Elijah Shelton was sitting in his apartment playing video games when the phone rang. The UNLV linebacker picked it up and heard his teammate, Lacarea Pleasant-Johnson, on the other side.
Two words changed Shelton’s world:
“Those two words — at first I didn’t believe him,” Shelton told The Michigan Daily. “But I also knew that wouldn’t be a joke. I was just kind of in shock and quit everything I was doing and reflected on everything.”
Shelton scrambled to call his coaches and confirm the tragic news: Ryan Keeler, his beloved UNLV teammate and defensive end, was found dead in his apartment on Feb. 20, 2023. At just 20 years old, Keeler’s life was claimed by an arrhythmia caused by thickened heart tissue.
Nearly 2,000 miles away, J.J. McCarthy got an urgent text from his dad that he had bad news. A close friend of Keeler since they played for the same youth football program, the Michigan quarterback struggled to keep his composure. McCarthy and Keeler’s football journeys — including three Illinois State Championship appearances with Nazareth Academy High School — were forever intertwined, from intense workout sessions to state championship games. The news rocked him.
“When he called me, I just broke down and started crying because (Keeler) was someone that worked so hard as he did,” McCarthy told The Daily. “And he was such a phenomenal human being. There’s not a speck of evil in this kid’s heart, and the rest of his life was taken from him like that.”
From the moment Keeler and McCarthy stepped on the field together in the seventh grade, they quickly formed a friendship. So did their families, as Herb Keeler and Jim McCarthy bonded over coaching their sons through a sport they loved. With Ryan at defensive and offensive line, and J.J. at quarterback, the two excelled on the field. With each game, their relationship improved, too.
“Freshman year comes and it was them two,” Herb told The Daily. “They were thick as thieves.”
Once at Nazareth, Ryan and J.J. only blossomed further. They not only bonded on the field, but also through their commitment to the sport off it. J.J., eyeing a future where he’d be a top college prospect, would go to extra workouts or practices to hone his game. Chasing the same dreams, Ryan worked right beside him. And when they finished their workouts, Ryan’s older brother Matt would drive them home.
“Just working out, that’s really where we started to grow our relationship because he had the same mindset that I had,” J.J. said. “He just wanted to work, work, work, work. And I had never been around somebody that actually met my level of work ethic, (but) he was right there.”
And as Ryan worked hard, his body began to change, too. He grew to 6-foot-5, packing muscle on to a mountainous frame “built to play football” as Jim McCarthy put it. That size gave him more options on the field, and Ryan started to attract Division I interest as a defensive end.
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