Twelve-year-old Corey Heyward and his AAU basketball team had just advanced to the tournament championship in Richmond, Virginia, when he received the news. His father had died. Craig Heyward, an 11-year NFL veteran who had battled a brain tumor for seven years, was just 39.

Heyward had a choice: Return home the next day or stay with the team and play for the tournament title on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth.

The AAU team won the championship and Heyward helped lead them there. He had decided to stay because he thought his dad would’ve wanted him too. But the trip home to Georgia remained, where Heyward had to face reality.

“The next night going home,” Heyward said, “taking it all in. … It was obviously hard. It was at a young age.”

The now-23-year-old redshirt senior guard at Georgia Tech and his two brothers grew together through sports after the death of their father. Cameron plays defensive line for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Connor will soon play football at Michigan State. The three are hundreds of miles apart, but stay connected for their father by playing the games he had loved to watch.

“(The boy’s) sports were an outlet for him,” Charlotte Heyward, their mother, said, “and all of us to get away from what he was going through.”

That nature stems from their father, the Pittsburgh Panthers’ fourth all-time leading rusher. He scored 30 rushing touchdowns in more than a decade with stops in New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis and Indianapolis. The 5-foot-11, 265-pound bruiser bullied his way to 1,083 rushing yards in the 1995 season.

Later, even when cancer confined Craig to a wheelchair, he ended up on the sidelines of his son’s games to cause the ruckus he had managed so well in the NFL. He attended every football and basketball game, to jaw with and heckle the referees. Craig showed up to his son’s school assembly in a gold satin suit. It was the same Craig who, as a young boy, earned the nickname “Ironhead” from the time someone snapped a pool cue over his head in a fight at the Boys & Girls Club.

During his playing days, Craig always towed his sons along and later passed on his same mindset and physicality on smaller fields. He raised the three boys in youth football, AAU basketball and Peachtree Ridge (Georgia) High School athletics. Sports became pillars at home in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth.

The Heyward family grew accustomed to sports on the biggest stage. At the Colts facility, Ashley Thompson, franchise quarterback Peyton Manning’s then-girlfriend and now-wife, supervised the Heyward children as their dad played. Craig showed his sons how to prepare like a pro, introduced them to teammates and frequently brought them to Atlanta Hawks games.

During one game against Milwaukee, Craig kept hollering “Jesus!” to Bucks shooting guard Ray Allen. Heyward, confused at the time, only later realized the heckling referenced Allen’s character, Jesus Shuttlesworth, from the Spike Lee movie, “He Got Game.”

“My dad was more like a friend than an actual father figure.” Heyward said. “He was like our best friend.

“He’d do anything for us.”

Courtesy of Charlotte Heyward

Cameron followed his dad’s football footsteps first, becoming a dominant defensive lineman for Ohio State. Connor is following a similar path by signing with the Spartans to play football.

Corey wanted to be different. He started enjoying basketball around age 11 while watching Cameron play AAU. The pace of basketball appealed to him. Plus, he escaped the sweltering sun. “You get your AC,” Heyward said. “I was inside of a gym instead of your Georgia heat, so I decided to go with basketball.” The decision didn’t disappoint his father. He went to almost every basketball practice to watch his sons play.

By the time Heyward made it to junior high, cancer robbed Craig of the strength to go for full practices. Sometimes, he couldn’t even pick them up as he always had. The Heyward brothers drew inward, driving directly home to see and care for their dad. One week, Craig felt fine. The next, he returned to the hospital. The brothers looked to Cameron, the oldest, who played the role model the best he could.

Now, the brothers remain close though separated by both geography and athletic schedules. They stay close through texting and Twitter, and Cameron occasionally texts Heyward after a game he didn’t even know his older brother was watching. When all three brothers get home, usually for the holidays, it’s like the old days again, almost.

The three play video games like NBA 2K, or backyard football, which amuses Heyward because now they’re all grown men. Charlotte enjoys the rare opportunity to see her sons all in the same place at the same time. “(It’s) maybe once or twice a year,” she said.

The brothers also return home to a bigger family. Charlotte remarried, to former NBA player Cory Blackwell, and though they divorced, the family remains close with Blackwell’s son and two daughters. Charlotte also adopted another daughter, Meagan.

“We were like ‘The Black Brady Bunch,’” Heyward said.

As the end approaches for Georgia Tech’s season and Heyward’s career, uncertainty remains while the Yellow Jackets teeter on the edge of the NCAA Tournament bubble. Until the final buzzer sounds, the senior will put on a “Heyward” jersey and play to keep the memory of “Ironhead” alive a little longer.

“We’re just kind of living his legacy through us,” Heyward said.

“It’s been a blessing so far, for my brothers and I.”

Published on March 2, 2017 at 10:35 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @A_E_Graham