Eagles’ Jalen Hurts doesn’t change, and he’s changing lives because of it: ‘This is who I am’

Alan Smith was in Houston this spring, taking inventory, when something went wrong. The associate principal at Channelview High School also mentors dozens of kids each year through the Rockstarz, a local AAU basketball program. Except this year, he wasn’t going to be able to outfit all his boys on the court. Short on uniforms, the Rockstarz were even shorter on money. How were they supposed to promote proud unity and identity to their teens if they couldn’t even promise matching jerseys?

So Smith did what he needed to do: he dialed an old friend. It just so happened this friend was the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Jalen Hurts came through Channelview himself, years earlier, born and bred in the Houston area. The whole family remains: his dad, Averion, has been the school’s head varsity coach for more than a decade; his mom, Pamela, is a school counselor; his brother, Averion Jr., coaches with nearby Summer Creek; and his sister, Kynnedy, graduates in 2023. Certainly Jalen, entering a prove-it year as the young face of an NFL franchise, was the busiest of them all when Smith called. It didn’t matter.

“I was having a hard time,” Smith says, “and I said, ‘Hey man, can you help me get a couple uniforms — like three or four — real quick?’ And Jalen said, ‘Well, is that all you need?’ He told me to expect a call the next day.”

Sure enough, less than 24 hours later, representatives from Champs Sports and Eastbay Performance were on the line with Smith, offering not just a couple of new unis, but an entire makeover of the Rockstarz program. Hurts, Smith explains, had instructed his apparel partners to give them whatever they wanted, from jerseys to shoes to jogging shorts to athletic bags. In the end, every single player and coach for both the 16u and 17u teams benefited from an estimated $15,000 in combined gifts.

“To be able to impact the people back home on the east side of Houston, the entire city of Houston and the kids across the state of Texas and the world,” Hurts says, “it runs deep, because you never realize who’s watching, but you always know someone is watching. I just wanna set the right example. It may not even be the kid that looks up to me. They may look up to somebody else, but when they see the name Jalen Hurts, I want them to be able to say, ‘That’s how I can do it.'”

The 24-year-old was back in his hometown three times between the end of the…