‘Running in the hands of God’: Lessons learned at home and in school help Cardinal Ritter graduate fulfill football dreams

Indianapolis Colts running back and kick returner Devin Moore poses on Oct. 15 at St. Vincent Health Field at Marian University in Indianapolis during a Cardinal Ritter Jr./Sr. High School football game. The Indianapolis West Deanery interparochial high school retired his number that night. Moore graduated from Cardinal Ritter in 2004, and was a member of its 2003 state champion football team. (Submitted photo/Steve Rettig)

By Sean Gallagher

On Sept. 12, Indianapolis Colts kick returner Devin Moore stood quietly at his team’s goal line at Reliant Stadium in Houston.

The playing field was still as 10 of his teammates were spread out before him, and 11 Houston Texans players stood ready to run at full speed to tackle him.

It was the opening kickoff of the Colts’ 2010-11 regular season and Moore, a 2004 graduate of Cardinal Ritter Jr./Sr. High School in Indianapolis, would be the first member of the team to touch the football on their quest for a possible return to the Super Bowl.

Once Texans’ kicker Neil Rackers sent the ball sailing through the air toward Moore, the stillness would disappear and Moore would bound into action.

“Before the ball is kicked, I may send up one last prayer and ask for [God] to be with me,” Moore said. “Once the ball is kicked, everything kind of fades to black and I block out the crowd. I’m focused.

“Once I get the ball, I just feel like I’m running in the hands of God. That’s the biggest thing that you learn in [a Catholic] school—to trust God.”

That trust is there with Moore when he catches the ball and immediately tries to avoid tacklers, protect the ball, follow his blockers and find a hole to run through with fearlessness—hopefully all the way to the end zone at the other end of the field for a touchdown, one of football’s most dramatic plays.

But it is there, too, when a kickoff return results in a season-ending injury, as it did for Moore three weeks later during a game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla.

“I’m dealing with adversity, and I’ve developed a plan with the training staff here at the organization,” Moore said. Even though I’m out for this year, I plan on being here next year.”

That determination to keep a spot on the Colts’ roster is partly what helped Moore make the team in the first place. The path that he took to fulfill his longtime dream of playing for his hometown Colts was filled with as many challenges as those faced by a kick returner who wants to score a touchdown.

Humble and intense

Lots of high school football players dream of playing in the pros.

And Moore was no different, according to Joe Pfennig, who coaches running backs and teaches theology at Cardinal Ritter.

He was in his first year as an assistant coach in 2003 when Moore, a running back and kick returner for the team, was a senior.

“The way he practiced was always intense,” Pfennig said. “You could see it in his eyes. He ran hard on the field in practice. And it showed up in games.”

And in one special game in particular.

“We played a game where the first four or five times he touched the ball, he ran it in for a touchdown,” Pfennig said. “I just remember standing there seeing him handing the ball to the ref [after scoring a touchdown], and not jumping up and down or doing a dance.

“It gives me goosebumps just being able to re-tell the story.”

But Moore wasn’t always so humble.

“I remember one time when I was in little league [football], and I scored a touchdown,” he said. “And I had seen a couple of guys on TV kind of showboating once they scored. So I tried to do a little dance once.

“And my mom came out on the field and she actually taught me a little lesson, and told me not to do it again.”

Shelia Moore laughed as she remembered the scene from her son’s childhood.

“If you can’t share your glory and share the happiness of playing the game and winning the game, you have no reason to be on the field to play the game,” she said.

Shelia Moore also taught her sons to work hard.

“She kind of taught me that things weren’t going to be given to me in life, and that you have to work for what you want,” Devin Moore said. “Nothing is easy.”

Doing his job

The hard work that Moore put in on the practice field in 2003 helped Cardinal Ritter win its first state championship since 1977, when Pfennig was a running back for the team.

Pfennig said that Moore’s humility and intense effort to excel are the hallmarks of a Cardinal Ritter student athlete.

“He confirmed what a Cardinal Ritter student athlete is all about. We go out and do our best. And then we just say, ‘We did our job.’ ”

Moore continued to do his job as a student athlete at the University of Wyoming after graduating from Cardinal Ritter, excelling in the Mountain West Conference.

Yet when Moore graduated from college in 2009, no NFL team drafted him. He eventually made it onto the Seattle Seahawks’ and later the Carolina Panthers’ practice squads, but was not on either team’s active roster.

This past spring, though, the Colts invited him to try out for the team. After a lot of hard work in training camp and exhibition games, the undrafted Moore won a spot over other players drafted from football powerhouse universities.

Excitement and joy came with such an achievement.

“To come back home and be with my family, first of all, and to become part of such a well-known and honorable organization was just a great feeling,” Moore said.

But then his humility and intense drive to work hard quickly kicked back in.

“It’s one of those quick reflections you have, and then it’s back to business,” he said.

Family first

It took a while, though, before Moore became a Colt. So he started working hard for another reason—to support his baby daughter.

He even mowed lawns to provide for her while trying to get an invitation to an NFL training camp.

That fatherly dedication gained some attention in Indianapolis after the Colts invited him to try out for the team. But, as is typical with his humility, Moore shied away from the spotlight.

“I tried to keep that under the radar, but I guess a couple of people let it out,” he said, later adding that he learned his family values from his parents. “My mom and dad were hard workers. They put us first—myself and my two brothers.”

Shelia Moore may be more proud of her son for taking responsibility to care for his daughter than she is of him making the Colts’ roster.

“It’s important that you take the time and the responsibility and do it gladly without anyone having to ask you or tell you that you need to be doing this,” she said. “I would really be hurt if I had to ask one of my sons to take care of their own children.”

Shelia Moore and her husband, Kevin, set an example for their sons in caring for them. The weight of that care fell on Shelia Moore’s shoulders alone, however, after Kevin died of lung cancer in 1997 when Devin was only 12.

“[Devin] needed some way to direct his anger,” she said. “He was angry that his father got sick and left him. He didn’t just see it as he died at that point. It was like he had left us, and we couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t fair.

“Ritter … [helped] fill that void in his life.”

Fulfilling a dream

Even though she and her family are not Catholic, Shelia Moore sent all of her sons to Holy Angels School in Indianapolis, but allowed them to choose what high school they would attend.

However, she was pleased that Devin chose Cardinal Ritter.

“I appreciated the fact that there was a school that taught that God was first and you were second,” Shelia Moore said. “That’s a major thing to me for me, for my children and my grandchildren. God is first. You’re second—always.”

She said that Cardinal Ritter instilled in her son a perspective on life that can guide him through the current challenges that he is facing.

“The plus of being in a Catholic school is the fact that religion is taught,” Shelia Moore said. “You are taught about God and the good that God can bless you with, and that maybe God put the hard times in life for a reason.”

Having never been drafted by an NFL team and working hard to earn a spot on the Colts’ roster, Devin Moore knows that there is no guarantee that he will be with the team next year.

But he is taking the lessons that he has learned from his parents and at Ritter, and putting them to good use to prepare for next season.

“I’ve never had it easy in life,” Moore said. “But … I do plan on making an impact next year. I just have more time than others to work on it, and become healthy and a lot stronger and faster.” †