TicketsBy Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – The first practice of the season had ended and all the players on Nat Lewis' youth football team in Danville, Va., were on their way home except one.
Little 8-year-old Kimoni Fitz was sitting all alone.
"I said, 'Kimoni, what's wrong?'" Lewis recalled. "He said that whoever he rode with had left him."
Kimoni got in the car with Lewis and his 6-year-old son, Kaden, who was also on the team. During the 20-minute drive to Kimoni's house, Kaden was so taken with him that he asked his dad if Kimoni could spend the night at their house.
"His parents said that would be fine," Lewis said. "From then on, he was with us just about every weekend."
It was the beginning of a long, loving relationship between Fitz, a junior defensive end at the University of Cincinnati, and the Lewis family that led to Nat and his wife, Daleen, being granted legal guardianship of Fitz after his father died five years ago at the age of 68. Fitz was 16 at the time.
"They were always there for me," Fitz said. "It was my new family. It may look like I was adopted, but I wasn't really because they were my family from day one."
Fitz was extremely close to his father, Delano, who was 52 when Kimoni was born. It was just the two of them together when his brother, Datuan, left to join the Air Force after he finished high school. By then, their mother, who was dealing with problems of her own, was no longer around.
Delano Fitz had a variety of health issues – including high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes – so he and Kimoni took care of each other.
"He did everything for me," Fitz said. "He was the hardest working man I've ever seen in my life. I really didn't live a normal life because I had to be there for my dad so much. Then my dad had two strokes. The first one he had when I was in elementary school. It affected the whole right side of his body. After that, my dad was basically disabled. He couldn't work anymore and my brother, he was in high school, but he was out of the house real quick.
"I didn't see the first (stroke) because I was in school at the time, but the second stroke I did see. I was out of school for the summer after my junior year and it was just a normal day when I saw my dad just pass out. He said he was weak and he couldn't do anything. I was so scared. The first thing I did was call 9-1-1. After that he was fighting so much through the next two months, but he didn't make it."
That's when the Lewis family stepped in.
"His dad always tried and did his best with what he could do," said Lewis, who works as a nurse and serves as a volunteer assistant coach for the Chatham High School football team. "And his mother ended up leaving about a year after we met Kimoni. My wife is the only mom he's really ever known. And he likes to relate to me as dad. When his dad passed away we finally got guardianship through the court system. He basically lived with us most of the time anyway, but it was just final. We always had another bed for him. When he was sick he wanted to be at our house because my wife nurtured him.
"I've got three boys, but when somebody asks me how many kids have you got, I tell them, 'We've got four boys. There's Kimoni, Kaden, Kamden and Kennen.' We say this all the time that we knew it was meant to be because all of our boys were named with a K. That's one of our inside family jokes."
The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Fitz has impressed the UC coaching staff during training camp and is expected to figure prominently in the Bearcats' defensive plans this fall. In 12 games last year, he made 37 tackles with 3.0 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
"Kimoni is one of the guys on our punt team and those punt team guys are hand-picked," said UC head coach Luke Fickell. "Is he gonna play on defense? Darn right he is. We've got some guys that we can roll through there, but he's a starter on that punt team. That means that we have incredible respect for what he does."
Fitz takes great pride in being on the punt team.
"In this program, special teams comes first," he said. "Coach Fick will tell you that the best players are gonna play on special teams. I'll definitely be in the rotation for sure. Of course I want to start. That's the goal. I definitely want to put in the work every day to prove what I can do on the field."
Fitz realizes that he's been blessed to have two families. As much as he appreciates his new family, he hasn't forgotten his dad, who worked as a bus driver for New Jersey Transit for 27 years before moving to Virginia in 1999 when Kimoni was three years old.
"My dad fought through every day having the pride of a man," Fitz said. "Just seeing him so weak, he just looked so helpless. It was hard because he was all I had, the only real blood I had.
Every day I try to make my dad proud. He never missed a football game. It didn't matter how ill he was.. I played basketball too. He didn't miss a basketball game either."
For the record, Lewis and his wife are white, while Fitz is African American. That's noteworthy only because their story mirrors The Blind Side, the 2009 movie which tells the real-life story of parents of a white family living in Memphis, Tenn., who become legal guardians for Michael Oher, who becomes an All-American tackle at Mississippi and a first-round draft choice in the National Football League.
But as Lewis is quick to point out, "This was going on way before The Blind Side came out. I remember the very first time we watched it, I think it was Thanksgiving at my wife's grandmother's house. It was my wife, on one side, Kimoni's in the middle, and I'm on one side and he's got his arm around both of us and halfway through he movie, he says, 'I love this movie.'
"It's not a fairy tale or anything," Lewis continued. "We're definitely a family and I discipline him just like I do the other ones. People say to us, 'Oh, you guys did such a great job and he's lucky to have you.' Maybe he is. But he made it easy. He's been easy to love."
