WEBSTER, Fla. – All it takes is a quick drive through the heart of downtown, past the modest structure known as City Hall and the small post office next door, to conclude Keanu Neal grew up in a Florida much different than the one packed with beaches, theme parks and tacky tourist attractions.
Neal was born here, raised here, played a game the local boys called “pick-'em-up-and-bust-'em.”
“Tackle football with no pads,'' he explains.
Whenever Neal was outside in the hot Florida sun searching for stuff to do, there was a constant landmark to guide him home.
The place nicknamed the “Cucumber Capital” has a can't-miss water tower right in the middle of town.
The light-green pylon rises high above Webster like a Redwood dropped from the sky into a desert.
“That is the biggest thing there,'' Neal said. “It really is.”
Except on Mondays. That is when folks from all around Central Florida make a road trip to shop at the famous Webster Flea Market, which has been in operation for more than 50 years and doubles or triples the population for a few hours.
Otherwise, this is a sleepy rural community far removed from the hustle-and-bustle life Neal has lived as a college football player the past three years at UF, about 80 miles north.
Neal missed the first two games of the season with a leg injury but returned in last week's win at Kentucky and finished with nine tackles and a sack. One of Florida's starting safeties, Neal blossomed as a player at nearby South Sumter High in Bushnell, about an eight-mile bus ride from Webster.
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His older brother, Clinton Hart, did the same two decades ago. Hart was a standout football and baseball player at South Sumter in the mid-1990s.
He played quarterback and defensive back for Raiders head coach Inman Sherman, who took over the program in 1984 and is still there as one of the winningest coaches in the history of Florida high school football.
Sherman remembers a raw athlete full of raw emotion.
“He is one of the most intense players we have ever had at this school,'' Sherman said. “His intensity just brought everybody's intensity to another level. There was never a moment when Clint was down. He was always ready to get somebody.”
Hart wasn't the student his younger brother is. While good enough athletically to play football in college, Hart never did. He enrolled at Central Florida Community College in Ocala and played baseball.
He was good enough to get drafted by the Angels in the late stages of the 2000 MLB Amateur Draft. Instead, Hart devised what seemed to many a far-fetched plan to make it to the NFL.
“I said I was going to the NFL in four years,'' Hart said this week. “I said that before it ever happened. I stuck to it. I didn't think I was ever going to play behind Brian Dawkins.”
In what turned into an unlikely success story, Hart tried out for the Tallahassee Thunder in the lower tier of the Arena Football League. He made the team, played well, and was signed by the Tampa Bay Storm of the AFL. Hart stood out with the Storm in 2001 and earned a spot in NFL Europe.
After his stint in Europe, he was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles and as a rookie in 2003, started nine games when Eagles All-Pro safety Brian Dawkins suffered an injury.
The 38-year-old Hart played parts of seven seasons in the NFL, spending five seasons in San Diego before finishing his career in 2009.
By the time Hart's NFL career was coming to an end Neal was his No. 1 fan, his growing interest in the game derived root and branch from watching his brother's success.
“He had a huge influence on me,'' said Neal, who is 18 years younger.
While Hart and Neal have different last names, they have the same biological parents, Kathy Hart Neal and Clinton Neal. The family's life during Clinton's youth was not as stable as it was when Keanu came along.
“They weren't at hardly any of my games. Now I'm seeing a totally different response to him,'' Hart said. “It's so much better now that they were able to mend a lot of the broken pieces and be there for him.”
Hart tries to be there for Neal, too.
He helps Neal train in the offseason and tries to serve as a mentor to help his brother avoid some of the potholes he stepped into.
“Keanu didn't see a lot of what I saw. It was very bad when I was coming up,'' Hart said. “There were drugs everywhere [in Webster]. It's calmed down a lot. I'm glad he didn't get exposed to any of that. A lot of kids got caught up in that my age and they were never able to get out of it.
“People don't relate the two of us because of the last-name difference. The Hart side of our family is very athletic. My dad's side is very tall in physique and chiseled. We now have the opportunity to put both families on the map.”
Sherman has photos of Hart and Neal on his office wall. Like Hart did in the NFL, Neal wears No. 42 for the Gators. There are other similarities.
But when they arrived at South Sumter and joined the football team, there was no comparison in stature between the two. Hart weighed 170 pounds as a senior. Neal was 206 pounds his sophomore season in high school, a player that crunched opponents with his physical presence on Friday nights.
“KeKe was on the varsity as a ninth-grader,'' Sherman said. “For us here, we're extremely proud of him. He never wants to let anybody down. He fights to be successful at everything he does. We knew he was going to be physical. He was physical in everything he did for us.”
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Much like he did in high school, Neal began to assert himself as a sophomore for the Gators. He started eight games and developed a reputation as the team's hardest hitter.
Gators receiver Ahmad Fulwood quickly noticed the way the 6-foot-1, 216-poound Neal tossed his body around to make plays with fiery abandon.
“That kid is lethal,'' Fulwood said. “If you get in his wrong way, he'll come straight through you. He's a strong kid, really smart, and plays the game well.”
Neal finished with 45 tackles last season and three interceptions, including one late in the game to seal the victory at Tennessee, Florida's opponent on Saturday at The Swamp.
The closest Neal can come to identifying where he developed his full-throttle approach to football happened in middle school.
He came up from safety and drilled a receiver in the middle of the field. He shed the “cotton candy” nickname Hart once teased him with forever.
“One good hit,'' he said. “That's just how I play. Guys see me as a big hitter and I've kind of fallen on it in a sense.”
However, it wasn't until last season that Hart, who now lives in Ocala and owns a fitness center, saw Neal began to play confident at the college level.
“Keanu has a very mean side to him,'' Hart said. “A lot of people don't see it, and that's good, because that's what it takes to be a great football player. You have to a good person out in the community, but when you touch the football field, you have to change and transform into something different.”
Hart used to keep dolls in his locker before games to remind him of the mentality he needed to carry onto the field, including a Rocky Balboa edition.
If Neal stays healthy, Hart envisions a day when he and his younger brother can share stories of playing the game on the biggest stage.
“He has all the intangibles,'' Hart said. “He has what it takes to make it to that top level. He's chasing me. I love that. I want him to be great. I want him to be greater than I ever was. He's got the ability to do that.”
In a secondary loaded with talent, Neal is the biggest of the group, which allows him to be used in several ways. Neal can pressure the quarterback, defend the run and has worked on his pass coverage.
First-year Gators defensive backs coach Kirk Callahan is never concerned about Neal's commitment to improve or to the team.
“He's very serious in that he takes everything that he does seriously, whether that's practice, technique, film study and obviously that's another thing that you want those young guys to continue to see,” Callahan said. “That's guy that does things the right way. You reap what you sow. The things he puts in off the field is going to show up on Saturdays when he's out there.”
Sherman can relate.
The only two Parade All-Americans his program has produced – Neal and former Gators linebacker Earl Everett – came from Webster. They grew up within a mile radius from each other in a neighborhood locals refer to as “the sub.”
The same place Hart grew up and returns occasionally to give back to the kids who have yet to learn there's another world out there.
“A delight to coach,'' Sherman said of Neal. “It's going to be difficult for me to say something bad about him. I think Clint gave Keanu a little bit of a road map on how to do things right and maybe a little of how to do things wrong. I think it helped him.”
