Second chances: For Demetris Summers in 2025, regrets and a new path forward
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Demetrius Summers: A football star’s rise, fall and rebirth
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Drugs, and a different path: Demetris Summers couldn’t be caught. Until he was
Second chances: For Demetris Summers in 2025, regrets and a new path forward
The Demetris Summers story, Chapter 5: Demetris Summers, a hometown football legend with so much promise, was a convicted drug dealer at age 33. Now 42, he opens up in this five-part series about his past, including getting kicked off the USC Gamecocks, and his hopes for the future.
Demetris Summers is sitting on his couch, talking about regrets.
Four of his daughters — there are six in all, from age 10 to 24 — have gathered around, listening just off to the side. They’re free to hear everything, which is probably smart in a world where they can Google all of their father’s mistakes.
They can learn about him getting kicked off the USC football team. The positive drug tests. The arrest in 2014. The drug bust in 2015. The eight-year prison sentence.
Summers, now 42 and living in the Irmo area, has always relished the idea of being a father. At the age of 18, he and his longtime girlfriend (now fiancee) Latesha “Candi” Boykin had the couple’s first child, a girl they named Ny’Asia. Summers would father three more daughters with Boykin and two with a woman who has since remarried and moved to Oklahoma.
Right after Ny’Asia was born, Demetris went back to Lexington High and passed out celebratory mini cigars to all his buddies.
“I was excited,” Summers said. “I had a dad, but he wasn’t around like he should’ve been. I just (said) to myself that whenever I have kids, I’m gonna make sure I’m around.”
To actually heal the father-son relationship, though, he needed to be a father to a son. Summers dreamed about that for years. Not even prison could dim the desire.
“Momma,” he’d say in prison, “when I get out, I’m gonna get me a boy.”
And Jacqueline would laugh: “Demetris, you’re full of girls.”
“Well,” he’d respond, “I’m gonna keep going until I get a boy.”
Last November, just a little more than 10 months after being released from prison, Summers found out his dream would come true. He was going to have a son.
Yet, a dilemma loomed.
Summers was dead-set on naming his son Demetris Summers Jr.
Boykin pushed back, wondering why they would want to give this child the reputation, the expectations of his father, before he could become his own man?
Jacqueline Summers sided with her son. She wanted a Junior, even though she knew what that would mean.
“They’re gonna expect the same thing out of him that Demetris did,” she said. “I’m telling you. I don’t know how this boy is gonna make it.”
A Summers boy who will turn into a Summers kid and then a Summers teenager. He’ll live just a few miles away from where his dad became one of the greatest running backs in the history of the Palmetto State and just a few miles from where his dad spent six years and nine months of his life in prison.
At some point, along with all the other coming-of-age talks a father must have with his son, Summers will have to explain his story.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. But, I mean — ” Summers said, pausing for a few seconds. “I don’t know when or how I’m gonna tell him about it. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna get stories from other people: ‘Your daddy was bad. Your daddy was this. Your daddy was that. I know he’s gonna have questions.”
A special connection with Bailey and Beth Harris
Bailey Harris thought he saw a ghost.
Harris was sitting at River Bluff High School on a December night with his wife, Beth, waiting for a basketball game to start, unaware that the greatest talent he ever coached was out of prison, let alone behind him.
“I kind of broke down,” Harris said. “I hadn’t seen him in a while. He gave me a big ol’ hug and told me he missed me. … Honestly, he looks better now than he did the couple years before everything went wrong.”
Every tale about Summers getting in trouble is a phenomenal little block to stack onto the tower of evidence while his life went south. But those who supported him the most still love him and say those missteps should be considered in context.
“He got suspended a handful of times,” said Harris, the Wildcats’ longtime basketball coach. “But it was never for anything disrespectful or behavior. It was for being late. Or not communicating and then being late.”
Behind the late Jimmy Satterfield, who coached football at Lexington, few men did more for Summers than Harris. He or Beth would often pick Summers up from his house. They’d often swing through a drive-thru to make sure he had a pregame meal. When Beth heard that Summers would be at a number of banquets during his senior year, she took him to Stein Mart and let him pick out a suit.
And when the Lexington basketball team took trips to play in Christmas tournaments, Harris’ two sons — both of whom idolized Summers — often wanted to go toss a football on the beach. Sometimes, Summers was the only one willing to go play with them.
