FEATURE – MOTHER KNOWS BEST

Growing up in the small Texas town of Brownwood — where Pop Warner football had no presence — Kenny Vaccaro’s early athletic endeavors began in an unexpected direction. He started running at the age of four and soon his mother, Alesia, had him running competitively and playing soccer. He excelled at both.  But the Longhorns’ hard-hitting senior safety — whose uncle A.J. Johnson won a Super Bowl with the Washington Redksins — had football in his blood. “He was a great soccer player,” Alesia says. “He could’ve gone far in soccer but that was never it. It was always football. He played soccer like a football player. He’d mow the other players over if they came near him. He’d go through them to get the ball and they rarely ever came back near the ball after that.”

During his sophomore year at Brownwood High, Vaccaro realized he had the [s2If current_user_is(s2member_level2)] potential to play Division I football. “I thought I was going to be a soccer player. I tried basketball for a while and kept fouling out every game. I realized I was too aggressive so I gave football a try.” This naturally aggressive style of play is well known by those who follow college football. During the Longhorns’ 8-5 2011 campaign — which featured Vaccaro as a starting safety for all 13 games — he racked up 82 tackles to go along with two sacks, two interceptions and eight pass breakups. Probably none were bigger than his sack of California quarterback Zach Maynard in UT’s Holiday Bowl win where he hurtled Golden Bears tailback Isi Sofele to record the sack. That play put Vaccaro in the national sports-TV highlight reels, creating buzz that Vaccaro might make the jump to the NFL.

Ultimately, Vaccaro made the tough decision to return to Texas for his senior year. “It came down to me believing that there was more in me … more I wanted to do here. I believe that there are more plays for me to make.” His decision to return to a talented but youthful defense was a welcome one for the Longhorn coaching staff. “I’m excited about him being back,” assistant head coach and defensive backs coach Duane Akina says. “He had a great spring and I believe he can be not just a top safety, but one of the top defensive backs in the country. He’s one of the better defensive backs to come out of here during my 11 years — and we’ve had some good ones walk through these doors.”

One of only two projected senior starters on the 2012 Longhorn defense along with end Alex Okafor, Vaccaro finds himself in a leadership role, something he says comes naturally to him. “Teams with great leaders win big games. I show leadership more from a physical standpoint than I do vocally. Guys like to be around people that play hard.”  Okafor echoes that sentiment, “Kenny leads by example. He’s one of the hardest workers on the team. People respect that and follow his example.”

Vaccaro’s work ethic and competitive nature have always been on display at Texas. Akina’s first memory of Vaccaro was during his first summer camp, where Vaccaro played wide receiver all three days. “I used to go and watch during camp when we’d have one hand touch games. The team would be divided up randomly and it was a downtime activity, but you could tell that for Kenny, this was the Super Bowl. His passion for the game just jumped out at me.”

While people may debate the percentages, it’s hard to argue with the sentiment behind the old adage, “genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.” Anyone who knows Vaccaro knows his work ethic, something his mother instilled in him early. “She always had a plan for me. When I was four years old she had me running two miles, and before long it was four miles a day, then five and six. When I was 10, I broke the 400-meter state record in track and then I won nationals. I finally got burned out on running. It got to the point where I couldn’t go to track meets because I couldn’t stand the smell of corn dogs. ”

Alesia pushed Vaccaro to play soccer and before long he won two state championships with his under-10 team. By the time he started playing football, she was able to step back and watch him run, knowing she had set the foundation for him.

Growing up as the only girl among five siblings in an athletic family, Alesia found her way onto the Pop Warner football team, right alongside her brothers. “I was the first girl to make it in Pop Warner boy football. I played corner and we won state.”  Needless to say, she knows something about excelling in sports. “You have to have discipline and you have to develop it from a young age,” she says.

With her husband — 18 years her senior — sick with emphysema for most of their children’s lives, she took on the responsibility of mentoring her children athletically. She always believed Vaccaro would accomplish great things. But she was also aware that he would need a solid foundation and a strong sense of self-esteem, something she felt was especially crucial for a child growing up biracial. And she had a plan from the beginning.

“When none of the other kids ran every single day, mine did. It didn’t matter that they were five years old. It didn’t matter that it was raining. Circumstances didn’t matter; it was part of their life. You brush your teeth and you run.”

