When he was growing up, Clemson’s Ajou Ajou did not think of himself as a football player.
In fact, the Alberta, Canada native did not know what sport he wanted to play, so he tried his hand at pretty much all of them.
“I remember in grade two I told my teacher I wanted to be a professional sports player because I played so many sports, I could not pick one,” Ajou said following Tuesday’s practice inside the Poe Indoor Practice Facility in Clemson.
Ajou played Lacrosse, soccer, football, basketball, handball, and was a high jumper on the tack team. Ajou loves sports so much, he even tried out hockey for a little bit.
“I am good skater, I just have to get the two-foot stop down,” Ajou said. “I have to get that down, but it is good though.”
Since he could not get the two-foot stop down, Ajou figured it was not good for his health to keep slamming into the walls.
“I tried one day. He was like, ‘You have to lean this way and your momentum will stop you,’” Ajou recalled on how one of his coaches tried to teach him the two-foot stop. “So, I start skating and I am going and going, and I go (to stop), and I am flying. I mean flying. I said, ‘Yeah, this is not for me. I am just going to stick to staying upright.’”
Despite his lack of skating skills and his second-grade teacher trying to discourage him by pulling up a statistic that only 0.3 people make it as a professional athlete, Ajou was not hearing none of it.
“I was like, watch me. I love to prove people wrong,” he said.
Clemson’s 6-foot-3, 222-pound receiver eventually settled on playing basketball and football. Basketball was his first love and is still his favorite sport, but he eventually realized playing football was his best chance to make it as a professional athlete.
Though he is raw as a college wide receiver, Ajou showed off his potential at Georgia Tech last season when he hauled in a slant pass from Hunter Helms and then ran through almost every Yellow Jacket defender on his way to a 35-yard touchdown.
In the spring, Ajou continued to make strides as he caught the eye of his coaches with one big play after another, including a 16-yard touchdown catch over All-ACC corner Andrew Booth in the Spring Game.
“Ajou, he has put in the work. You can just tell that his confidence is there,” offensive coordinator Tony Elliott said. “He is not perfect, and we do not expect him to be. But what you are seeing, he has a desire now to give a perfect effort. He is learning how to do that and that is where that challenging from Coach [Dabo] Swinney has really taken hold. And he is pushing Jo.”
Swinney’s challenge began with Ajou’s diet. The sophomore said he weighed 240 pounds at the end of the last season.
“I was not really watching what I was eating,” he said. “It just blew up on me. I was like, ‘Whoa!’”
Ajou got with Clemson’s nutritionist, Paul Harrington, and started to get lean. He stopped his bad eating habits and only drinks water. The receiver says he is down to eight-percent body fat.
As for on the field and in meeting rooms, Ajou admits he has taken his preparation to another level.
“I had a lot of mental errors as a freshman, and I am not going to lie to y’all,” he said. “But now I am really buying into that playbook. I am studying every day and every night. If I can get fifteen minutes, I am in there. It has really helped me. It has made me a lot better.”
The game has also slowed down for Ajou. He says when he lines up, he can see the coverage, and everything seems to be clicking.
“What you are starting to see is us potentially being what we have been in the past, with that one-two punch at the nine-man,” Elliott said. “He is a lot more consistent. He is a lot more fluid because he is not thinking, and he is a lot more confident.
“So, it has been fun to watch his evolution.”
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