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – The first practice of the season had ended and all the players on Nat Lewis' youth football team in Danville, Va., were on their way home except one.
Little 8-year-old Kimoni Fitz was sitting all alone.
"I said, 'Kimoni, what's wrong?'" Lewis recalled. "He said that whoever he rode with had left him."
Kimoni got in the car with Lewis and his 6-year-old son, Kaden, who was also on the team. During the 20-minute drive to Kimoni's house, Kaden was so taken with him that he asked his dad if Kimoni could spend the night at their house.
"His parents said that would be fine," Lewis said. "From then on, he was with us just about every weekend."
It was the beginning of a long, loving relationship between Fitz, a junior defensive end at the University of Cincinnati, and the Lewis family that led to Nat and his wife, Daleen, being granted legal guardianship of Fitz after his father died five years ago at the age of 68. Fitz was 16 at the time.
"They were always there for me," Fitz said. "It was my new family. It may look like I was adopted, but I wasn't really because they were my family from day one."
Fitz was extremely close to his father, Delano, who was 52 when Kimoni was born. It was just the two of them together when his brother, Datuan, left to join the Air Force after he finished high school. By then, their mother, who was dealing with problems of her own, was no longer around.
Delano Fitz had a variety of health issues – including high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes – so he and Kimoni took care of each other.
"He did everything for me," Fitz said. "He was the hardest working man I've ever seen in my life. I really didn't live a normal life because I had to be there for my dad so much. Then my dad had two strokes. The first one he had when I was in elementary school. It affected the whole right side of his body. After that, my dad was basically disabled. He couldn't work anymore and my brother, he was in high school, but he was out of the house real quick.
"I didn't see the first (stroke) because I was in school at the time, but the second stroke I did see. I was out of school for the summer after my junior year and it was just a normal day when I saw my dad just pass out. He said he was weak and he couldn't do anything. I was so scared. The first thing I did was call 9-1-1. After that he was fighting so much through the next two months, but he didn't make it."
That's when the Lewis family stepped in.
"His dad always tried and did his best with what he could do," said Lewis, who works as a nurse and serves as a volunteer assistant coach for the Chatham High School football team. "And his mother ended up leaving about a year after we met Kimoni. My wife is the only mom he's really ever known. And he likes to relate to me as dad. When his dad passed away we finally got guardianship through the court system. He basically lived with us most of the time anyway, but it was just final. We always had another bed for him. When he was sick he wanted to be at our house because my wife nurtured him.
"I've got three boys, but when somebody asks me how many kids have you got, I tell them, 'We've got four boys. There's Kimoni, Kaden, Kamden and Kennen.' We say this all the time that we knew it was meant to be because all of our boys were named with a K. That's one of our inside family jokes."
The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Fitz has impressed the UC coaching staff during training camp and is expected to figure prominently in the Bearcats' defensive plans this fall. In 12 games last year, he made 37 tackles with 3.0 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
"Kimoni is one of the guys on our punt team and those punt team guys are hand-picked," said UC head coach Luke Fickell. "Is he gonna play on defense? Darn right he is. We've got some guys that we can roll through there, but he's a starter on that punt team. That means that we have incredible respect for what he does."
Fitz takes great pride in being on the punt team.
"In this program, special teams comes first," he said. "Coach Fick will tell you that the best players are gonna play on special teams. I'll definitely be in the rotation for sure. Of course I want to start. That's the goal. I definitely want to put in the work every day to prove what I can do on the field."
Fitz realizes that he's been blessed to have two families. As much as he appreciates his new family, he hasn't forgotten his dad, who worked as a bus driver for New Jersey Transit for 27 years before moving to Virginia in 1999 when Kimoni was three years old.
"My dad fought through every day having the pride of a man," Fitz said. "Just seeing him so weak, he just looked so helpless. It was hard because he was all I had, the only real blood I had.
Every day I try to make my dad proud. He never missed a football game. It didn't matter how ill he was.. I played basketball too. He didn't miss a basketball game either."
For the record, Lewis and his wife are white, while Fitz is African American. That's noteworthy only because their story mirrors The Blind Side, the 2009 movie which tells the real-life story of parents of a white family living in Memphis, Tenn., who become legal guardians for Michael Oher, who becomes an All-American tackle at Mississippi and a first-round draft choice in the National Football League.
But as Lewis is quick to point out, "This was going on way before The Blind Side came out. I remember the very first time we watched it, I think it was Thanksgiving at my wife's grandmother's house. It was my wife, on one side, Kimoni's in the middle, and I'm on one side and he's got his arm around both of us and halfway through he movie, he says, 'I love this movie.'
"It's not a fairy tale or anything," Lewis continued. "We're definitely a family and I discipline him just like I do the other ones. People say to us, 'Oh, you guys did such a great job and he's lucky to have you.' Maybe he is. But he made it easy. He's been easy to love."
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.