‘I’ve got a lot to play for’: How Argos returner Javon Leake has beaten the odds

Toronto Argonauts punt returner Javon Leake is on pace to enter the CFL record book — maybe as soon as during Monday’s Labour Day Classic against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. After that? Well, let’s not put any limitations on where Leake can go from here, considering the challenges he has overcome.

Javon Leake’s face lights up when he talks about his two-year-old daughter, Laylani.

“She knows what (her) daddy does. She’ll be like ‘my daddy’s in Canada,” the Toronto Argonauts’ star punt returner said while discussing Laylani, who lives in Maryland with her mom, after a recent practice.

“She’s real smart. Knowing that I got that, I’ve just got to keep going.”

At this pace, Leake, 25, is going to the CFL record book — maybe as soon as during Monday’s Labour Day Classic against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. After that? Well, let’s not put any limitations on where Leake can go from here, considering the challenges he has overcome.

It’s a huge credit to Leake and those around him that he is living this life rather than something much worse.

The man putting together one of the best punt-return seasons in CFL history has, in his words, “been through a lot.”

“I play like it,” he continued. “I play with a (chip) on my shoulder. I’ve got a lot to play for.”

An excellent story by Emily Giambalvo in the Washington Post, written while Leake was starring at the University of Maryland in 2019, offered a glimpse into his history.

Leake had irregular visits with his biological father Thomas Kelly Jr. before he was killed in a shooting when Javon was in fifth grade in New York. Javon and his mom, Natasha, didn’t find out until two years later.

The man Javon calls dad, Joel Simpson, was in prison for four years from 2016-20 after being convicted of assault and criminal possession of a weapon. Simpson met Natasha when Javon was one and formed a close relationship with him before the adults split up when Javon was in middle school.

Before high school, Natasha and Javon moved to North Carolina with the mother thinking it would be a better place for her son to grow up.

The adversity didn’t st