INDIANAPOLIS — Kenny Moore II spends a part of every off day in the classroom.
The Colts slot cornerback is also a part-time teacher at Cardinal Ritter, educating eighth graders on life skills every Tuesday afternoon, even during the season.
When Moore set up the Rise and Shine Initiative with the school last year, a partnership through his Love One Foundation, he wanted his work with the school to be deeper than a financial contribution, something that would last beyond a check.
Nearly all of the work Moore does in the community is centered around the same principle, taking a hands-on approach to helping people, and it’s one of the big reasons that Moore is the team’s Walter Payton Man of the Year Award winner, the first Colt to win the team award three times.
“I thought it was very appropriate for me to be in the flesh and not just kind of send something to the school and just say, ‘Good luck with this,’” Moore said. “But I want it to be in the flesh, and I want it to be more of a more hands on, more of a role for the school.”
A lot of the NFL’s league-wide Walter Payton Man of the Year winners earn the honor for big, sweeping gestures in the wake of community hardship, like Drew Brees stepping up after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Eli Manning serving as the chair of New York March for Babies or J.J. Watt leading the fundraising charge in Houston after Hurricane Harvey.
Moore has always been drawn to the personal, to the everyday, to building long, lasting relationships with people. When Moore decides to work with a cause — like the Firefly Children & Family Alliance, like Grace Car Center Pantry in Noblesville, like the camps and Hurricane Helene relief he’s done in his hometown of Valdosta, Ga. — he often finds a way to make connections, like the friendship he forged with Mason Garvey, a child battling a rare, aggressive form of cancer.
Or the connection he made with kids earlier this season at the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital homecoming event, a chance meeting that led to Moore performing their celebration in the end zone after a pick-six early in the season.
“When you are in the community and you are asking little kids what celebration dance you should do if you make a big play on the field, and then you go into the game that Sunday, you make that big play, and you keep your promise to that little kid, is exactly what this is all about,” Colts owner and chief brand officer Kalen Jackson said on Wednesday.
Moore has the same kinds of conversations with the kids at Cardinal Ritter.
He formed the partnership in order to have a presence at the school, to find the kids who were struggling and open their eyes to the wider world, taking them to see career opportunities and tracking kids.
The more he visited the school, the more the long-time Colt wanted to make an even bigger contribution.
By stepping into the classroom.
“I’m there for about two hours, and the class work is about 45 minutes to an hour before they get out of school,” Moores said. “They kind of schedule their Tuesdays in a way of letting me have this fourth block with these eighth graders, and we’ll be able to track these eighth graders all throughout high school.”
Two hours might not seem like a lot.
But an NFL player has only one day off every week, and Moore’s committed his time to working with the same group of kids.
“Initially, they were kind of like, ‘What can I talk about? What can I say?’” Moore said. “They were very quiet. Now going on probably our eighth or so, having these types of discussions and everything, talking about how is it at home? Or how is it juggling all the responsibilities that you have with school and extracurriculars? Their growth and everything – the comfort level was already there.”
Moore knows what it was like to be those kids.
The only boy in a family of seven kids, Moore has never lost a sense of where he’s come from, how badly he wanted to make it before anybody knew his name.
The more he talks to kids, the more they realize there’s not as much difference between them and a long-time Colts star as they might think.
“Initially it’s kind of a little uncomfortable, but I think the more you talk about it, you realize that we’re all going through the same thing,” Moore said. “We’re all bound to have rainy days. You’ve just got to have the tools to be able to make it through and see the sunshine again. I think that’s what I’ve learned in my career, as an adult, and I didn’t know those things whenever I was in eighth grade or whenever I was in high school.”
Moore is in the classroom every Tuesday with two other teachers, helping kids through the rainy days and the tough stuff.
On Sundays, he’s Kenny Moore II, still one of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL.
On Tuesday, he’s Mr. Moore, or Mr. Kenny.
Building relationships with kids that are going to make a big impact down the road.
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.