After high school, he had to attend a prep school for a year to mend academic problems. At Penn State, he watched from the sideline for the past three years. Through most of the summer, he battled for the starting role and faced questions about his passing ability.
Now, with his opportunity to play finally here, Clark has become the Nittany Lions’ unlikely star. Despite the post-high school detour and the uncertainty that came with his inexperience, he has become the central figure in an offense loaded with talent, and an unquestioned leader in the locker room. He has even received recognition as a Heisman Trophy contender.
“This is absolutely insane what’s going on, but it’s a real good time,” his father, Daryll Sr., said in a recent telephone interview. “He’s finally getting his shot, and everything’s working out for him real well.”
Clark is a big reason Penn State (8-0, 4-0 Big Ten) is ranked third in the Bowl Championship Series standings heading into Saturday’s game against No. 9 Ohio State (7-1, 4-0). For Clark, this will be his biggest stage as a starter. Penn State has not won at Ohio State since 1978, having lost seven games in Columbus during that stretch. But a victory Saturday night would align the Nittany Lions for a shot at the B.C.S. title game.
“My mind was like kind of blown away that we’re doing so well, and I’m coming from a lot of things, been through a whole lot of things,” Clark said in a teleconference. “But I remained quiet through everything, and I’m real proud that I was given the chance to show what I could do.”
Clark grew up in a rough section of Youngstown, Ohio. His father, a press operator, and his mother, Sheryl, a hairstylist and corrections officer, made sure Clark and his two brothers were inside the house once the streetlights came on.
He found an outlet in football. And he knew to avoid trouble, or his parents would take away the ball he slept with. Penn State coaches accidentally noticed Clark during a recruiting trip to evaluate one of his teammates at Youngstown’s Ursuline High School — a tight end named Louis Irizarry, who played at Ohio State before going to prison for robbery and eventually ending up at Youngstown State.
Clark had a strong and unrefined arm, and his standardized test results did not meet national qualifying requirements. At the recommendation of the Penn State coaches, he decided to spend a year in prep school to raise his score on the ACT.
He enrolled at the Kiski School in Saltsburg, Pa., a coat-and-tie academy with deep Penn State connections and about 200 students. Coach Joe Paterno was a friend of Kiski’s former headmaster, Jack Pidgeon. The former Penn State tailback Curtis Enis spent a year there before joining the Nittany Lions in 1995.
Paterno said he was leery of recruiting Clark because he was unsure he could make the grades. But Jay Paterno, the Penn State quarterbacks coach, assured his father that Clark would be able to make it through Kiski. Jay Paterno and Clark spoke often and forged a strong relationship.
“We wanted him to work, struggle and claw,” Jay Paterno said in a telephone interview. “Early on in the process, I was on the phone with him, and he said, ‘There’s no girls here and we’re in the middle of nowhere.’ I said, ‘That’s the idea.’ ”
Clark focused on academics at Kiski, in addition to football. He met with his instructors outside of class and made the honor roll almost every marking period.
He estimated that he took the ACT six times and said he needed a score of at least 21 to qualify. He consistently scored 20 or 19, roughly the national average. He would sometimes cry during long phone conversations with his mother, and he said he began to question whether he should give up his football dream. But on his final try, he said, he scored a 24.
“If it wasn’t Kiski, he would have found some way to get to Penn State and do what he’s doing now,” Christopher A. Brueningsen, the school’s headmaster, said in a telephone interview. “He’s a kind of guy, he’s focused and he knows what he wants. And he’s going to get it mostly just by working hard and not giving up.”
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