Clearly, football and Grayslake Central's Paul are a fine fit

Football is Nick Paul's focus.

Quite literally.

Paul, Grayslake Central's wide receiver turned star quarterback as of last week, is a football diehard. It has been his primary sport, his love, since grade school.

"Football is what I do," said Paul, a junior. "I do football in season, and out of season, I watch film on football, I study football. Football is so important to me.

"My whole life is about football."

Paul's entire life has certainly been changed by football.

While Paul focuses much of his time on football, football, in turn, has helped him focus in general: in the classroom, at home, in social situations.

He was desperate for something to help him do that.

Paul, who exploded for 3 touchdowns and 354 yards of offense himself after taking over at quarterback in the third series of Grayslake Central's stunning 33-10 victory over Grant last week, was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when he was in second grade.

He struggled to understand why he was always acting differently from the other kids.

"I would wonder 'Why am I misbehaving, why can I not sit still and focus like the other kids, why is my mind always traveling, why are my friends telling me I am too wild, why is my teacher always telling me to calm down?' I was just a very hyper kid," Paul said. "We were told that I had ADHD, and we had to figure out what to do."

For awhile, Paul was put on the typical medications used to treat young ADHD patients. But that didn't last long. About a year.

"My Mom (Nicole) said I wasn't acting like myself," Paul said. "So she took me off the medication. She said we needed to do something else. She wanted me to do something, like a sport, so that I could put all of my extra energy into that."

Paul excitedly told his Mom that he wanted to try football. He had just recently started watching NFL games on TV.

"Right around that time, I had watched my first-ever football game. It was the (New Orleans) Saints and the (Indianapolis) Colts in the Super Bowl," Paul said of the 2010 matchup that was won by the Saints. "I just loved all the big plays, all the excitement. It was so fun to watch. I remember that I wanted to make big plays like that."

And Paul did just that as a youth football star.

But as he began to make more and more noise on the field, in a positive way, Paul became quieter and queiter off of it. More and more calm. And that was a positive, too.

"Football really helped me with my ADHD because I could just fly around the field. It was where I could go to just let it (extra energy) all out," Paul said. "It was just a great outlet for me. I was so excited to play football and I'd run around like crazy, having fun, making plays and then I'd go home and I'd be all tired and knocked out."

Paul channeled his extra energy through football, but he also used his desire to be a serious football player as motivation for being more focused in other areas of his life.

"I think football made me gain more focus at school, because I wanted to play football so bad. I knew I had to get better grades," Paul said. "I knew I couldn't be drifting off and losing focus in class. Once I started playing football, I was so much more focused at school.

"From there, I just developed such a big love for football."

Paul started his football career in the Grayslake Colts youth program. He was usually a running back because of his shifty moves.

"I have good switches. I make good cuts," Paul said. "And I know where to go and what is a smart move to put on a defender."

As a freshman and sophomore in high school, Paul was turned into a defender himself, playing cornerback on the freshman team and then cornerback on the varsity last year as a sophomore.

At then end of last season when Grayslake Central lost starting running back Mikey Andrews to injury, Paul was moved to running back for a few games. But he didn't get many reps.

His first full-time position on offense came at the beginning of this season when he was turned into a starting wide receiver.

Although, he wasn't a receiver for long.

Grayslake Central starting quarterback Sam Lennartz went down with a knee injury in the season opener. The Rams went to backup Ben Vogeler, but decided to give Paul some reps in practice because now Vogeler would need a backup, and Paul was seen as the best candidate.

When the Rams were down 3-0 and struggling against Grant last week, the coaching staff decided to put in Paul at quarterback after the second series.

The Rams (1-2) took off from there, scoring 27 unanswered second-quarter points under Paul's direction, setting the stage for a watershed victory for a struggling Grayslake Central program that had won just one game in the previous three seasons combined.

"I was kind of surprised (that the in-game move to quarterback worked so well)," Paul said. "During the whole entire game, I kept telling my teammates that it felt like I was dreaming. It was like, 'Wow, this is amazing. Are we really doing this? Am I really doing this?'"

The coaches weren't surprised at all.

They had seen Paul's potential since he stepped on campus as a freshman.

"Nick is pretty athletic, and I think he's kind of always wanted to play quarterback," Grayslake Central coach Jason Schaal said. "Nick stepped on the field last Friday, took the reins and really played at a high level.

"He can throw pretty well. He obviously can run well. We wanted to give him that opportunity and we're going to run with that for awhile now. We always talk about trying to get our athletes the ball in the best position for them and this might be it for Nick."

Schaal says that even though Paul has almost no experience at quarterback, he is a natural in many ways. Especially when it comes to his instincts.

"His decision-making might be his best quality as a quarterback," Schaal said of Paul. "When he makes a decision, whether it's the right one or the wrong one, he's confident in it. He won't second-guess himself. He just finds a way to make plays work.

"The effort he gave and everything he did last Friday, it just changed everything we've seen on our sideline the last few years. The sideline was alive, everyone was having fun, and on the field, guys were sprinting harder to make plays, just playing harder. That energy that Nick brought just brought everything up."

And this, for Paul, is really all that he could have ever hoped for with an ADHD diagnosis. He says he will always have ADHD, but now, he is in charge, rather than the other way around. He is using his energy for good, and at the right times, and keeping it under control otherwise.

"I've calmed it down," Paul said. "People who don't know me might not even know I have it."

Not that Paul is hiding it, or ashamed of it.

Paul wanted to share his story to help other kids find productive ways to control their ADHD. He says that his success with controling ADHD has totally changed the way he sees himself: less and less the underdog kid with an issue.

By the way, the reason he picked No. 83 and will stick with that wide receiver number even when he plays quarterback, is because No. 83 was the number of Wes Welker, a retired NFL receiver who played a bulk of his career with the New England Patriots. Welker was Paul's childhood idol because Welker is just 5-foot-9 and considered an undersized underdog for the NFL.

"People looked at Wes Welker and because he was small, they didn't expect him to do much in the NFL. He was an underdog," Paul said. "That's the way I've always thought of myself. And underdog. I'm not very big (5-foot-9) and I've had some things to get through.

"But I want to change that now. I want to get my name out there for people to know."

From here on out, Paul will be focused on it.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

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