“Your wife,” Harris said, “isn’t gonna send your two little kids out on the beach with somebody they don’t trust.”
Summers reconnects with former teammates, mentors
Before you can be reintegrated into society, you have to reintroduce yourself to society. Somehow — perhaps through contraband technology — Summers ran a Facebook account from behind bars. His alias was “Victor Lap.”
He reached out to a former Wildcat teammate, Jon Wheeler, who invited him to dinner when he was released. Summers brought two of his daughters, and his grandaughter, Za’Mia — who played with Wheeler’s son, Bo, all night. They talked and hung out. Wheeler’s mom brought out old newspaper clippings she had.
Wheeler’s recalling all this sitting in his classroom at Hammond, where he teaches and coaches football now. It’s 8:51 a.m. Class starts in a few minutes. And he’s crying.
“He looked me square in the eye,” Wheeler said of Summers at the dinner. “And he goes, ‘All that stuff I got in trouble for, that was nobody’s else’s fault. That was on me.’”
Around that same time, Chad Staggs received a call from a random number. Staggs, a mentor for Summers at Lexington and at USC, hadn’t spoken to Summers in years.
When Satterfield visited Summers in prison, he tried to get Staggs to come along. Staggs declined. He was still angry. Still mad that he put so much effort, so much of his time in making sure Summers stayed out of trouble, got to school on time got to practice on time, kept good grades, on and on. And for what? He ended up kicked off the Carolina football team and in prison anyway.
Then Summers called.
“He went on to tell me how much he appreciated me and loved me,” Staggs said. “To come out of his mouth was like, holy cow. … That was big for me. Then I felt like an asshole because I never went and saw him (in prison) and I should have.”
Something always changing in Summers’ world
During a March afternoon, Summers pulls up to Groucho’s Deli in Irmo at 2:10 p.m. He steps out of Range Rover in shiny Jordan 11s. Years earlier, Green knew Summers was selling drugs by looking at his feet. Where there were once Nikes, there were Jordans. Green knew something was up.
As he stands in high-end sneakers next to an SUV gleaming in the sun, Summers is asked if that pre-prison drug money endured or life is going that well. He’s emphatic it’s the latter. He’s working almost every day, driving trucks around the Midlands using the CDL he earned from Midlands Tech soon after being released from prison.
Fast-forward to August. Summers’ sparkling-gray Range Rover is sitting just outside his mother’s double-wide trailer on a plot of land that’s been in the Summers family for years. Jacqueline has the door open. She’s re-arranged the living room. A soap opera is playing on the television. And the house is empty.
Where’s Demetris? Isn’t that his car outside?
“It ain’t working,” Jacqueline says. “It won’t go in reverse and it won’t go in gear. We don’t know what the problem is, but we took it over to the place and they want $3,500.”
So Summers grabbed his mom’s car and left the Range Rover at her house. Jacqueline’s not sure if he has a warranty. She’s not sure what her son is going to do with this car.
In the life of Summers, this is the norm. There’s always moving parts, always change. When asked in the winter for Summers’ phone number, Harris sent over two. Neither worked. Eventually his digits were tracked down — then the number went out of service this summer. He got a new phone number.
Little things are always happening, always holding him back. Between 2001 and 2008, Summers had racked up seven speeding tickets and been in three car accidents. Between 2010 and 2015, he added six more traffic tickets.
And all that makes you think back to Harris, who finally suspended Summers from the basketball team after being late who knows how many times. Or Staggs, who was at his beck and call for years and now regrets not having a bigger impact, not being a motivator.
Or Satterfield, who treated Summers like a son just to watch his life spiral anyway.
“If we hadn’t helped him,” Satterfield told The State soon after Summers was dismissed from USC, “he may have gotten some accountability, but he would have been accounting over there on George Street.”
Summers connects with his father
Look in all of the scrapbooks, or all of the photos, or all of the articles written about Summers, and one omission stands out. His father isn’t in any of them.
For a long time, Preston Leaphart lived on the east side of Lexington, another subsection of the city with the ominous nickname “The Jungle.”
“If he stayed (away) from the Jungle, he’ll be all right,” Jacqueline says of Leaphart. “That’s where the bad habits are at. … If y’all go down there, they might think you wanna buy some drugs.”
