Mimi Butler - USC Trojans

Mimi ButlerThe Believer By John BaxterMimi Butlerphotographed inHeritage Hall in heroffice chair, with ajersey given to her byUSC All-AmericanKenechi Udeze.E“EVERY KID DESERVES TO HAVE SOMEBODY who believes in them!” So says Mimi Butler,and believe in them she does. • The phone rang in Mimi’s office in Heritage Hall one day in2001. It was a professor calling from USC’s geography department. • “One of your students isfalling asleep in my class,” the professor said. • Okay, that’s not good. Still, this wouldn’t be thefirst college student to catch a few winks in a lecture hall. • No, it’s not just that, the professorsaid. “I’ve seen young people doze off before, but this kid is out cold in the front row every day.”• Out cold? The front row? Every day? That’s a little more unusual. And then the name. “It’sKenechi Udeze.” • Now that really didn’t compute. Udeze was a defensive end on the Trojans’football team. Butler, who works for the Stevens Academic Center in the athletic department,first met Udeze when he arrived at USC in 2000 as a highly recruited freshman out of LosAngeles’s Verbum Dei High School. She was assigned to be his learning specialist. • “Kenechi,my focus is not for you to ace every test,” Mimi said the day she first met the football star. “Myfocus is to challenge you to do your best.” • That struck a responsive chord with Udeze. • “Shetapped into my competitive spirit,” he says today. “She pushed me to grow as a young man andto be responsible.” • But here Kenechi was in his third semester at USC, and he was fallingasleep in class. He was falling asleep in football position meetings, too. He was on his way out—from the football team and from the university.• None of that sounded responsible to Mimi.PROFILES OF USC ATHLETICS / 2012 21