Editor’s note: The Tennessean is running a season-long, all-access series about the Pearl-Cohn football program. To follow along with the project, please subscribe to The Tennessean here.
Joy Saulter sank into her seat as the steel Greyhound bus beneath her lurched forward, slow at first, then faster until it was slashing through the December night.
Advertisement
It was almost two decades ago, but the memory won’t go away.
She was 17 and five months pregnant. Her unborn twin sons’ father died days earlier at 23. Grieving and scared, she eyed the route from Nashville to Cincinnati where a procedure would fix everything.
Not an abortion.
Some elders had suggested that for her, because the world would just be easier, they said, if someone else raised her twins.
Saulter shuddered at that.
She wanted to eat meals with her sons, dress them up for Halloween and see them off to college. And as she boarded the bus, one of them “was dying inside of me.”
More: Meet Santana Peterson-Warden, the inspiring Pearl-Cohn football senior leader for the Firebirds
Advertisement
More: Pearl-Cohn announcer Catfish is James Brown of high school football
Saulter’s mother, Delilah, went to Ohio too as her daughter underwent surgery to end complications from twin-to-twin syndrome. The operation fixed unevenly dispensed vessel connections in Saulter’s womb that were robbing one twin, Stephon, of blood and giving the other, Stephen, too much.
This autumn, Joy stood between her healthy identical twin boys on a clear Friday night as Pearl-Cohn High School celebrated its senior football players in north Nashville. Stephen and Stephon are 17, stand over 6 feet tall and look even bigger in shoulder pads.
On Nov. 6, she’ll watch from the stands as the Firebirds open the Class 4A TSSAA football playoffs against Montgomery Central. It’s the start of their final Tennessee high school football postseason run.
Advertisement
Her sons are positioned for college despite the mornings there was no food in their refrigerator, nights they slept in a car due to financial struggles, and weeks at home in the one bedroom apartment they share with their mom and three other family members.
“The greatest part of raising Stephen and Stephon is seeing their ability to adapt,” Joy said. “Their sense that everything will be OK no matter what.”
‘I just gave birth to two kids, and I have no idea what I’m doing’
Joy gave birth a month premature. She smiled at her newborns through a twinge of anxiety.
“I just gave birth to two kids,” Joy said, “and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Advertisement
Life was complicated like the elders said. Money ran out when her sons were 7 years old, and they slept in a white Honda Accord with their mom for eight months.
They didn’t have a house, but even in the Accord they had a home. Joy slept in the backseat because she was taller and the boys slept in the front seats. They had movie nights using their phones and scheduled dinners in the car together.
“My mom always tries to make the best out of everything no matter how messed up it is,” Stephon said. “She always tried to make us smile.”
Things got better, but Joy suffered depression when her 24-year-old younger sister, Arieanne, and Arieanne’s unborn son died in 2019 due to heart complications during pregnancy. Joy took a job with Public Storage and helped raise Arieanne’s daughter. Then Joy’s mother, Delilah, suffered her first of five strokes between 2019 and 2022.
Advertisement
Joy shot for the moon: She left her job to open a business that didn’t work out. She ended up in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship. Joy sent the boys to live with a friend, and with her own mom now living in a shelter, Joy lived alone in her car for two months.
The Saulters got back on their feet after Joy went to work for Amazon delivering packages while studying to become a certified nurse assistant. Money dried up again and they were in the process of being evicted again when her mom, who now had an apartment and was getting social security, took them in.
Stephon, Stephen and their step sister Khiari sleep in the living room. Joy, her sister Donishia and Delilah share the bedroom.
“It gets a little cramped,” Joy said, “but that’s one thing about (Stephon and Stephen), they never complain about anything. They always look on the brighter side no matter what’s going on. Something can be on fire and I’ll panic on the inside, but they always keep their cool, and they’re right, because the fire will always go out.”
Advertisement
‘Imagine you had a twin …’
It’s the week after fall break and Stephon laughs while explaining he can’t cut the manikin’s artificial hair any shorter than it already is.
He’s in Pearl-Cohn’s cosmetology class with clippers, practicing fades on a dummy. He wants to open a barbershop someday.
“I want to make people happy,” Stephon said. “And for me, when I get my haircut and look in the mirror, if I feel good, if I look good, it makes me happy.”
