Rashaun Grant lay in his hospital bed in Pembroke Pines, Fla., his breathing so compromised that he needed an oxygen tube. Diagnosed with COVID-19, Grant was so debilitated that he got out of bed only to use the bathroom, and even that simple task caused him to breathe heavily.
“I was pretty bad,” said Grant, who a decade and a half ago graced Bobby Dodd Stadium as a Georgia Tech running back.
It was April 24. Into his woeful state arrived an email for the married father of three. It was from the Tech registrar’s office. As he labored to fill his lungs with air and rid himself of a deadly virus, Grant read on his phone that he had been approved to graduate from the institute, 11-1/2 years after his last full-time semester on campus.
“Despite all that was going on with me health-wise, I felt good,” Grant told the AJC by phone. “I’m a man of faith, so I kind of believed that everything would be OK, so I felt good.”
In his circle of friends from his days at Tech, Grant is known as a storyteller and a family man.
“Great father, excellent husband, he loves his kids,” former Tech cornerback Avery Roberson said. “Loves his family, would do anything for them. But he’s just an all-around good guy.”
A four-star prospect from Tampa, Fla., Grant began promisingly as a freshman, but his career was derailed by injuries. A backup to Tashard Choice, currently Tech’s running backs coach, Grant met his last tough break in his senior season in 2007. After Choice was injured against Army, Grant subbed for him and ran for 119 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries before he severely injured his ankle. It ended his season and his career.
Despite the setbacks, “I still never saw him have a negative attitude toward anything,” said Roberson, now a middle-school math teacher at Drew Charter School in Atlanta. “He was always supportive. That’s just how he is, to this day.”
Leaving without his degree
Calamity struck during the spring semester of 2008. An uncle who served as a father figure was diagnosed with cancer, and his parents got a divorce after more than 20 years of marriage, Grant said. At the same time, Grant was training for Tech’s Pro Day to take his shot at the NFL.
He withdrew from all of his classes. Unfortunately, he had just missed the deadline for withdrawing without it impacting his GPA. He returned in the fall of 2008 and completed his required classes. He took part in graduation ceremonies, although he said that he knew that he wasn’t going to receive a diploma.
Tech requires a 2.0 GPA to earn a degree, and the semester in which he withdrew from school dropped his GPA barely below that standard. It’s conceivable that had Grant informed the school of the circumstances of his withdrawal, he could have been granted leniency, but he kept the matter private.
Grant put it behind him. Living in Miami with his then-girlfriend (now his wife) Jessica, Grant had a job and didn’t feel the need to come back. In time, Rashaun and Jessica got married and started a family. The idea of returning to Atlanta for a semester (Tech requires students to earn their final 36 credit hours in on-campus classes) grew more unfeasible.
However, Grant’s academic adviser kept encouraging him to cross the finish line. Doug Allvine is now Tech’s assistant athletic director for innovation, but his pet project remains the athletic department’s degree-completion program.
So determined was Allvine that even after Grant stopped answering his calls, he began telling Grant’s friends, such as former Jackets Marcus Harris, Xavier McGuire and Roberson, to tell their buddy to call Allvine.
Grant finally relented.
“I guess getting older, wiser,” he said by way of explanation, “and then realizing that, say, if I did want to switch careers or something like that, I might not be as fortunate as I’ve been able to progress (without a degree).”
He also thought it’d be nice to give his mother his degree to hang up in her home.
Taking steps to graduation
In 2017, Grant and Allvine submitted paperwork to make the case to Tech for him to receive his diploma. But, perhaps not surprising for a school whose alumni prefer the term “getting out” to “graduating,” it would not be quite so easy. School officials did remove his failed grades from the semester when he left school mid-term. However, because the management degree that he was on the precipice of earning in 2008 no longer existed, replaced by a highly similar business major, Grant needed to take more classes to complete degree requirements.
School officials did, though, permit him to take the classes away from Tech.
That left Grant to take two classes at Florida International, which he did last fall, while continuing to work as a dorm supervisor and counselor for about 100 young men in a job-training program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, and raising Skyla (8), Jadari (7) and Jaiden (3). The job is a fit for Grant, who grew up going to Boys and Girls Clubs and himself enjoyed the blessing of having multiple male mentors in his life.
Grant took a marketing class and an upper-level management class, the latter a rigorous mix of math and case studies, requiring him to exercise muscles he had scarcely used in 11 years.
“I ended up getting a B,” Grant said. “I was like, Wow.”
All that was left was for Tech to process his paperwork for him to officially graduate this spring. And, in that time, he contracted the coronavirus. He believes he was infected by his mother-in-law, who lives with Grant’s family and also was diagnosed (and has since recovered).
At first, hit with a high fever and a lack of energy, Grant quarantined himself at home, but then one day woke up unable to take a deep breath. Jessica took him to the emergency room, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs. He was scared.
“They tell you you’ve got double pneumonia and you hear about all the cases of people,” said Grant, who lost more than 30 pounds in his sickness. “It was scary for my family as well. I could definitely see how somebody who is maybe immunocompromised or older could succumb to the symptoms. It’s serious business.”
Grant recovered, learning that he was graduating at the same time. He was released from the hospital Saturday. Under normal circumstances, Tech would have held commencement the same day.
For Grant and his family, there is plenty to count as blessing. He is healthy, as are his wife’s mother and aunt, who also was diagnosed with COVID-19. And he now is a Tech degree holder, eager to celebrate with his former teammates and fellow graduates.
“God willing, if the football season kicks back up, I’ll probably be at every home game,” Grant said.
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