Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BY JORDAN WELLS " S traight Outta Anaheim." Okay. It doesn't quite in- voke the same response as the famous N.W.A. song, or the subsequent movie released last year, even though a Google Maps search estimates a trip from Anaheim to Compton at roughly 30 minutes. And that's why Notre Dame soph- omore wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown's father, John Brown — a Compton native — took his son across Los Angeles from Anaheim to Comp- ton to play regularly on weekends during the youngster's prep days. "We live in Orange Country, which is a suburb and a real nice area, and it gives my sons a chance for a bet- ter life than I had," John Brown told The South Bend Tribune. "But I didn't want it to make them weak. "Where they were growing up wasn't good for toughness. So I wanted to do something about that. I said, 'Look you may get into a fight, but this is how it is. You've got to learn how to play with these kids.'" "He didn't want me to grow up in that neighborhood, but he felt like it was necessary for me to be around there a couple of times to see what it's like," St. Brown said. "And how people I'm going to be playing against, what their mindset is like and what I needed to get mine like." Sounds like a pretty intense train- ing idea. Looking back on it now, more than a year into life in South Bend, the Irish sophomore gives those experiences a large thumbs up. " I t w a s d e f i n i t e l y h e l p f u l , " St. Brown said. "People in that kind of environment are more hungry than other kids. "It's not every case, but some. So going to camps, playing in games, etc., that mindset really stands out and helps you." Learning that tenacity also could pay off in training and conditioning. During a practice in mid-November, St. Brown suffered a sprained shoul- COMPTON TOUGHNESS Equanimeous St. Brown has benefited from a unique motivational tactic implemented by his father