Watts admired at Florida high school
Wildcat center now faces manslaughter, DUI charges
Posted: Thursday November 19, 1998 11:11 AM
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Watts now faces second-degree manslaughter and drunken-driving charges AP |
LEXINGTON, Kentucky (AP) -- Jason Watts' high school football coach thinks so highly of him that he keeps five pictures of Watts on his office wall.
Watts was "my favorite player in 30 years of coaching," says Jack Blanton, who coached Watts at Oviedo High School in Oviedo, Florida.
The 21-year-old University of Kentucky starting center who now faces second-degree manslaughter and drunken-driving charges was one of the most admired boys at the school.
"Down here, he was never in trouble," said Wayne Epps, the principal at Oviedo. "Let me put it like this: I would have loved to have had a whole high school full of Jason Watts."
But at Kentucky, tight end Paul McGonagle said Watts' robust approach to life often seemed shadowed by ill fortune.
How much bad fortune?
"How much time do you have?" McGonagle said. "You don't have the time."
Watts was behind the wheel of a pickup truck early Sunday when it went out of control on U.S. 27 north of Somerset and overturned, killing Eastern Kentucky University student Christopher Scott Brock, 21, and Kentucky teammate Arthur 'Artie' Steinmetz, 19. Watts suffered a severe gash on his right forearm.
Doctors Wednesday night upgraded Watts' condition to good after he underwent a third operation to cleanse the gash on his right forearm. He could be discharged in three to five days.
Watts' blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, or 1 1/2 times the threshold at which a driver is legally impaired. Blood-alcohol levels of Steinmetz and Brock were 0.13 percent and 0.15 percent, respectively, the Pulaski County coroner's office said.
"I still can't believe it. It's a tragedy of unreal proportions," said Epps, now the principal of a rival high school. "Jason is such a great kid. The kind of kid who always had a smile on his face and a good word to say to everybody."
"He was the kind of kid who never backed down from a challenge," said Blanton, the former Oviedo football coach. "And he was the kind of kid who never believed he could get hurt."
Some knew Watts as the boy who used to race motorbikes, or the young man who loved to take his pickup truck mudding. Or the fellow who has become semi-famous for his willingness to wrestle alligators in his native Florida.
"Where we're from, there just isn't very much to do," said Scott Dedelow, Watts' best friend in high school and now a football player at Central Florida. "But Jason was the kind of guy, he would find things to do. We'd take our trucks mudding. We'd go out on a boat. He's a little bit crazy, but he's just the kind of guy who makes things fun."
When he got to high school, Jason Watts transferred his zeal to the football field.
In his senior year, Watts separated a shoulder, but would not stop playing. Once, the shoulder popped out of its socket, but Watts would not tell his team's trainer because he was afraid the trainer would not let him continue.
At Kentucky, Watts became one of the standout centers in the tough Southeastern Conference. He started the final game of his freshman season in 1995 and had been starting ever since.
"If you've watched any of our games through the years, you've seen Jason," former Kentucky player John Schlarman said. "He's the guy whose body was always flying around the pile, the guy always looking for one more guy to hit."
Last year, Watts paid a fine following an incident in which he shot teammate Omar Smith in the buttocks as they handled a rifle outside the house they shared in Lexington. A police report on the incident reported that Watts' blood-alcohol content was 0.12 percent.
Watts initially was charged with first-degree assault, but that later was reduced to unlawful discharge of a weapon, a violation of city ordinance, in part because Smith refused to file a criminal complaint or testify against Watts.
Meanwhile, Arthur Steinmetz's mother, Therese Steinmetz, lashed out at prosecutors for bringing charges against Watts.
"No one -- no one -- will ever replace my son Artie and ... that poor young man is in the hospital trying to heal and get well and he's being charged with something like this. It's just unbelievable and not necessary," she told the Herald-Leader.
"My husband and I do not want this to happen," Mrs. Steinmetz said.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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