Niles West welcomed home alum and Super Bowl champion Rashard Mendenhall to retire his #5 jersey at a pep assembly on Friday Sept. 22. He was recognized for his high school, college and professional football accomplishments.
Mendenhall attended Niles West and started his career as a football, basketball and track athlete, primarily marking achievements in football with his extraordinary talent and practice from track. He went on to attend University of Illinois to play college football, where he gained recognition for his talent as a running back and was named the 2007 Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year. In 2008, he joined the Pittsburgh Steelers as a first round pick. During his rookie season, he led his team to a Super Bowl victory against the Arizona Cardinals. He became known for his powerful running style and ability to break tackles, and over the course of his NFL career, Mendenhall rushed for over 4,000 yards and scored 39 touchdowns.
“It feels good, just knowing that I was going to come back to the place where things started. Being welcomed in by new and old, by people that are here now and also coaches, my teammates, people that they brought back, it just feels outstanding to be here and merging that old and new,” Mendenhall said.
On Sept. 16, Mendenhall was also honored by being inducted into the University of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 2023. Niles West football players were invited down to the University of Illinois to watch Mendenhall get inducted.
“The football team and I were very thankful that he invited us out and we all had a great time. Mendenhall shows us that you can make it to the NFL from a school like Niles West if you work hard enough,” senior and varsity football player Logan Brandfeller said.
In 2013, Mendenhall played with the Arizona Cardinals for a season before retiring from professional football in 2014 at the age of 26. Mendenhall enrolled at the University of Chicago and pursued a master’s degree in creative writing before going on to become a writer and story editor for the HBO sports comedy, Ballers.
“He was a very nice and polite young man. Rashard did all his writing assignments which is probably how he ended up writing for HBO,” English teacher Andrew Jeter said.
Beyond his writing and football career, Mendenhall has been an advocate for social justice causes and has used his platform to speak out on issues such as racism and discrimination. In 2020, amidst the global Black Lives Matter protests, Mendenhall spoke about the need for systemic change and the importance of unity and understanding. In the wake of Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem in protest against racial inequality and police brutality, Mendenhall expressed his support for the movement. While this stance resonated with many who believed in social justice, it also drew criticism from those who viewed it as disrespectful to the flag and the country.
“Coming from a place like Niles West that has so many different cultural backgrounds [and] so many different flags…growing up and that being my life from the time I was six years old, that’s important to me because I can’t even imagine a world where people are separated coming from a place like here,” Mendenhall said. “I couldn’t imagine how you could try to separate people based on what you believe about them.”
Mendenhall’s assembly also brings some discussion from students with differences from the assembly honoring Jewell Loyd in 2021.
“Her jersey retirement was optional and was after school. For Mendenhall, they have chosen to throw him a whole assembly for which attendance is required. Not only are they taking time away from our education, but there is a clear disparity between Loyd’s and Mendnhall’s jersey retirement ceremonies. They have both played on the professional level,” senior Rylie Gordon said.
In the end, Rashard Mendenhall’s career was impressive, in both the athletic and writing world. His name resonates with football fans across the nation; in 2015, he was inducted into the Niles West Athletic Hall of Fame.
