Hameen Ali

Ali overcame many obstacles in life prior to earning an athletic scholarship to play for William & Mary, located in Williamsburg, Virginia.[3] As a child, Ali, his mother, and his sisters often had to live in their station wagon in Dover, Delaware because "that's all we had," he later said (he even spent one Christmas Eve in the car).[3] At age 12, Ali was kicked out of sixth grade for getting into too many fights.[4] In 1990, he stepped in to stop his mother's new boyfriend from being abusive toward his younger sisters; the boyfriend then went after him instead.[3] His sisters were fathered by different men, and Ali used to sell drugs on the corner.[3] He ran away and eventually found himself living in a foster home.[3]

Ali credits living in a foster home as the best thing that could have happened to him.[3] It provided stability, and after a stellar football career at Dover High School, he was awarded an athletic scholarship to play for the Tribe. Ali suited up for the Tribe from 1996 to 2000.[5] In his true freshman season they won the Yankee Conference championship, made it to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division I-AA Playoffs, and were named that year's Lambert Cup winners.[5] Two years later, in his redshirt sophomore season, he led William & Mary rushing; he led the team again the next season as well.[2] While he did not repeat a third time in leading the Tribe in rushing, he did finish his career after the 2000 season having accumulated 21 touchdowns and 2,217 yards (at the time of his graduation in 2001, this total ranked him eighth all-time in school history).[1][2]

On December 7, 2000, the National College Football Awards Association presented him with their Sports Spirit Award in Lake Buena Vista, Florida during an annual ceremony.[3]