don’t think I have ever seen him agonize as much as he did the last three weeks,” Jennifer Dean said. “We haven’t been home on weekends for a solid month. . . . People like to woo you and it’s very much a game, a business. It’s very political.

“We were very organized. We had a 10-point list and we’d come back home and rate everyone. We asked him, ‘If you didn’t play football and based on academics, where would you go?’ ”

Dean reaffirmed his commitment to UCLA two weeks ago.

“Sometimes you look at a young player and try to project what he will be,” UCLA Coach Rick Neuheisel said. “This is a guy who is complete right now.”

If not complete, then at least headed in the right direction.

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chris.foster@latimes.com

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