Westwood High School football coach Carl Coleman (left) says Dominique Sholar is a student player, with a great attitude and the ability to play on the collegiate level. (Photos by Wiley Henry)

When Dominique Sholar was four-years-old, his father discovered something about him that defied logic.

“We were lying on the couch watching football and he did something I didn’t like,” said William Sholar. “When I got ready to spank him, he jumped from the couch to the easy chair — about 5 feet. I couldn’t believe it.”

Convinced that his son’s athleticism was innate, Sholar began to take note of his progress. Dominique, he discovered, possessed a pair of strong legs and he loved to play football.  

When Dominique turned five, Sholar surveyed the Memphis-area landscape in search of a peewee team that would play his son. “But a kid couldn’t play football until he is six-years-old,” said Sholar, now an executive tailor for MCA/USA in Virginia.

Dominique is now 19 and on his way to play defensive back at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn. “He always said if someone gives him a chance to play football, he’d show them what he could do,” said Sholar.

It didn’t take long for Dominique to develop his skills on the peewee gridiron. But his mother’s death in 1997 nearly sacked Dominique’s dreams, said William Sholar, who was left to raise four children.

The death of his mother in 1997 nearly sacked Dominique Sholar’s football dreams, but he picked himself up and moved forward.

His mother’s death left Dominique, then 8, emotionally drained. “When my mother died, it really hurt,” he said. “That really showed me that nothing is guaranteed in life.”

At that point, he went to live with his paternal grandmother and missed a year of football. Still a peewee player, he returned to the gridiron in 1998 with a determination to perfect his craft.

He landed a spot on a team called the Orange Mound Volunteers, playing two positions: running back and defensive back. “He had it hard, but he held it together,” said William Sholar. “I always told him to be a man, to be honest and don’t ride the fence.”

Translation: Know what you want to do in life. But that wasn’t a problem for Dominique. He knew at age 5 that he hoped to follow the path of his favorite football player, Deion “Primetime” Sanders, Dallas Cowboys’ defensive back.

“My goal is to get to the NFL,” said Dominique, a small-frame, 5’ 11”, 180 lb. defensive back and track star who won six consecutive races in the 100-meter dash in his junior and senior year.

“But I want an education,” he said. “I want to major in engineering. That’s why I chose Lane College.”

Education is key to Dominique’s success, said Coach Carl Coleman of Westwood High School. “We’re trying to motivate him to enroll in Lane’s summer classes to get his education started,” he said.

“I’m trying to encourage him to get started early because the streets are eating up our young men,” said Coleman, Dominique’s coach for the 2007-088 school year. “I told him you’re going to school to play football — but academics come first.”

Dominique will graduate May 24 at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church.

Coleman said Dominique is a student player with a great attitude. “He has the ability to play on the collegiate level,” he said. “He’s running a 4.39. He’s quick on his feet. All he needs is the opportunity to show his skills.”

Coach Preston Harris, Dominique’s coach at Westwood from 2005 to 2007, agrees. “You couldn’t ask for a better kid,” he said. “I hate that I couldn’t coach him in his senior year.

“He has exceptional athletic skills and has a great knowledge of the game,” Harris said. “He has good work ethics and is one of the top 5 players I’ve coached in my 10 years of coaching.”

Harris said some of his former players have romped the gridiron and matriculated at Tennessee State University, the University of Memphis and schools in Alabama.

He said Dominique knows his potential. “He’s in the top 30 percent of his class,” said Harris, who now coaches at Kingsbury High School. “He has a 2.8 GPA, and that puts him in the top percentile of his class.”

Dominique said he was a little disappointed with a recruiter from Mississippi State University who didn’t follow up on his interest in the star 10th-grader.

Other Division 1 schools, Dominique said, turned him down. But when he got the call from Lane College, he was overjoyed. “I thought I wasn’t going to college,” he said. “I was down at one point, but my coach told me not to give up.”

Harris said he sees wonderful things for Dominique. “Not only is he a wonderful athlete, he’s a wonderful person,” he said.

“I love that kid.”