North Carolina State University Athletics
Pack Unlocked, Volume 1: Stephen Louis
5/20/2016 8:44:00 AM | Football
RALEIGH, N.C. - There's always a party at Steph Louis' house.
Or at least that's what people think. There are usually numerous cars parked in front and a crowd of people inside. But although the Louis family has been known to throw a party sometimes, the crowd inside their in West Palm Beach, Florida, home is usually just their own family.
The Wolfpack's redshirt sophomore wide receiver is one of seven kids born to Haitian immigrants Estilia and Jacqulin Louis. He's the youngest of six boys. Jackson is the oldest at 31, then there's Johnson, James, Steven (yes, there is a Steven and a Stephen), Jacqulin, Jr. and Stephen (pronounced STEFF ahn). Younger sister Jasmine is just 14.
"I come from very big family," Louis says. "My granddad had about 20 kids and most of them live around me. Some live in Haiti but they come to visit all the time."
With so many older brothers, Louis said he learned to be tough. "You definitely have to be tough growing up with that many older brothers, but my dad made sure we all took care of each other. There were a lot of fights just to prepare you for what's going to happen in the real world. I learned a lot from my brothers' mistakes."
The Louis boys learned early on the value of hard work. "Many Haitians come from nothing," he continues. "The country is small and poor, so they come to America for opportunity and are willing to work hard. With us, from the time you're born, you're taught to work hard, because that's the only way to be successful."
"I learned how to be a hard worker from my parents. My dad works every day and he only takes days off for very, very important reasons. He didn't go to college, but he's been very successful because he's always worked hard. They raised all of us and I never felt like I needed anything. They took care of all of us."
The language spoken in Louis' home might have been Creole, but sports was definitely a second language. "It was always sports," Louis laughs. "I had one brother who was really good at soccer. Another played basketball and then the rest played football and ran track. My brothers are more outgoing than I am. They would play sports, but they had other stuff going on - more of a social life."
Louis, however, was focussed solely on sports. When he was a young boy, his father realized that he was going to be a competitor on a different level than his brothers. "I would watch sports on TV with my dad and I would literally cry if I saw a player do something wrong. He told me at a very young age that he knew I would be good at sports because I cared about it so much. He always pushed me to be better every day."
Before long, Louis was a highly-rated recruit, ranking among the top athletes nationally by ESPN.com. When it time to choose where to go to college, NC State stood out for many reasons, but one major one was that he found some fellow Haitians on the team.
"One of the things I loved when I came here on my official visit was that there were other Haitian players here: Rodman Noel and Sean Paul," remembers Louis, who says he and Paul frequently speak Creole to each other.
Louis graduated early from Palm Beach Lakes High School and in January of 2014, he enrolled at NC State and participated in spring drills. In just his second game that fall, he scored a touchdown. Just eight games into his collegiate career, he was starting at wide receiver on the road at Louisville. He could already see his future rolled out in front of him like a long, Wolfpack red carpet.
Unfortunately, that carpet had a few wrinkles. In that start, he suffered a dislocated shoulder. He was not able to play at wide receiver in the next game, but came back and played the rest of the season. Then, just a couple of workouts into 2015 spring practice, he realized that he wasn't going to be able to play. He underwent surgery on one shoulder. Weeks later, he had to have surgery on his other shoulder.
"Playing as a freshman, I thought, 'I've got it,'" Louis says. "I was on a high. I played and saw that I could play on this level, then that fast, I'm hurt. You get here, you play and you see that you can do it, so you start coasting. I feel like God did that for a reason so I can't take things for granted. I took the hard work for granted and was just getting by."
Louis was forced to redshirt the 2015 campaign while he rehabbed both shoulders. Being unable to play the sport he loved was hard. But to the young man who grew up living with a houseful of brothers and being a part of close-knit teams since he was a young boy, the separation between the participating players and the injured players was even harder.
"When you've played football for so long, you never think about the game being taken away from you," he remembers somberly. "You always have your teammates, who are your brothers, and you're always around them. When it's taken away because of injury, it's like a whole different world.
"You don't get to experience being in the huddle. You don't get to experience being hype with your teammates before a game. You don't get to experience just going out and grinding with them. So it hurt. It hurt REAL bad."
Those inside the Wolfpack football program never saw hurt during Louis' rehab. Instead he approached every day with a smile and a determination that made him a favorite of all who worked with him.
