Local cop gets Briscoe back on course

But then came the day that changed Briscoe’s life forever. In summer 2012, he was called in to meet with the school’s athletic director.

“He told me about my grades and said I had way too many absences,” Briscoe said. “He said, ‘nothing I can do; you can’t play.’ ”

It was a crushing blow to kid who had been wowing folks on the football field since he played for the St. Charles Bears in “pound ball.”

“That hurt me,” Briscoe said, the pain still evident years later. “I’m not going to lie to you, I cried.”

The worst part, Briscoe’s predicament wasn’t the result of not having the aptitude for doing the work. Everybody in Charles County, where Briscoe’s family has lived for generations, knew him to be exceptionally bright and intelligent.

He’d just quit trying. Or caring.

Enter Corey Wimberly.

Wimberly is a robbery detective in the Charles County Sherriff’s Office. But he also has made it his calling to mentor young men in the greater Waldorf area.

Wimberly knew Briscoe’s aunt, Katika Briscoe, from when they used to work together in the moving business years before. She knew about Wimberly’s reputation for helping troubled young athletes, so she reached out to him.

Wimberly accepted, then went to work.

“I got him to get his transcripts,” Wimberly said. “My whole thing is using football to pay for your education. You’ve got to have a plan. Kids have goals, but they have to understand the difference in having a goal and a plan. You have to have a plan to reach the goal. And that’s what we talked about.”

Wimberly had been down this road before. A rec-league football coach at West Lake Park — which is actually a rival of Briscoe’s St. Charles Park — he advised defensive back Antwaine Carter before he signed with Maryland in 2014 and a number of athletes who came out of the area before that.

“There have been a bunch of kids I mentor, but Juwuan’s like my son, and I’ve told him that,” said Wimberly, who has a 19-year-old son, Devin. “I consider him one of my own. I love all the rest of them equally and I look after them all the same. But me and (Briscoe) have connected on another level where he just reminds me of my son.”

There’s nothing fantastical about what happened next. Wimberly simply went down the list of classes Briscoe needed for college, came up with study and workout schedule to get it done and “hounded him to death” about sticking to it.

The two of them figure they’ve talked on the phone every day since then.

“He just told me if I wanted to go where I want to go I have to put the work in,” Briscoe said. “That was pretty much it.”

So rather than playing football, Briscoe spent his 10th-grade year started getting up at six each morning and heading to the school to either work on his studies or work out in the gym. He stayed after school as well and did the same thing until six at night.

A strong male influence was needed in Briscoe’s life. His father, Frank Holland, lives an hour away in Baltimore and is not actively involved in his life. Briscoe is extremely close to his mother, Jessie Briscoe, but she’s often at work and trying to make ends meet. The two of them share a townhouse with “Aunt Tika” and her two younger teenage sons.

“He has a strong female influence in his household,” Wimberly said. “I mean, those ladies they’ve got him; Mom and Aunt don’t play. But I think young, black youths need a strong positive black man in their lives.”

Mama agrees.

“Corey really helped him a lot,” she said. “He’s been with him for a while now as a mentor, which I really thank him for. (Juwuan) really had no male figure growing up. He had a grandfather and uncles who looked out from him. But when he did mess up his 10th grade year, that did wake him up. He realized what he wanted to do in life and that really straightened him out.”