USC Glad to Be in State of Grace : He Switched From Basketball, Then Caught On in Big Way

Football looked like fun. Well, a little bit of fun, anyway.

But at De Anza High in Richmond, Calif., Ken Grace was a star on the basketball team--he scored 49 points in one game--and didn’t want to get off that court.

Still, when friends implored him to go out for football, he almost gave in.

“I got to the point where I agreed to go out, if all I’d have to do was return kicks,” said Grace, who is now a starting senior wide receiver for USC.

“The coach didn’t think much of that idea, so I stuck with basketball. All the kids in my neighborhood in Richmond, we all played basketball. I wanted to get a basketball scholarship.”

After his senior year, in 1989, Grace the basketball player was recruited by UC Santa Barbara, San Jose State and Purdue.

He turned them all down, and got a job.

He worked for a year on the staff of the FRAGO Treatment Center in Oakland, counseling disturbed, displaced children. There, he learned that life’s rewards aren’t confined to sports.

And in his year out of school, Grace reassessed his sports future.

First, he measured himself again.

Rats!

He was still 5 feet 10.

Maybe football wasn’t such a bad idea.

He presented himself to Thomas Coleman, football coach at Contra Costa Junior College, in San Pablo.

“Basically, Coach Coleman took a chance on me, and I owe him a lot,” Grace said. “I had no experience and he told me he’d give me a chance.”

For Coleman, the payback was immediate. The first time Grace touched a football in a game--in the 1991 season opener--he ran 90 yards on a reverse for a touchdown.

From that point on, the fleet, 170-pound Grace was on a fast track to major college football. In 1992, he averaged 157 all-purpose yards per game, catching passes, running and returning kicks.

Enter everyone, most prominently USC, UCLA, Florida, Tennessee, Washington and Cal.

“Tennessee showed a lot of interest in me, but USC came on late and I was a little leery of going out of state,” Grace said.

He quickly nailed down starting roles as a wide receiver and kick returner with the Trojans. He started 10 games last season and was third in receptions (36 for 458 yards) on a team whose headliner was All-American wide receiver Johnnie Morton.

As the 1993 season wound down, Grace had his most productive games, since opponents were double-teaming Morton.

Currently--in a bye week before USC plays Baylor Sept. 24--Grace is almost the only sound wide receiver Robinson can suit up. With starters Keyshawn Johnson and Ed Hervey injured, USC’s pass offense has been at half-speed in its first two games.

Grace has caught seven passes and is tied for the reception lead with tight ends Johnny McWilliams and John Allred.

“When we get healthy, we’ll show that we have one of the best offenses in the nation,” Grace said.

“There’s a lot of high expectations placed on us, and maybe we’re trying too hard to meet other people’s expectations instead of pleasing ourselves. Our pass attack will get going, but right now it’s missing a big chunk.”

Grace sees himself as some sort of ticking bomb, skulking about unsuspecting defenses.

“My job is to show up in patterns where defenses don’t expect me, to make things happen,” he said.

“Last year, when defenses looked for Morton deep, I was all alone over the middle a lot. When we get it going, the same thing will happen this year. We’ve got lots of good tight ends, plus Hervey and Keyshawn--all that helps me.

“No matter what’s going on in a pass pattern, I’m sort of hangin’ around. I might be deep, short or in the middle, but I’m hangin’ around, somewhere.”

Grace was “hangin’ around” in last year’s UCLA game, when he made a play that put the Trojans within three yards of the Rose Bowl.

UCLA had a 27-21 lead when Rob Johnson passed 33 yards to Morton and then 43 yards to Grace to set up USC at UCLA’s three-yard line with 1:16 left.

Unhappily for USC, opportunity was lost when a third-down interception ended the threat.

Grace hasn’t had a kickoff return this year. He led the team and was fourth in the Pac-10 in kickoff returns with a 22.5 average in 1993.

He’s an athlete who understands there is life beyond pro sports.

That understanding was reinforced in his year at the FRAGO center.

“All the children here are severely disturbed and some of them are very angry and had suffered trauma in their lives,” said Jimmie Franks, founder of the center.

“Ken is an excellent child-care worker. He shows great patience with these children, and they loved him because he listens to them. All of the staff here felt Ken had a lot of assets in this kind of work.”

Grace is hopeful he might earn a living one day returning kicks in the NFL, but has other goals too.

“I’m a history major, and some day I’d like to be a junior college history teacher,” he said.

“Growing up in the Oakland area, I saw a lot of athletes grow up assuming they’d be pro athletes, and when it never happened, they had nothing to fall back on.

“I’m not going to put all my marbles in one basket. I’ll compete as hard as I can in football, and we’ll see what happens. I definitely think I can play in the NFL, but you never know.”