He’s not banking on a football future, but sports have been a life-saving distraction. The Saulter twins had opportunities to live different lives. The north Nashville community where Pearl-Cohn is located became polarized after a landmark 2018 Brookings study showed the 37208 zip code had the nation’s highest incarceration rates (14%) for individuals born between 1980 and 1986.
Advertisement
Stephon grew up playing football with Demario Anderson, a jokester who was close like a cousin. Anderson, the younger brother of Pearl-Cohn assistant David Anderson, was fatally shot in an attempted robbery last year.
The twins stuck together.
Stephon has 36 tackles and an interception at cornerback as a senior. The expiring regulars season remind the brothers they might have to separate after high school. Stephen is committed to play at Western Kentucky, while Stephon is sorting through future options with offers from Eastern Kentucky and West Georgia.
Stephon says he’ll be at peace if he doesn’t play college football.
Advertisement
But life without Stephen?
“There would be times we wouldn’t have enough money for food, or whatever, and he’d be the one telling me, ‘We gonna be smooth, brother, we’re in this together,” Stephon said. “Imagine you had a twin, right? And he looked just like you and y’all bond gets stronger every day for all y’all life until you graduate when you’re 18. And you’ve been with him every single day. You haven’t been in a different apartment as him. You’ve slept in the same room as him for 18 years, and then you just gotta be separated.
“It’s going to be very different for me.”
‘Big little bro’
Stephen is screaming at the top of his lungs.
Advertisement
Pearl-Cohn’s season opener is minutes away and rap lyrics pound the locker room walls before the Firebirds take the field against Montgomery Bell Academy.
“The music gets our blood warm,” Stephen says. “For me, when I’m here, there’s nothing else.”
Stephen has 664 yards receiving and 15 touchdowns this fall. At just over 6-2, he’s one of the bigger pass catchers Pearl-Cohn coach Tony Brunetti has coached in 20 years at the school.
People call Stephon “little big bro” because he’s a minute older, but an inch shorter. Stephen is “big little bro.”
Advertisement
Stephen was the quieter twin growing up, but that changed when he was about 16. In and out of steady homes, his older brother established a practice called “shower thoughts,” where the family could share things they thought about while alone in the shower.
Stephen used the opportunity to say something that his mom later described as something of a wakeup call.
“Stephen voiced his opinion about our homeless situation, how he didn’t want to have to live in a car anymore or have to go to a shelter,” Joy said. “He basically said, ‘What are we going to do?'”
Stephen still doesn’t like napping in cars.
Advertisement
“It does something to you when that all happens at a young age,” Stephen said. “But sometimes I give myself a pat on the back, because it’s definitely not easy coming from my background.”
‘I’m not going to stop crying’
Stephon and Stephen stand inches apart in full pads as a silver October moon hangs above them a galaxy away. It’s one of the first cool autumn evenings of the Tennessee high school football season, and an early sunset casts long shadows across Pearl-Cohn’s field during practice.
Brunetti is sitting on a silver bench, about to start cleaning up the sidelines for a freshman game. He has coached many players who struggle at home.
Advertisement
Not everyone handles it like the Saulters. Their days are full. Joy drops her sons off at school by 6:45 a.m. so she can work her 12-hour nursing shifts. Once they get home, there’s barely enough time to eat, shower and sleep.
“They don’t want pity. It ain’t like that,” Brunetti said. “They always come to school with a smile, they’re always happy. They’re ‘yes sir, no sir.’ That’s how they cope with it.”
At the same time: “We don’t know half the things kids go through in life,” Brunetti said. “Most of them just deal with it. And that’s society.”
One day before a critical region game against Springfield, the Saulter family celebrated a friend’s birthday at Logan’s Roadhouse in Opry Mills. The boys watched the NFL “Thursday Night Football” game between bites of food.
Advertisement
“All I know is, I’m gonna cry,” their grandma Delilah says when asked about the twins’ graduation in May. “And I’m not going to stop crying.”
They left the restaurant and spilled into the parking lot with full stomachs. Birthday cake was waiting at home. The car grunted as they made for the highway.
The twins have traveled for miles since the trip to Ohio, and there are miles to go.
Tyler Palmateer covers the Tennessee Titans for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for Tyler? Reach him at tpalmateer@tennessean.com and on the X platform, @tpalmateer83.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Pearl-Cohn football’s Saulter twins have triumphed thanks to unbreakable bond
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
