s I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil because God is with me. Rest in Peace, Mom. 4-5-07. The words underneath the brim of Keyvius Sampson's baseball cap remind him how far he's come. Thankfully, the 6-foot-1, 187-pound senior right-handed pitcher/outfielder at Forest (Ocala, Fla.) can now focus on just baseball, and it's working out pretty well for him. Keyvius has signed with Florida State but is also a potential early-round pick in June's MLB Draft. He went 10-2 last year with a 1.49 ERA and 123 strikeouts in 71 innings, while his highlights this year include no-hitters against Columbia (Lake City, Fla.), Lake Weir (Ocala, Fla.) and Vanguard (Ocala, Fla.). He also went 4-for-4 with a pair of homers against Vanguard. He's currently ranked the No. 95 prospect in ESPN Scouts Inc. expert Keith Law's Top 100. Keyvius'sophomore stats, however, are nowhere to be found because he wasn't allowed to play for the team or even attend Forest. His troubles began during the summer of 2006, only a few weeks from the start of his sophomore year at Forest. The night before he was supposed to travel to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for Junior National Team trials, he was driving to the movies with two friends. Unbeknownst to Keyvius, one friend was carrying a gun and the other a BB gun, and they both reportedly jumped out of the car and confronted two other teens.

Though Keyvius says he was unaware his friends had weapons, he was arrested as an accessory because he was driving. Keyvius pleaded guilty to simple robbery and was sentenced to 90 days of curfew probation and 150 hours of community service, which he satisfied by working at a local soup kitchen. "It humbled me a lot," Keyvius says. Because of the charges, he was not allowed to attend Forest his sophomore year and was instead placed in the Silver River Marine Institute (Ocala, Fla.). Playing baseball for Forest was also out of the question. Rather than give up, Keyvius used his time at Silver River Marine to catch up on his schoolwork. And despite not even being allowed on school property, he still watched Forest's games from beyond the right field fence. "I felt like I let them down, so I wanted to let them know that even though I wasn't playing, I was there to support them," he says.

 

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But before things would get better, they got worse. On April 5, 2007, his mother, Faye Manuel, who was battling breast cancer, died of a heart attack. Keyvius had been at a baseball game, and by the time he arrived at the hospital, his mother had passed. "I felt like all the stuff I went through as far as getting into trouble caused her death," Keyvius says. He contemplated quitting baseball, but eventually decided he wanted to play to honor his mother's memory. With his father, Nathaniel, living 20 minutes away in Reddick and battling heart and kidney problems, Keyvius and his dad decided he'd be better off staying in Ocala after his mom's death. So Keyvius moved in with Scott and Toni Carpenter, whose son, Tyler, is a senior catcher at Forest. The Carpenters ultimately gained joint custody of Keyvius. "They helped pick me back up and helped me get back to where I was as far as confidence and life," Keyvius says of the Carpenters. "They are my guardian angels." Keyvius returned to Forest his junior year, got his life back on track and now offers advice to younger students, talking to at-risk kids at school about how to avoid the pitfalls that nearly derailed his baseball career. "If his story can turn around and help someone else, then we are going to tell it," Scott Carpenter says. "I've been through the storm," Keyvius says, "and ended up coming out in a sunny day." Jon Mahoney covers high school sports for ESPN RISE Magazine.