“I have a strong personality, probably stronger than his, and I tried a lot of different ways to get him to do what I thought was the right thing. I didn’t stop trying. I’m pretty relentless,” Alesia explains. The disciplined work ethic soon took root in Vaccaro, fed by the sense of achievement that went along with each youthful accomplishment. That’s not to say that Vaccaro and his mom didn’t “knock heads” from time to time, as he puts it, but in hindsight he’s grateful for her parenting style and the mental toughness she instilled in him.

One major period of strife between mother and son happened during Vaccaro’s last two years of high school. Shortly after his father passed away, Alesia pushed and prodded Vaccaro to transfer from Brownwood to the high school of neighboring Early, Texas. Vaccaro describes that period as “hectic,” while his mother describes him as being “a bit out of control.” Vaccaro successfully resisted the pressure to transfer through his junior year but after tallying 235 tackles and five interceptions in three seasons at Brownwood, he gave in.

Vaccaro shared the defensive backfield with his younger brother Kevin for only three games at Early before he tore his ACL. Soon after, he was on his way to Texas thanks to an early graduation. While Vaccaro credits his mom’s push for his transfer to the school’s strong academic reputation, she says it was more than just that. “It sure wasn’t for football because at that point Early didn’t win anything in football. I wanted him there for character. I had done my job well as a mother but he still needed something in the way of character,” Alesia says.

But during a 2009 freshman season that saw Vaccaro appear in 13 games and make his biggest impact through his special teams play, an off-field incident unfortunately made the biggest impression. After getting into an altercation with a fellow student during an on-campus basketball game, police issued an arrest warrant for Vaccaro.

He’s the first to admit that he struggled with his transition to college. “I was immature. Not to make excuses, but I was coming to Austin from a small town and I graduated early. I was coming off of a torn ACL. My dad passed away the year before and I felt mixed up. When I was on the field I did everything right, but off the field I could’ve been more on point.”

Vaccaro’s mom says that her son was still grieving during that time. “What people didn’t realize is that while Kenny was being recruited, his dad died. I was with my husband at the hospital when he passed away. I went and picked the kids up from school and took them to the hospital so they could see their dad before he was cremated. Then I took Kenny straight back to football practice and his younger brother to a track meet because life goes on. I think he went to Nebraska later that week for a recruiting trip. There really wasn’t a chance for him to mourn.”

Any attempts to label Vaccaro as a troublemaker proved inopportune as he went on to mature after that early incident. “He’s grown up since then,” Okafor says. “He knows that he needs to set the example. He has responsibilities for this team and he knows that he has to do the right thing at all times — on and off the field — even when nobody’s looking. And that’s what he’s done.”

While Vaccaro is known for delivering crushing blows, his knowledge of the game is equally astounding. When asked for his greatest accomplishment as a Longhorn, he points to his mental game. Akina agrees. “Kenny understands the intellectual side of the game now … splits of receivers, whether the back is set strong or weak, splits of linemen, down and distance, wind direction, the drops of the quarterback … all those little things that allow a great athlete to really take advantage of an opponent.”

Vaccaro credits his mother for his intellectual accomplishments as well as his athletic successes. “I remember having my Big Chief tablet and writing my ABC’s 40 times a day, to the point where I had the best handwriting,” he recalls. When talking about Vaccaro’s childhood, Alesia tells the same story along with many others.  She refused to send her kids to daycare because she didn’t want anyone to negatively impact what she was trying to accomplish. She remembers writing out a résumé for him to take to kindergarten to get signed by his teachers so they’d be aware of how much he knew, and could focus their efforts on reigning in his hyper tendencies. “He’s still hyper. It’s just who he is. One of his kindergarten teachers told me I was going to have to constantly challenge Kenny in the right way to help him take the right path in life.”

His mother’s efforts have paid dividends as Vaccaro grew and developed into a son that any mom would be proud of. “I’m so proud of who he is today. He’s got a strong personality and does everything to the extreme because he was brought up to the extreme. That’s why he is the way he is … he even hits people to the extreme. A lot of people baby their kids but I never did.”

And as further testament to Alesia’s parenting skills, Kevin Vaccaro will join his older brother as a member of the 2012 UT squad.

While Vaccaro may not have always appreciated his mother’s demanding parenting style, it’s one he hopes to imitate with the birth of his son this spring, Kenny Dwayne Vaccaro III. Fatherhood serves as a motivating factor for Vaccaro on and off the field. “I realize that everything I do is affecting his life as well as my own. The decisions I make, who I’m around and what I’m doing, all revolve around whether they’ll better my son’s life. He’s truly the biggest blessing I’ve ever had. I’ve been focused like never before this last year. Now more than ever, every decision I make is crucial.” [/s2If]
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