GAINESVILLE, Fla. — There is no time to turn back and look at the clutter of the past. What has happened has happened and Matt Elam recognizes the urgency required in his current station in life.Elam hasn’t always seen this clearly. Certainly not while growing up in hardscrabble neighborhoods near Interstate 95 in West Palm Beach. Elam was a feisty and moody kid prone to getting into a scrape or two. His grades weren’t always the best. He turned to football to stay out of trouble and off the streets like his older brother Abram before him.Those mean streets in South Florida have caused the Elam brothers a lot of pain over the years.When Matt was 8 his 12-year-old sister Christina was murdered by the brother of a rival. It happened in a neighborhood park near their house. Christina’s favorite number was 22, the same number Matt now wears for the Gators. In the spring of 2008, in a sad and cruel twist like something out of “The Wire,” Elam’s older brother Donald was murdered in the same park that Christina’s life was taken.The darkness in his personal life threatened to derail Elam’s promising football career.A ray of sunshine splashed… Read full this story
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