Going Long : Pathon's Path to Big Time Took Him From South Africa, Across Canada and, Eventually, to Seattle

By JIM HODGES

Nov. 14, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The hard days are the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when he gets together with his sister and mother, and occasionally his dad.

The easy days are those like Saturday, when he catches passes for Washington against UCLA in the Rose Bowl before thousands in the seats, millions in a television audience, finally fulfilling a goal he didn’t realize was so ambitious until he was told to keep his game where it belonged, where the field was bigger, the competition less fearsome.

“Everybody goes home for holidays, and they have their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins around and everybody is happy,” says Jerome Pathon, the Husky who refused to take no for an answer.

“But all of my aunts and uncles and cousins are still in South Africa.”

Since he was 5, he has been a Canadian, with few memories and only occasional contact with a family in Cape Town that is still trying to learn to deal with being able to hold up its head without racial retaliation.

“We left because of apartheid, and because my mother and father figured there was a better opportunity for us in Vancouver,” he says. “I’ve been back once, and it was great seeing cousins and aunts and uncles, my family, and a couple of boyhood friends. But it’s all so different from what I’m used to now.”

Everything is so different.

Pathon was a soccer player and a track runner who was talked into playing football by a friend at 14, and a year later was starting for a high school team in Canada’s 12-man, three-down game, finding the whole thing remarkably easy, the wider, longer field made for a receiver who could run.

“He is very athletically gifted,” says Larry Donahoe, coach at Carson Graham Secondary School in North Vancouver. “We had no JV ball when he played, so he hadn’t played much, but he picked it up easily.”

And was put down just as easily by Tennessee, Notre Dame, Miami and, yes, Washington. They were schools that got packages from an ambitious transplanted South African that included game film and a resume of his exploits as a conference most valuable player in British Columbia.

That’s not exactly the same thing as being all-CIF.

“I wanted to aim high,” Pathon says. “I didn’t know any better. I sent a letter and game film to the big-time schools. I wanted to play in the big time.”

“They brushed me off,” Pathon says. “They all told me they had no scholarship.”

He had no place to play in British Columbia, either. There are three major football-playing colleges in the province, and admission is predicated on academics. Anybody with an average below B-minus need not apply, so he suddenly found himself in Nova Scotia, a 17-year-old kid at Arcadia University, which is about as far from Seattle as you can get without a boat.

Pathon had no problem impressing.

“We had a scrimmage a week before our first game, and he caught a ‘fade’ about as pretty as you could see,” said Sonny Woolf, Arcadia’s coach. “We knew this was a kid who had to have the ball in his hands.”

He did, enough for a 93-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, a 55-yard run on a reverse for another score and seven touchdowns receiving.

He was all-Canada, virtually unheard of for a freshman, and the Canadian Inter-University Athletic Union’s rookie of the year.

But none of that is the NCAA, and Nova Scotia is about as far from Vancouver as it is Seattle.

“He was 17, and he was lonely,” Woolf said. “When he got here, I got a call from his mother and one from his father [they are estranged] every day for the first 10 days. One day, his mom would call first, then his father would call. The next day, his father would call first, and then his mother.”

It’s eight hours by the fastest means of transportation from Vancouver to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and another hour to Wolfeville, site of Arcadia University.

“It was too far,” Pathon says. “I really wanted to find someplace closer to home.

“And I’d done everything I could [at Arcadia]. I thought I could be that much better if I could play in the United States.”

Again, game film and letters went out, but this time the resume was enhanced. He had played college football--sure, in front of 3,500 at Arcadia, against the St. Mary’s Huskies and St. Francis Xavier Axemen, but still college football--and he had attracted attention usually reserved for people wearing skates and carrying sticks.

This time Washington Coach Jim Lambright watched the film a little closer, asked Pathon to walk on because the Huskies were short on scholarships because of NCAA sanctions and promised better things down the road.

He’s well down that road now, with six 100-yard games this season, the product of a summer well spent with Brock Huard, Washington’s quarterback, and daily throw-and-catch sessions. Pathon leads the Pacific 10 in receiving yards with 1,092, and is second in punt returns, averaging 13 yards.

“You can really tell,” Huard says of the fruits of their summer labor. “It seemed to put backbone in his game. He wants the ball, and he’s doing everything he can to get it.”

Says Arizona State Coach Bruce Snyder, victimized by a 41-yard touchdown reception by Pathon, “He’s scary. He seems to be like not just a fast guy, but a guy who believes that every ball in the air is his.”

He scared UCLA a year ago, returning the opening kickoff 60 yards to set up the Huskies’ first touchdown and set a pattern for an entire day spent on a short field.

Canada remembers him. He was selected in the second round of the Canadian Football League draft last spring by the Montreal Alouettes, the 11th pick overall. His future is assured if he wants it to be, but again Pathon has adopted an ambitious stance.

“I’d like to see if I can play in the NFL,” he says.

He won’t have to send out letters and film. The NFL is watching.

And Washington is looking north, to see if there are more Pathons.

“We have a back here, Paris Jackson, who will be a receiver in college,” Donahoe says. “Washington takes our calls now.”

Pathon’s calls home and their return are easier to handle now, and the family crosses the border for home games, then can drive home, what family there is.

“I’d like to have more here,” he says. “I really would.”

He’ll settle for 74,000 friends on Saturdays in Seattle, even for thousands of temporary enemies this Saturday in Pasadena.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SATURDAY’S GAME

WASHINGTON at UCLA

* Time: 12:30 p.m.

* Site: Rose Bowl

* TV: Channel 7

* Radio: AM 1150