Colin Kaepernick is a football quarterback and civil rights activist who has become known for protesting systemic racism and police brutality, by taking a knee during the national anthem. He played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers, but where did he grow up?
Colin Kaepernick and his adoptive parents originally lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin but moved to Turlock, California when Colin was four, for his father’s work. It was in Turlock that Kaepernick did most of his growing up, attended school, and honed his football talent.
Read on to learn more about Kaepernick’s early life and burgeoning football career.
The Early Years
Colin Rand Kaepernick was born on November 3, 1987 to Heidi Russo in Fond du Lac, but was adopted when he was a few weeks old by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick.
Rick and Teresa turned to adoption after losing two sons to heart defects, but had two older children, a son Kyle and daughter Devon, that Colin grew up with.
Speaking of growing up with his white adoptive family, as the biological son of a white woman and a black man, Kaepernick said, “I knew I was different to my parents and my older brother and sister” but “I never felt that I was supposed to be white. Or black, either. My parents just wanted to let me be who I needed to be”.
After four years in Wisconsin, the family moved to California so that Rick could take a job as an operations manager for the Hilmar Cheese Company.
“Something to Prove”
It was in Turlock, California that Kaepernick began to pursue his passion. Whilst at Turlock’s Dutcher Elementary School, Kapernick wrote a letter to himself about his future ambitions, as part of a classroom activity in fourth grade.
He wrote, “I’m 5ft 2 inches 91 pounds. Good athlete. I think in 7 years I will be between 6ft — to 6ft 4 inches 140 pounds. I hope I go to a good college in football Then go to the pros and play on the niners or the packers even if they aren’t good in seven years.”
Kaepernick’s letter was impressively prophetic. He had begun playing football at the age of eight, becoming a quarterback aged nine, but while his football talent was clear, he also excelled in baseball.
By the time he was a student at John H. Pitman High School, Kaepernick was an all-round athlete, and was nominated for the all-state election in basketball, baseball and football in his senior year. His ambition had always been to play football, but while baseball scholarships were forthcoming, football ones were not.
Kaepernick would attend football camps and said that when people asked where he was going to go to school, “It was hard telling them, ‘I don’t have a scholarship offer.’ Everybody was like why not? That was frustrating for me. Ever since then, I’ve had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove.”
His football scholarship offer from Nevada was the only one he received for the sport but he has said that, in hindsight, “it’s almost satisfying it happened that way”.
The Wolf Pack
Kaepernick signed with Nevada in 2006 and spent the next four years doing the rest of his growing up as part of the Wolf Pack the University of Nevada, Reno.
He received numerous accolades in Nevada and has been unofficially recognized as “the best player ever for the Wolf Pack”. His sophomore year he was named WAC Offensive Player of the Year, and was named WAC Co-Offensive Player of the Year in his senior year.
Kaepernick set several school records in his collegiate career and became the first quarterback in the history of Division I FBS college football to pass for more than 10,000 yards and rush for more than 4,000 yards.
His young years paved the way for his extraordinary achievements in football and beyond.
Watch some of his Wolf Pack highlights in the YouTube video below.