[WATCH: Steph Louis working hard off the field. http://gopack.com/news/2015/10/21/FB_1021150806.aspx]
"Steph approached his rehab in a way that he started to truly believe that his setback was a platform for a major comeback," said Dantonio Burnette, the Wolfpack's Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for Football. "No athlete is truly tested until they've stared an injury in the face and come out on the other side stronger than they've ever been. And that's exactly what Steph did. He achieved a personal best on every one of his maxes at the end of our training phase and his confidence was through the roof."
"The biggest lesson I learned was that I can get through anything," Louis recalls. "It was one of the toughest things I've ever had to go through, but it also showed me that there are a lot of people around who really care about me. Not only my family, but people here like Mr. [Al] Byrd, Coach Thunder [Burnette], and all the coaches. It shows you that this is like a family here at NC State.
"I wasn't with my teammates, but I still felt the love from everyone in the program. I realized that people love you here because of who you are, not what you're doing on the field. It was actually a blessing that it happened so I could see that."
After two surgeries and countless hours of rehab, Louis was back on the field this spring. "Being back felt so good! It was a great time just being out there with my teammates. For most of last season, I was by myself just working out so it felt good to get out there and play."
Now Louis says that he looks at football, and life, through new eyes.
"When I see people who take stuff for granted, it's annoying. I know a lot of guys from back home who, if they were in this situation, would take full advantage of it. Sometimes guys complain about having to work out, but I know so many guys who would die for this. They would love to come here and wake up at 5 a.m. and work out and eat breakfast and go to school. Now they're working jobs that they'll be doing the rest of their lives."
Louis had a great spring outing and in his words, "established myself as one of the playmakers on the team." For the Kay Yow Spring game, his grandparents, who were visiting from Haiti, were able to see him play for the first time.
"They were very excited. My niece and nephew came, my little sister, three of my brothers and my parents. And then I had five cousins come. It was a lot of fun and it was great to be back out there."
Louis feels that he has an obligation, to his family and to his support system at NC State, to be successful. "I feel like I have to lead my group to be the group that everyone expects us to be. We've got guys like Torry Holt who come back and see us. Having a guy who is that great come back just shows us that this school has a history of great receivers and we have to try to meet the standard that they set."
Louis is proud that he will be the first in his family to earn his college degree. "It means so much to me. They support me so much now and they have supported me so much from the time I started sports. If there is anything I ever need, I just call them and they're there."'
Or at least that's what people think. There are usually numerous cars parked in front and a crowd of people inside. But although the Louis family has been known to throw a party sometimes, the crowd inside their in West Palm Beach, Florida, home is usually just their own family.
The Wolfpack's redshirt sophomore wide receiver is one of seven kids born to Haitian immigrants Estilia and Jacqulin Louis. He's the youngest of six boys. Jackson is the oldest at 31, then there's Johnson, James, Steven (yes, there is a Steven and a Stephen), Jacqulin, Jr. and Stephen (pronounced STEFF ahn). Younger sister Jasmine is just 14.
"I come from very big family," Louis says. "My granddad had about 20 kids and most of them live around me. Some live in Haiti but they come to visit all the time."
With so many older brothers, Louis said he learned to be tough. "You definitely have to be tough growing up with that many older brothers, but my dad made sure we all took care of each other. There were a lot of fights just to prepare you for what's going to happen in the real world. I learned a lot from my brothers' mistakes."
The Louis boys learned early on the value of hard work. "Many Haitians come from nothing," he continues. "The country is small and poor, so they come to America for opportunity and are willing to work hard. With us, from the time you're born, you're taught to work hard, because that's the only way to be successful."
"I learned how to be a hard worker from my parents. My dad works every day and he only takes days off for very, very important reasons. He didn't go to college, but he's been very successful because he's always worked hard. They raised all of us and I never felt like I needed anything. They took care of all of us."
The language spoken in Louis' home might have been Creole, but sports was definitely a second language. "It was always sports," Louis laughs. "I had one brother who was really good at soccer. Another played basketball and then the rest played football and ran track. My brothers are more outgoing than I am. They would play sports, but they had other stuff going on - more of a social life."
Louis, however, was focussed solely on sports. When he was a young boy, his father realized that he was going to be a competitor on a different level than his brothers. "I would watch sports on TV with my dad and I would literally cry if I saw a player do something wrong. He told me at a very young age that he knew I would be good at sports because I cared about it so much. He always pushed me to be better every day."
Before long, Louis was a highly-rated recruit, ranking among the top athletes nationally by ESPN.com. When it time to choose where to go to college, NC State stood out for many reasons, but one major one was that he found some fellow Haitians on the team.
