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PLANTATION, FLA. (WSVN) - Some may think being a high school athlete is easy, but one South Plantation High School senior proved it is anything but.
Matthew Binion plays on the football team and has stellar grades.
He will be attending college in the fall and received a full scholarship.
Since Binion was 10 years old, an easy life is something he said he never experienced.
“The beginning of my life was pretty tough having to deal with poverty, homelessness,” he said.
Money was so tight for Binion, his mother and his older brother that they had to sleep in their car.
Just last year he was living in a homeless shelter.
“It was kind of hard living there, having to go to school in the morning, then going to practice and work right after that, all using the bus,” Binion said.
He never really had a father figure in his life and lost some of his friends to gun violence.
Binion said he saw how cruel the world could be and decided he had two choices: give in to the pressure or fight against it.
He chose to fight against it by playing sports.
“I first started playing football when I was 11, basketball and track coming along the road,” Binion said.
When he was on the field or court, that was his escape.
“When I think about it, when I step on the field, it just gets me a whole different way,” he said.
Through hard work and dedication, he’s not only graduating from South Plantation High School but is heading to Greenville University in Illinois with a full scholarship to study biology.
His older brother, Tommy Binion, is so impressed he said he looks up to his younger brother.
“It’s amazing, like, he made me just want to push harder, you know?” Tommy said.
Their mother said the life they were handed was not the life she hoped for, but she knows her son will be ready for anything as he starts a new chapter in his life.
“Sometimes we go through things, and it motivates us,” Martha Binion said. “It inspires us, so we can be better people.”
With so much promise in front of him, Binion said his real goal is to make sure someone else just like him hears his story and makes similar choices to his.
“I just hope I could be an inspiration to other people that are possibly dealing with the same situations I dealt with,” he said.
He will graduate high school in June and will attend his first semester in college mid-August.
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