Leaphart was in and out of prison throughout Summers’ life. He was charged for criminal domestic violence in 1998. Again in 1999. In 2004, he was sentenced to two years in jail for distributing crack. On and on.
“He was doing drugs and stuff, and we never built that father-son relationship,” Summers said.
But they’re trying. After Summers left prison, father and son grabbed a beer together. They talked about life. Leaphart told his son, “I hope you get it right this time,” before telling him that people on the street are doubting he’ll stay on the straight and narrow.
They’ve never spoken about all those years away. All the games missed. Pictures he’s not in. Memories he’s not a part of. At no point has Summers told his father anything along the lines of, "I wish you were there." Because, he feels, who is he to talk?
“I mean, I was there,” Summers said. “But with me doing some of the things I was doing, it’s like I wasn’t there.”
The story of Demetris Summers’ life still being written
A few months ago, a package came in that mail. Someone had sent Summers a nice letter along with a couple of his 2006 Upper Deck rookie cards from his short stint with the Dallas Cowboys. (You can buy the same card on eBay for $1.50).
He asked Summers if he could sign the cards and mail them back, which Summers gladly did. Apparently, Summers said, this happened a handful of times when he was in prison, too. Some folks sent letters and cards directly to the prison. Others mailed them to Jacqueline with instructions to have her son sign them.
The latest one came in late May, leading Summers to share on Instagram immediately. Someone texted him, asking how often people still send fan mail.
“All the time,” he wrote back. “It blows my mind to see stuff still coming through the mail and telling me how much excitement it was to watch me play and wishing me the best of luck in my future!! I guess legends never die!!”
Perhaps in 20 years, this is the part of Summers’ story where his redemption arc will be regaled.
For now, however, his story is unfinished. Summers is at a critical pivot point, his destination still not fully clear. What we at least know: Summers is thinking about doing good.
That began back in prison, when he’d watch a young kid get released … only to get locked back up in no time.
Summers was not necessarily struck by the recidivism rates in South Carolina. It was how these young kids would return to prison like they were being let back into Disneyland. They were elated. Prison, to them, was like high school — sure, it sucks sometimes, but at least you’re around all your friends.
He talks about starting a non-profit he wants to call ROC ROY — short for Rescue Our Children, Rescue Our Youth — where he aims to help the kids of the Midlands not fall into the same traps he did. He wants to host football camps, too, maybe even at Lexington.
The idea began while Summers was still incarcerated and he continued to mention it to The State in March and again in August. To this date, though, Summers has not been able to get it off the ground. A non-profit by that name has not been registered with the state of South Carolina. No camps are scheduled.
Nonetheless, Summers has people rooting for him. Like his high school teammate Dustin Curtis, who’s now Lexington’s athletic director. He wants to lead the charge in reshaping Summers’ public persona, wants to revive some of what Summers lost in prison — notably, getting removed from the Lexington Hall of Fame.
But Curtis understands he can’t snap his fingers and tell everyone to forgive Summers. It’s going to be a years-long process of people actually seeing Summers do good in the world.
“Before I retire from being the AD here,” Curtis said, “I hope I can get him back in. I just need him to do his part. I really would love to spearhead that, he just needs to spend five or six years doing it the right way. Then I think people would come around.”
A birth, and a rebirth
Summers has been out of prison 22 months now.
Almost two years trying to amend fractured relationships, thanking the people who gave all of themselves to keep him on the right path. Laying the foundation of a family. Buying a house. Getting a well-paying job driving trucks. Appreciating the nights he could stay home and watch movies with his babies.
And, within all that, the universe granted Summers his wish: A boy.
He was born early, coming into the world on May 29 weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces. In the hospital, Summers’ baby was wrapped in a white blanket. He looked at his son. Finally, he thought. At one point in the hospital room, he put his baby in his right arm and stuck the Heisman pose.
Three weeks later, Summers is sitting on his couch. His son is sleeping in his car seat next to him. He’s got the same brown eyes as his father. Summers is looking at his baby boy. His cloudy brown eyes are welling up. Maybe it’s just the good running back vision, as George Rogers would say.
On the front door hangs a massive blue ribbon. It’s a birth announcement. A celebration of King Demetris Terrell Summers.
Summers looks at his only son.
“I still call him Junior.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 11:00 AM.
