The white mantle is the first thing guests see when stepping inside the Sopsher family’s mobile home. It is overflowing with memorabilia: athletic trophies, specialty letters, game-worn lanyards, newspaper clippings.

Wanda Sopsher has turned her mantle into a shrine to her three children, and the biggest of them—6’5″, 305-pound Ishmael—is at the center.

Ishmael just happens to be the No. 1-ranked defensive tackle in the 2019 signing class, a teddy bear of a kid whose size and vigor on the football field has made him the most sought after prospect in one of the nation’s most fertile and hotly contested recruiting grounds.

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