INGLEWOOD, Calif.
Ekeler, the mother of Chargers dynamo running back Austin Ekeler, rushes to get to her seat almost as fast as her son does on the field.
She responds with an answer that just about any other mother in her position would give, that she’s just happy to be in a position to be at SoFi to see Austin play.
Heading into Thursday night’s showdown with the division-leading Kansas City Chiefs at SoFi Stadium , Ekeler has rushed for 730 yards on 161 carries and scored nine touchdowns, including four against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov.
Suzanne has been cheering for Austin long before he became an NFL star, dating from when he started playing football in high school.
Fighting through a tough relationship with his stepfather and doing unbelievably difficult chores on his family’s ranch in Eaton, Colorado, such as putting in fence posts and breaking the ice in the water tanks so the animals could drink.
It started in high school, then continued in college — where he wasn’t highly recruited and went to Division II Western Colorado .
But Ekeler kept working hard toward his goal — not necessarily to prove everyone wrong, but to prove himself right.
“Never count him out,” said safety Derwin James Jr., who worked out alongside Ekeler last season when both were injured.
But he remained undeterred, thanks to how he was raised by Suzanne, who is a real estate agent near their current hometown of Windsor, Colorado, when she’s not criss-crossing the country to see her boys play football.
It’s a sunny warm Tuesday, which in a normal game week is the Chargers players’ day off, and Austin is at Edwin Markham Middle School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, surrounded by community leaders and students.
He partnered with Stix, a rapper and Watts community leader who is the founder of the Thinkwatts Foundation, to present the laundry equipment to the school.
And, of course, his family and friends; a dozen or more are expected to be at SoFi Stadium on Thursday, where Ekeler will prove his toughness yet again.