There are so many professional athletes from Oak Cliff that it’s hard to keep track of everyone, but the Ottawa Sun offers an update on Patrick Levels today.
Levels, a defensive back for the Ottawa Redblacks of the Canadian Football League, grew up in Oak Cliff but took a DART train to attend school near his grandmother’s house in Pleasant Grove. He was an all-state defensive back for Roosevelt High School.
“They called me the golden child. My grades were good. I didn’t miss school. I didn’t do anything to get in trouble. I stayed out of drugs and things like that. I didn’t get any tattoos,” he told the newspaper. “I just did things a lot differently because I wanted a different result.”
Levels was on the honor roll at Baylor University and graduated in 2016. He’s played in the CFL since 2017.
He’s under 6-feet tall, a disadvantage in pro football, but it motivated him to go as far as he could in the sport, he told the newspaper.
Nobody had to push me to want to do more. I was a smaller guy, so I always had a chip on my shoulder. I’d hear it: ‘You’re too small, you’re too small.’ And I’d think, ‘OK, let me show you what a small guy can do.’ I was motivated to prove everybody wrong. That’s what got me to this point. You can’t judge heart. It doesn’t matter if you’re 6-foot-9, 350 pounds. If you don’t have heart, you’re not going to make it. My work ethic got me past a lot of my size issues. I never take anything for granted. I don’t think I’m owed anything. Everything I do is appreciated. And everything I get is appreciated.
The profile highlights Levels as a dad — his first child, Jay’Lynn, was born when Levels was 18. He also has a 4-year-old, Mila. And he helped raise two much younger siblings, according to the article.
He says he owes his success to the support of his grandmother, who died when Levels was in college, and his mother.
“In college, my focus was trying to make it to the NFL and take care of my whole family,” he told the publication. “I had my mom to support me, helping take care of my son. She was like, ‘Hey, if this is your dream, we’re all going to work together as a family to make sure you succeed. It’s the support I needed in order to keep going. And while I was there, there was never any quit in me. I was like, ‘I have somebody who relies on me.’”
