From Family to Field: How Devotion Drives Los Angeles Chargers Draft Pick Cam Hart

While in middle school Cam Hart was recruited by several high schools. His choice was Our Lady of Good Counsel School. It was a great opportunity, the school has produced several professional football players including Stephon Diggs and Kendall Fuller. But attending required two hours of commuting five days a week. The young Hart wasn’t phased by losing free time for two reasons;

“Thankful for Good Counsel being so far away, there wasn’t much time (for hanging with friends or making bad choices),” Hart said. “If I was getting home, I had to do homework, get to bed and wake up by 5 or 6 the next morning to be able to get to school.

“So luckily that was one, and then, two, I think once I made the decision that ‘OK, I want to do something with football, and if I’m going to go to a private school and my mom’s going to make all these sacrifices, then I’ve got to make some sacrifices myself.’”

Fast forward to 2022, Hart lost his grandmother to lung cancer. He dedicated that season to her, who helped raise him and who he counts as ‘one of those three seminal female figures in his life.’ The final is his older sister whose name, Tamira, adorns his left biceps.

The other family member who played a hand in where Cam Hart is now is his Uncle Zac. “He’s not even my uncle, he’s my second cousin”

“As Zac [Dingle] started to see that I wanted to start making the right decisions and actually had something going for myself, he took the role and played the dad figure in my life,” Hart said. “He’s guided me throughout the way, helped me make some big decisions in my life and he’s supported me in everything I want to do. And with the football thing, since my mom doesn’t really know what’s going on football-wise, she watches it and supports it but doesn’t really know the ins and outs of recruiting or all this other grimy stuff out there, he makes sure I was protected in that fashion. I’m really appreciative of him as well.

“That’s why I’m so driven to make sure that, even if I don’t make it to the NFL, even if I have to work for the rest of my life, that’s going to be the person I take care of because she’s made so many sacrifices for me. I couldn’t even articulate or put into words for you, but she’s just everything I have and she’s done everything for me, sacrificed so much, sacrificed her childhood – we basically grew up together – because she had to sacrifice that to raise me. So I’m just going to pay her back as much as I possibly can.”