Devonte Boyd overcomes adversity to become star receiver for UNLV

Four years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his family’s home in New Orleans, UNLV wide receiver Devonte Boyd moved to Las Vegas to live with his uncle, who made an immeasurable impact on his life.

“He basically taught me how to be a man. He was the father figure in my life,” Boyd said. “He taught me how to change a tire and stuff like that. He told me about mistakes he made to make sure I didn’t go down that path.

“He kept me on track with school, because in middle school I used to think getting a D was all right. He put that in my head that that’s not OK. You want to get A’s and B’s. You want to be the best in football, the best in life, the best Devonte you can be.”

Boyd’s uncle, Kevin Boyd, his mother’s brother, died earlier this year after a long bout with pneumonia and heart problems. Dealing with his uncle’s death is the latest in a seemingly endless string of blows absorbed by Boyd in his personal life that he has channeled into inspiration on the football field.

“It was a hard loss,” said Boyd, 21. “To be honest with you, that type of stuff has happened my entire life. You just take it and keep going.

“There are so many negative things you can turn to to deal with it, but you can also use it as motivation to keep going.”

A Basic High School product, Boyd hasn’t let anything stop him from thriving at UNLV, where he has more receiving yards (1,884) through his sophomore season than any other player in school history and has already racked up eight 100-yard receiving games.

“This is not a knock on anybody else, but a lot of times bad things happen to us in life and we use those as reasons why we’re not successful,” UNLV coach Tony Sanchez said. “Well, guys like Devonte Boyd take those and use them as fuel to be successful.”

Boyd was 10 in August 2005 when one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history annihilated New Orleans, his birthplace, displacing more than 800,000 residents.

His most vivid memory of the devastating natural disaster was of living with his mother and six brothers in the Superdome, where they sought refuge amid reports of rapes and murders.

“The Superdome was scary,” he said.

He and his family soon managed to flee New Orleans for Texas, where they waited for their hometown to reopen.

“The people that helped us out, I’m forever thankful,” Boyd said.

Upon returning to New Orleans, Boyd’s family lived in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer provided to people whose homes were destroyed in the flood.

“Everything was happening fast,” Boyd said of Hurricane Katrina. “I didn’t really understand what was going on until we got back to New Orleans and I saw everything flooded and the house destroyed.

“Whatever don’t kill you makes you stronger, I like to say. We overcame it. My mom was strong through it, so we had to be strong through it, too.”

Fast forward to 2009, when Boyd was 14, about to enter high school and hungry for a better life away from New Orleans. He asked his mother if he could move across the country to live with his uncle Kevin and aunt Rocky.

“I didn’t really have a father figure,” said Boyd, whose parents divorced when he was 2. “Most of my uncles had died before I was born, and he was one of my uncles I never knew. I wanted to be with him. My mom didn’t want me to go. It was hard for her, but she let me go.”

Boyd and his uncle quickly formed a close bond.

“My uncle didn’t have any kids, so me moving in, he was like, ‘All right, I’ve got a son now,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got an uncle now. We can do these (father-son) things.’”

Las Vegas might be known as Sin City, but it has proved to be Boyd’s salvation.

“It showed me a totally different lifestyle outside of New Orleans,” he said. “Las Vegas was just an eye opener that there’s so many things you can accomplish and so many dreams you can make come true.

“I was out here just with my uncle, so I could just focus on school and football and going to college. All my friends were in New Orleans, so I wasn’t sidetracked by a lot of other stuff.”

Boyd’s idyllic world was rocked by another tragedy the summer before his senior year at Basic when, less than a month after his aunt Rocky died, his childhood friends, Martin “Marty” Harry and Delanta “Digg” McCall, were shot and killed in Marrero, Louisiana.

“I love those two guys. Those are my best friends in the whole world, period,” he said. “I grew up with them. I got baby pictures with them in the tub.”

Harry and McCall were armed when the shooters pulled alongside their car and gunned them down. Had Boyd stayed in Louisiana, he might have been with them.

“It could’ve went both ways because I know I was with Marty every single day, so it could’ve been me,” he said. “Then again, we probably wouldn’t have gone to the spot they were at. It was a wrong place, wrong time type of thing.”

Boyd wears the words “Rest In Peace Marty” on his necklace to pay tribute to his fallen friend and said their deaths still drive him.

So do his brothers and mother, Landa, who still lives in New Orleans, where she works as a school bus driver and remains his biggest champion.

“I talk to my mom every single day,” Boyd said. “I always have her in my corner telling me I can do it and that the past is the past. It motivates me every day to get up, go harder and keep pushing.”

After earning a scholarship to UNLV and becoming the first in his family to go to college, Boyd shattered the school’s freshman receiving records for receptions (65) and yards (980), and last season had 54 catches for 904 yards and seven touchdowns.

This season, he’s on the watch list for the Biletnikoff Award, which goes to the outstanding receiver in college football. The only Rebel named to the preseason All-Mountain West team, Boyd will have his mother in the stands at Sam Boyd Stadium on Sept. 1, when UNLV opens the season against Jackson State.

Landa’s friend’s son plays for Jackson State, and the proud moms are planning to travel to Las Vegas for the game.

“This makes her smile a lot,” Boyd said of his college football career. “That makes me happy to see her so happy. It’s been tough for me, but it’s been way tougher for her.”

For all the good guidance Boyd’s uncle Kevin gave him, mother knew best when it came to her son’s future in football. At his uncle’s urging, Boyd played quarterback for Basic’s junior varsity team as a freshman, but his mother soon squashed that notion.

“The worst advice he gave me was to go to quarterback,” said Boyd, smiling. “Him and my mom argued about it. My mom kept telling him I played receiver, and the whole time through high school he kept saying, ‘You should’ve played quarterback.’

“I just wanted to go catch touchdowns.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0354. Follow him on Twitter: @tdewey33.