Best of His Age : Playing Beyond His Years, Boseman Has Often Been Asked How Old He Is, but There’s No Question How Talented He Is

Stais Boseman scored a touchdown the first time he touched a football in a game. He was 7.

“How old are you?” asked a parent who had just watched Boseman run over and around the other players in the Inglewood Junior All-American League. “You have to be older than they say you are.”

Boseman did not know how to respond.

What do you say when people think that you are older because of your athletic talents. Do you get angry? Do you laugh? Or, do you simply smile?

Boseman has heard speculation about his age so often he wonders whether he should carry around his birth certificate.

The reason for all the talk about age is simple. Boseman is that good.

He had his Junior All-American jersey retired when he was 9. He has been one of the best all-around athletes in the state since ninth grade; and this year, as a senior, he will become the first athlete at Inglewood Morningside High to start in both football and basketball four consecutive years.

Boseman has size, speed and savvy. There probably is not a college recruiter in the nation who does not have Boseman listed in his file.

During the 1991-92 school year, Boseman led Morningside to the State Division III title in basketball and the Southern Section Division VIII championship in football. If not for a ruling last month that forced the Monarchs to forfeit their football title, Boseman would be going for a double double.

“When Stais plays, he often looks like a man playing with boys,” said a Pacific 10 Conference recruiter. “He can do whatever he wants to, whenever he wants.”

Boseman dominated play so thoroughly that twice The Times received calls from opponents questioning his age following Morningside’s championships.

One call came after Boseman rushed for 146 yards and a touchdown and passed for another in Morningside’s 27-20 victory over Temecula Valley for the Southern Section Division VIII football title last December.

The other call came in March after Boseman scored 24 points while leading the Monarchs to a 79-72 victory over Seaside in the State Division III basketball championship game.

“I hear people saying that I’m too old and that I’ve stayed back a couple of years all of the time,” said Boseman, who turned 18 in March. “I guess I’ve always looked old, but I can’t change that.”

For Boseman, it’s ironic that Morningside was stripped of its 1991 football title for using an ineligible 19-year-old player.

“I thought that he looked kind of old, but because of the stuff I hear about my age, I figured he was eligible,” Boseman said. “It’s just too bad that it cost us the title.”

This fall, Boseman plans to improve on his football accomplishments from a year ago when he earned all-state honors.

As a two-way starter at quarterback and defensive back, the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Boseman rushed for 1,352 yards and passed for 1,174 more while accounting for 36 touchdowns. On defense, he averaged nearly 10 tackles a game with six interceptions, including two returned for touchdowns.

Boseman has been called the next Randall Cunningham by one college coach, but there are others who think that he is destined to be an all-pro defensive back.

Whatever he decides, Boseman’s future appears bright. However, there was a time when sports took a back seat to his off-the-field activities.

While growing up in a neighborhood south of the Coliseum in Los Angeles, Boseman ran with troubled crowds. He wanted to be like the rest of the kids in the neighborhood who were members of a gang and only play sports in the street.

Even after his mother, Alice Carruthers--who raised Stais and his older sister by herself--moved her family to a safer neighborhood in Inglewood, Boseman still found trouble.

According to Boseman, the turning point came when he was arrested for stealing from a local supermarket and had to face his mother. He expected the worst when he arrived home but instead, Carruthers simply left it up to him.

“She sat me down and told me I had to decide what I wanted to do,” Boseman said. “I was either going to make it or not and that it was up to me to be somebody. This really worked because I thought that I had let her down and that she had given up on me.”

Carruthers laughed when she heard this.

“I don’t really remember that one because I probably did more than just talk to him,” said Carruthers, who rarely misses one of Boseman’s games. “All I know is that he had a lot of mischief in him when he was younger.”

Soon after his run-in with the law, Boseman started his youth league athletic career, persuading Carruthers to allow him to enter by telling her it was free to play in the Junior All-American League. Then he begged her to pay the $65 fee when they went to sign up.

It did not take long before Boseman showed his mother it was a good investment. Even though he wanted to be a wide receiver like his idol, Lynn Swann, Boseman played quarterback his first season because of his ability to throw. He moved to tailback the next three seasons before his size forced him out of the league.

“The last year I was eligible to play I couldn’t because I was overweight,” Boseman said. “I had to sit out, which really hurt me at the time.”

The year off from playing football turned out to be the start of Boseman’s basketball career. He began to play in a local youth league and dominated on the court as he had on the football field.

By the time he entered Morningside, Boseman had become an athletic commodity. Again, he was an instant success.

In his first game playing varsity football, Boseman caught a touchdown pass as a tight end. As a 6-3 starter in his first varsity basketball game, he dunked.

Boseman’s accomplishments in football and basketball have made deciding which college he will attend that much more difficult. He says he enjoys both sports equally, but he also realizes that it is almost impossible to play both at the major college level.

Carruthers would like to see her son play basketball.

“From a mother standpoint and a realistic standpoint, basketball would be better in the long run because I don’t think that it would be so painful,” she said. “He can make it in either sport, but I would like to see him play basketball.”

Boseman, who averaged 18 points, nine rebounds, three assists and three steals a game as an all-state choice in basketball last spring, has kept his preference a well-kept secret.

“When you go by the numbers, football would be the choice when you look at my size,” said Boseman, who plans to study child psychology in college. “Being 6-4 in football is tall while it is only average for basketball. I would like to keep playing both, but I know that would be hard. . . . I just want to go to school and make sure I get my education.”