From career-ending injury to Stanford business school, Derby football player inspires
There are still days when Devin Hedgepeth wonders how far he could have made it the NFL, which is now only a what-if exercise. The Derby native’s football career ended when he ruptured the same Achilles three times in less than a year.
Hedgepeth, who became a starting cornerback in his true freshman season at Oklahoma State, played his final snap of football on September 15, 2012.
An abrupt ending to such a promising career could have been a devastating turning point in Hedgepeth’s life. Instead, he applied the same traits that made him a standout football player to launch a burgeoning business career. He graduated from Oklahoma State with honors as one of the program’s top industrial engineers, and was immediately hired by ExxonMobil, where he has climbed the ranks the last six years.
Here’s the story of how Hedgepeth went from writhing in pain on a football field some eight years ago, his future uncertain, to being accepted into the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He’ll attend this fall to complete his Master of Business Administration.
“I think the thing that has driven me my whole life is this quest to find my true potential,” Hedgepeth said. “I don’t ever want to feel complacent. I don’t ever want to feel too comfortable. It’s a big reason why I still wake up at 4:30 in the morning to get my workout in. I know every single day I’m not improving, I’m taking a step back. And that is a huge fear of mine: not improving.”
‘Things you can control’
Dwain Hedgepeth was born and raised in a small North Carolina town — “out in the sticks,” as he describes it — where few people had the means or ambition to leave.
“It was very common to grow up and stay there and end up on a street corner,” Devin Hedgepeth said. “That’s something I’ve always admired about my father. I’m not sure how he was able to dream and create something more in his mind because he never actually saw that in his environment.”
Joining the military was his ticket out of town and into a better life, a decision that resulted in 21 years of service in the United States Air Force as a pharmaceutical technician. He was stationed in Germany and eventually transferred to McConnell Air Force Base, which brought his family to Derby.
Growing up in the Hedgepeth household for Devin and his two sisters wasn’t easy. Dwain instilled his military work ethic in them early and held his children to high standards, both in athletics and in the classroom. But the one thing he tried to impress upon them above everything else?
“Don’t worry about things that are outside of your control,” Dwain said. “Control the things you can control, which are your attitude and how you respond to the situation.”
Devin never really needed that repeated.
The father remembers the first year Devin played organized basketball, in the second grade. He looked so lost on the court that he told his son that maybe basketball wasn’t his sport and he should try something else. Devin refused to quit and Dwain recalls coming home from work to find his son practicing his dribbling in the garage. The very next summer, Devin had improved so much that he was named to the Biddy Basketball All-Star team.
“He put that in my head at a very young age that no matter what happened, I always had a choice in how I responded,” Devin said. “He was tough and he was discplined. I sacrificed a lot growing up, especially when I compare my high school experience with others. It wasn’t easy at the time, but I’m extremely grateful for that today.”
‘Face of Derby football’
Even though Devin Hedgepeth was always a star football player, he never identified himself as only a football player. It’s once again a credit to his parents, who held him accountable in the classroom even more than on the football field.
Still, Hedgepeth always envisioned himself as a professional football player, and that dream seemed to be closing in on reality following a breakout freshman season at Oklahoma State. He remembers seeing his name already being mentioned for the 2014 NFL Draft.
That dream was ended by not one, not two, but three Achilles tears in less than one year. Just like that, football was no longer part of the equation.
“It felt so unfair when it first happened,” Hedgepeth said. “I was in the mindset of, ‘Why is this happening to me? I’m a good kid. I do the right things all the time. I don’t understand why this is happening to me.’
“That’s when I had to rely on the teachings that my dad gave me growing up. I had to realize I didn’t have control over the injuries, but I did have control over how I responded to the situation.”
While football was a major part of his life, Hedgepeth never allowed the game to define him. So when it was taken away from him so abruptly, he wasn’t completely devastated because he was also a superb engineering student.
“I did love football, but I didn’t love the game as much as the hard work it required, the disciplined it required, the tenacity it required,” Hedgepeth said. “I loved waking up at 4 in the morning and getting a workout in and doing something less than 1% of the world could do. I knew I could find those things in different areas of my life, so when football went away, I embraced everything else in my life.”
Derby football coach Brandon Clark is sure that if Hedgepeth was never injured, he would be playing in the NFL today. But long before Hedgepeth became an all-state football player for the Panthers, Clark realized that Hedgepeth wasn’t just a special football player — he was special in life.
“That’s why Devin is the face of Derby football,” Clark said. “Whenever we do leadership retreats, I always talk about the kind of leader that Devin was. He was the best kind of leader because he was just himself. That’s what we try to teach kids — don’t try to be Devin, don’t try to be someone else, just be yourself. That’s what makes Devin special and is the reason why he’s making the impact he’s making right now.”
‘100 Devin Hedgepeths’
Would Hedgepeth be headed to a top-ranked grad school if he hadn’t torn his Achilles a third time?
While some might smile and say everything happens for a reason, Hedgepeth isn’t so quick to admit that he didn’t have a choice in the matter. That’s part of the message he wants to spread, the one that was taught to him by his father: You always have a choice.
“I think it’s important for people to understand they can control their lives if they put in the right amount of effort,” Hedgepeth said. “You can’t just throw your hands up and say, ‘Well, everything happens for a reason’ and hope for the best. You have to figure out a game plan on how you get to where you want to go next.”
For Hedgepeth, that was in the classroom. Instead of pouring hours into studying wide receiver tendencies in the film room, Hedgepeth poured hours into studying.
It was in the classroom where Hedgepeth made an impression on Camilee Deyong, the program director for industrial engineering at OSU.
“He would be a poster child for industrial engineering,” Deyong told The Oklahoman. “He is just the epitome of what you would want the student-athlete to be.
“I wish we could clone him. With or without football, we would take 100 Devin Hedgepeths.”
Since graduating, Hedgepeth has written an e-book on resilience and even given a TED talk on the ExxonMobil campus about his story. Most recently, he penned an open letter to the Derby community addressing racial injustices and what it was like to be one of the only people of color in a predominantly-white community.
“Regardless of whether you’re in Derby, Kansas or working at a company like ExxonMobil, when you’re the only person of color in the room it’s really tough,” Hedgepeth said. “Day in and day out, you are somewhat of an outsider. That’s really tough and I think people should start to emphasize with others who are in that position.
“That’s why I continue to stress that everybody should identify the communities that they have an influence in. When I say communities, I don’t mean holding influence over the masses. It could be your bible study that gets together every Tuesday or it could be your work place or your university. I think it’s imperative that everybody identifies the communities that they have an influence in and figure out how to drive positive change there. If everybody does their part, then we can get there together.”
Hedgepeth’s influence continues to grow, even without football. He continues to improve, continues to move forward each day, as his story expands and adds the latest impressive chapter this fall when he starts at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He’s not doing this for himself — he wants to help as many people along the way in his never-ending search to reach his true potential. He may never reach it. Actually, it’s almost guaranteed he will never be satisfied. But that isn’t the point — his story has never been about the destination. It’s always been about the journey.
“A lot of people chase money and chase fame and chase their career for the accolades, but Devin has always had the right perspective on life,” Dwain Hedgepeth said. “He cares about family. He cares about people. He cares about the relationships. He’s not out there chasing material things; he’s chasing the things that have meaning and purpose to him. As a father, that’s as proud as I can get.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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