Our kind of player said a beaming Jerry Reese the Giants general manager minutes after he selected Pugh.
But the maturation of a first round N.F.L. draft pick was nuanced with myriad developmental steps along the way including personal trials. Pugh 22 was bigger than life Thursday night the glowing cynosure of a homemade video that captured the moment he was notified by the Giants. But 10 years ago Pugh was not particularly big or overpowering a gangly youth hockey player who aspired to be Wayne Gretzky. He had also recently lost his father to a heart attack.
Some things were tough for him Pugh s mother Carolyn Gavaghan said Friday in a telephone interview from her home north of Philadelphia. It wasn t always easy.
Those who know him now see a single minded gritty player albeit one that can be a paradoxical mix of intellect and intensity.
He s a guy who usually has a smile on his face someone who was smart enough to graduate from our university early said Will Hicks the Syracuse strength and conditioning coach. But in practice or games he flips a switch. He s not one of those coolly efficient offensive linemen. He s fierce. And at the end of a play you better have your head on a swivel because he s always looking to put somebody on the ground.
Pugh s high school coach Vince Bedesem noticed the same thing even when Pugh was a sophomore guard and barely 200 pounds.
Everybody gets up for games Bedesem said. But I saw Justin in practices as a young kid going against older all conference players and he was trying to dominate. He wasn t waiting for the games to ratchet it up. He was going after our own people. You don t see too many high school sophomores just named to the varsity with that kind of drive.
His mother said Justin always had a presence and was the child everyone noticed in a room.
Even as a little boy everybody knew his name Carolyn said. Probably because I was always yelling it and chasing after him.
Carolyn and David Pugh divorced when Justin was 5 years old.
Those next three years were difficult because Justin needed a male figure in the house even if it was someone to roughhouse with Carolyn said. He had friends he was a good student and he played sports. But there was something missing.
In 2000 Carolyn married Frank Gavaghan who was a single parent of two sons who were 8 and 11 years older than Justin.
He had to grow up a little tougher then said Frank Gavaghan a field construction superintendent whose company built MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands. His older brothers were like all older brothers they weren t taking it easy on him. And I m essentially a blue collar guy. We lived by the motto that hard work will make you rise to the top of whatever you re doing.
The two families blended in Frank Gavaghan s words very naturally.
When Pugh was in seventh grade he spent six weeks with his father who had relocated to North Carolina.
He was very angry at his dad for many years Carolyn who is a sixth grade teacher said. But it was a good visit and he re connected with him.
About three months later David Pugh was dead at 45.
Frank had already stepped into that role Carolyn said. But it was so good that he was there for Justin at that time of his life.
At about the same point Justin began to mature physically and the child who wanted to be a pro hockey player more or less started to outgrow the sport. By his sophomore year at Council Rock South High School in Holland Pa. he was making his mark in football even though he was still more lanky than beefy.
But then he just kept getting bigger and stronger said Bedesem who was stunned when Pugh weighed 270 pounds as a senior.
Villanova had been on Pugh s radar. But when Syracuse offered him a full scholarship he accepted. And when he got to Syracuse he was told to lose weight.
You refine his body take some of it off to build it back up another way Hicks said. He took off after that and there was no stopping him.
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