"One of the things I loved when I came here on my official visit was that there were other Haitian players here: Rodman Noel and Sean Paul," remembers Louis, who says he and Paul frequently speak Creole to each other.
Louis graduated early from Palm Beach Lakes High School and in January of 2014, he enrolled at NC State and participated in spring drills. In just his second game that fall, he scored a touchdown. Just eight games into his collegiate career, he was starting at wide receiver on the road at Louisville. He could already see his future rolled out in front of him like a long, Wolfpack red carpet.
Unfortunately, that carpet had a few wrinkles. In that start, he suffered a dislocated shoulder. He was not able to play at wide receiver in the next game, but came back and played the rest of the season. Then, just a couple of workouts into 2015 spring practice, he realized that he wasn't going to be able to play. He underwent surgery on one shoulder. Weeks later, he had to have surgery on his other shoulder.
"Playing as a freshman, I thought, 'I've got it,'" Louis says. "I was on a high. I played and saw that I could play on this level, then that fast, I'm hurt. You get here, you play and you see that you can do it, so you start coasting. I feel like God did that for a reason so I can't take things for granted. I took the hard work for granted and was just getting by."
Louis was forced to redshirt the 2015 campaign while he rehabbed both shoulders. Being unable to play the sport he loved was hard. But to the young man who grew up living with a houseful of brothers and being a part of close-knit teams since he was a young boy, the separation between the participating players and the injured players was even harder.
"When you've played football for so long, you never think about the game being taken away from you," he remembers somberly. "You always have your teammates, who are your brothers, and you're always around them. When it's taken away because of injury, it's like a whole different world.
"You don't get to experience being in the huddle. You don't get to experience being hype with your teammates before a game. You don't get to experience just going out and grinding with them. So it hurt. It hurt REAL bad."
Those inside the Wolfpack football program never saw hurt during Louis' rehab. Instead he approached every day with a smile and a determination that made him a favorite of all who worked with him.
[WATCH: Steph Louis working hard off the field. http://gopack.com/news/2015/10/21/FB_1021150806.aspx]
"Steph approached his rehab in a way that he started to truly believe that his setback was a platform for a major comeback," said Dantonio Burnette, the Wolfpack's Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for Football. "No athlete is truly tested until they've stared an injury in the face and come out on the other side stronger than they've ever been. And that's exactly what Steph did. He achieved a personal best on every one of his maxes at the end of our training phase and his confidence was through the roof."
"The biggest lesson I learned was that I can get through anything," Louis recalls. "It was one of the toughest things I've ever had to go through, but it also showed me that there are a lot of people around who really care about me. Not only my family, but people here like Mr. [Al] Byrd, Coach Thunder [Burnette], and all the coaches. It shows you that this is like a family here at NC State.
"I wasn't with my teammates, but I still felt the love from everyone in the program. I realized that people love you here because of who you are, not what you're doing on the field. It was actually a blessing that it happened so I could see that."
After two surgeries and countless hours of rehab, Louis was back on the field this spring. "Being back felt so good! It was a great time just being out there with my teammates. For most of last season, I was by myself just working out so it felt good to get out there and play."
Now Louis says that he looks at football, and life, through new eyes.
"When I see people who take stuff for granted, it's annoying. I know a lot of guys from back home who, if they were in this situation, would take full advantage of it. Sometimes guys complain about having to work out, but I know so many guys who would die for this. They would love to come here and wake up at 5 a.m. and work out and eat breakfast and go to school. Now they're working jobs that they'll be doing the rest of their lives."
Louis had a great spring outing and in his words, "established myself as one of the playmakers on the team." For the Kay Yow Spring game, his grandparents, who were visiting from Haiti, were able to see him play for the first time.
"They were very excited. My niece and nephew came, my little sister, three of my brothers and my parents. And then I had five cousins come. It was a lot of fun and it was great to be back out there."
Louis feels that he has an obligation, to his family and to his support system at NC State, to be successful. "I feel like I have to lead my group to be the group that everyone expects us to be. We've got guys like Torry Holt who come back and see us. Having a guy who is that great come back just shows us that this school has a history of great receivers and we have to try to meet the standard that they set."
Louis is proud that he will be the first in his family to earn his college degree. "It means so much to me. They support me so much now and they have supported me so much from the time I started sports. If there is anything I ever need, I just call them and they're there."'
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Wednesday, December 03
FB Players Postgame Presser vs UNC
Sunday, November 30
Coach Doeren Postgame Presser vs UNC
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Coach Doeren Weekly Press Conference (Nov. 24)
Monday, November 24