UK’s mother-son roommates cope with pandemic the only way they know how — together

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While her son was in elementary school, Mandy Headrick made a choice that in hindsight seems eerily prescient given the current circumstances America faces.

A single mother, Headrick was working in sales at the time. She wanted to make a job change that would be impervious, or at least far less affected, when faced with an economic downturn, and allow her to move easily. She also didn’t want to end up back at the bottom of a career ladder after she had worked so long to be able to make a living for her and her son, Darian.

So in 2012 — about four years after graduating with a degree in business and management — Headrick returned to school to study nursing. She finished a bachelor’s program at Lincoln Memorial University, and by 2015 was working at University Hospitals-Case Medical Center in Cleveland.

Her stay there was short, however, but not because it was a bad fit. While mom was hitting the books, Darian was hitting the weights. He was sprouting, too. By the end of his senior year at St. Ignatius High School, Darian stood 6-foot-5, weighed 336 pounds and was considered one of the best offensive tackles in the country. On April 30, 2017, he committed to the University of Kentucky from a final four also consisting of Penn State, Tennessee and UCLA.

Darian Kinnard, as a true sophomore, started every game at right tackle for UK last season. Between shifts at a hospital within earshot of Kroger Field, his mom was there to see every snap.

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Headrick applied for and got a job as a registered nurse at the Lexington VA Medical Center’s Troy Bowling facility located on UK’s campus prior to Kinnard’s enrollment at UK the summer of 2018. The twosome had spent their entire lives together; it just made sense to keep it going.

“That’s my road dog. He’s always been my front-passenger seat, so to speak,” Headrick told the Herald-Leader during a recent phone interview. “That’s not to say we don’t get on each other’s nerves — oh, believe me — but there’s a comfort in knowing that somebody who knows you so well is at least in it with you and that you have that person good, bad or ugly to support you regardless of what’s going on.”

It’s especially reassuring in the midst of a global pandemic. With college sports canceled through the end of spring semester and the future of the 2020 football season in limbo, anything that fosters a sense of normalcy is valued more than ever. Many of UK’s players returned to their homes in Michigan, Ohio and throughout the South when the earliest measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 were put into effect. For Kinnard, who spent most of his childhood in Tennessee before the move to Cleveland, home was never out of sight.

“Having my mom here, I don’t really have to worry about a lot of things,” Kinnard said. “My mom is the most important person in my life. It’s definitely good.”

He’s concerned for her safety on the job — her hospital has had COVID-19 patients but, at the time the Herald-Leader spoke with her, was preparing itself for overflow from other hospitals that had not yet been necessary — but tries to keep a level-headed mindset about it.

“You can only take measures to reduce the likelihood,” Kinnard said. “No one’s 100% safe. I’m worried, but she knows what she’s doing and I think she can handle it.”

On a typical day — at least typical for these days — Kinnard will drive his mom to the hospital then return to their home, where they live with two dogs. In-person meetings with his teammates at UK have been replaced by Zoom get-togethers. Their yard has become an off-campus extension of the Joe Craft Football Training Facility; it’s not close to state of the art, but it does have heavy wood and plenty of room to run suicide drills.

“He’s been flipping logs like Paul Bunyan,” Headrick said with a laugh. “My backyard’s tore up.”

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So many of the decisions Headrick has made in her life were motivated by a desire to help Kinnard achieve his dreams. As a youngster who frequently had to tag along and wait in a library at LMU while she went to class, it was hard for him to appreciate the steps she was taking.

“I thought every time I had to go to the library I was going to die,” Kinnard said with a laugh. “It was a pain, but it was worth it. She handled everything to the best of her ability.”

In middle school he became more aware of why his mom, often operating on only three or four hours of sleep a night, constantly had to juggle her life and why she had to find rides for him to and from football practice instead of taking him herself. Shazzon Bradley, a former Tennessee standout, was Kinnard’s football coach at the time and had a huge influence on his outlook.

“I always noticed what was going on, but it really clicked when Coach told me I could possibly take care of her one day,” Kinnard said. “ … I knew she was doing it for me, but he was the one who really drove it home. I didn’t want to go to college and be a burden, to have my mom be struggling to pay for college. She had to struggle to pay college, so by the time I was in middle school and was like, ‘I could go to college for free,’ I was just grinding.”

Kinnard said it “sounds really stupid,” in hindsight, that a kid would act and think like that, but “God blessed me with my growth,” and he put in the work necessary to complement it. He’ll be a junior, academically, next football season but could join a bevy of UK seniors who look to get selected in the 2021 NFL Draft.

There’s no second-guessing from where Kinnard gets his persistence. He plans to continue matching his mom’s drive for years to come.

“She was willing to sacrifice a lot for me and for her future to take care of me,” Kinnard said. “That’s one of my biggest reasons why I’m willing to sacrifice so much.”

Headrick does as much as she can to “remove herself from the equation” in terms of social-distancing, given her role. She’s exclusively shopping online right now, and when she’s not working or doing school work (she’s in an MBA program), Headrick makes time to relax with do-it-yourself projects.

“I just sort of try to focus my energy on things that I need to get done and I look at this as an opportunity to do that,” said Headrick, who shared that she’s working a few more hours than are typically called for by her schedule, but nothing comparable to nurses in places like New York City. “It can be hard ‘cause sometimes you’re just not in the mindset or you’re not in the mood to do certain things. It is what it is, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got. Just do what you need to do and take advantage of what you’ve got while it’s there, ideal or otherwise.”

They both miss visiting family members who live in Knoxville, and going out on the lake with lifelong friends who also reside in Tennessee. The thought of crossing the state’s lower border was mundane as recently as March; now it excites the mind.

This moment full of inconveniences is just a temporary blip on the radar, though, says Headrick. A month can feel like a year, in the moment, but a year from now a month of training lost to the pandemic will seem minuscule. At a minimum, it’s fostered a greater appreciation for routine.

“It’s amazing how much they complain how exhausted they are between class and football, and then, my God, you give ‘em a week away from it and they’re screaming that they need it back,” Headrick said with a laugh.

Until then, she’s fine with Paul Bunyan ruining the yard while she does her part to get him back on a weight bench.

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