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Shakita Peterson missed her oldest son's first day of pre-kindergarten.
Santana Peterson-Warden was 3 years old that early of morning of Aug. 22, 2012. The sun long ago had closed its eyes when he woke up to a house full of screaming men wearing SWAT gear and wielding rifles.
It was around midnight.
The screaming men with guns were there for his mother.
They were there because she had been dealing drugs.
They were there to bring her to prison, where Santana's father already was for doing the same thing.
"When he went to jail I took it upon myself to try to sell some
drugs, to be like him, because it was easy," Shakita told The Tennessean.
That is Santana Peterson-Warden's first childhood memory. A tattered tattoo glued to the brain of the now 17-year-old Pearl-Cohn senior football offensive lineman, who has been part of the program in some form since he was 5 years old. He sometimes walked an hour each way to catch a Metro bus to the high school he loves because his mother didn't own a car.
"I didn't know what was going on," he said of that August morning. "They were everywhere. It was crazy."
"They had their lights, their guns pointed to our faces," Shakita said. "Telling everybody to get down, be quiet. ... I thought I was never going to see my son again."
She spent the next two months in prison and the next seven years fighting bad choices, personal tragedies such as the death of her mother and addictions that became so bad she checked herself into rehab in 2019.
Santana spent the next two months living with his Godmother and every day since trying to avoid that path while sticking by his mother's side.
Through their financial struggles.
Through her struggles with cocaine that pushed her to the point in 2019, she said, that "I did not want to be around my kids."
"I did things I wasn't proud of," Shakita said. "I was like, 'Hold on, wait a minute. I am tripping. If I don't want to be around my kids, that means this drug has got me by the (explective) neck.' "
While she was in rehab, Santana began to learn how to take care of himself.
More specifically, he learned how to do laundry.
"I had to go to school sometimes with dirty clothes," he said with a laugh. "That is the day I learned how to wash clothes. I was so mad."
'He isn't present, but he's in our hearts'
Santana Peterson-Warden misses his father.
Shakita and he, though never married, were together for the first 14 years of his life.
He helped introduce Santana to football. He was a "loving" person. Then he got sick.
His struggles with mental health began, Shakita said, during COVID. They worsened in 2022, when her brother died. And in 2023, when her father died. And in 2024, when her brother-in-law did the same.
All were close with Santana's father. All were close with Santana.
Pearl-Cohn announcer Catfish is James Brown of high school football
She said Santana's father stopped taking his medication, which helped keep his illness under control.
Shakita decided it was best for her, Santana and his 12-year-old brother, Terrodkis, to move on. To move away. First near Madison and then to East Nashville, where they moved into a brand-new Section 8 apartment this summer.
"Santana has always had a mother and a father in the household," Shakita said. "His father is fighting a mental illness, like so many others, right now.
"He isn't present, but he's here in our hearts."
Santana still sees his dad once in a while. He still holds dear those 14 years they shared. Still wrestles with how much their relationship has changed.
"I miss the way it used to be," he said. "I get so mad at him sometimes, but then I tell myself that he's sick, that he doesn't want to be this way.
"How I grew up, it wasn't perfect. But it felt like I grew up by love. I know people who grew up by survival."
'I don't play about the Lord'
Santana Peterson-Warden sometimes misses a Thursday football practice so he doesn't miss his younger brother's game.
And he never misses his weekly get-togethers with his youth group, Teen Dream Center, a faith-based organization for teens that aims to help "people break free from the lies of their past by encountering the radical and powerful love of Jesus, experiencing his truth and grace, learning to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and fully live the life that God has for them."
That's where he met Ketric Newell, the group's founder who caught Santana's attention through a sermon his cousin convinced him to attend in eighth grade. It's where he met his mentor, Rainer Mays, who has become something of a father/older brother figure to Santana since the two met three years ago.
It's where he found the faith he leans so heavily into.
"Over time I started actually listening. Sorry, my bad," Santana said, tears beginning to fill his eyes.
"I realized, 'OK, I need to tap in with this,' " he continued. "It felt like everything just became easier because I had somebody with me, made me realize the Lord is always with you.
"I don't play about the Lord."
But he does pray to his Lord. Before every football game, his head leans against a goal post.
And after every day is done.
Before a new one begins, usually around 5:30 every morning when Shakita wakes him up to take him to school in the car she bought with her own money before she heads to work at her new job as a cafeteria worker.
'I got work at 5:30'
Mays walked with Shakita and Santana during the football team's senior night on Oct. 9.
Mays drove Santana to a football camp two hours away at a college in Kentucky, the latter hoping to get some interest from coaches at the next level.
Mays, who became Santana's mentor two summers ago, found a nearby coffee shop in which to work while Santana attended the four-hour camp.
"I pick him up after, ask him how it went," Mays said. "He's sweaty. I'm like, 'Hey, do you want to stop and get some food?' He's like, 'I got work at 5:30. I have to be on time. Can we stop, run through somewhere pretty quick?'
"That's his Saturday."
Those Saturdays are part of the weekends Santana works at Sonic for some pocket money and to pay the family's Internet bill.
Those Saturdays come the day after football Friday nights with the Firebirds.
It comes after those Wednesday nights of bowling or bible study or just hanging around with others from TDC.
"He's like a big brother everyone listens to," Newell said. "With Santana, he's all into whatever he's into. There's this simple joy that I see from him that is beautiful."
'I can't quit on a sport that helped save me'
Santana Peterson-Warden will miss football when it's gone from his life.
The kid who draws a cross on his wrist tape before every game, who hopes to play in college, said he is prepared to move on from the sport that has helped shape him if that doesn't come to pass.
He wants to be a physical therapist.
He considered moving on from football twice already.
Once after his sophomore season, when the Firebirds lost in the state semifinal game. He asked himself why he should bother to come back from a broken wrist he had suffered. He felt behind. Mentally, he was exhausted.
Another time after his junior season, when the Firebirds lost in the state championship game. College coaches were quiet. He felt like football wasn't loving him back.
Then he looked around him. Saw his teammates were all hurting like him.
"I was like, 'I can't quit on these guys,' " Santana said. " 'I can't quit on a sport that helped save me.' "
'I love those people, but I know who I am'
So now he is trying to help the Firebirds finish a job that began four years ago. That continued with a trip to the state semifinals his sophomore year and a trip to the state final last season.
For now, he will absorb all that football has meant to him. The confidence it has given him. The outlet for his anger and the brotherhood it has provided.
"On the field, I'm a dog," he said. "I'm releasing all that anger. I feel like I'm 'him.' "
Pearl-Cohn football coach Tony Brunetti took that 'him' a step further.
"He's just a nice, genuine kid," Brunetti said. "When a kid is a good, kind kid, humble, nice to everybody and polite ... You don't know what he's going through at home, coming to school every day, most of the time with a smile on his face.
"That's him."
That's Santana Peterson-Warden. The big brother. The football player. The son who loves his parents and others he grew up around but, in many ways, is doing all he can to not be like them.
"I grew up in that," he said. "I've seen too much. Too many people who have opportunity, lose it because of what they are into. I've seen people die because of what they're into.
"Don't get me wrong, they are my people, my family, who I stay around. But I also know some of the stuff they are doing is just not me. I still love those people, but I know who I am and who I want to be."
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Meet Santana Peterson-Warden, the inspiring Pearl-Cohn football senior leader for the Firebirds
