The Kirkwood phenom has offers from the best schools in the country. He’s leaning on his impressive mentors and memories of those he’s lost to carry him forward.
KIRKWOOD, Mo. — Football talent is abundant on the high school fields of St. Louis. And Kirkwood High School may have the most impressive talent of them all in 2025.
“On my film, you see, I get the ball in space and I’m a playmaker…One time, I saw someone coming up the middle, I think it was Fort Zumwalt West, and he just fell. I could tell he didn’t want to engage with me,” Kirkwood receiver and safety Jacob Eberhart said.
Eberhart is a 6-foot-3, 210-pound freight train currently deciding on a college final 7 of Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Oregon, Illinois and Mizzou.
“Going to see these places is surreal. The smallest offer like Kent State and Ball State meant so much to me because growing up as a kid and seeing my dad go to Illinois, that was my dream,” Eberhart said.
“He is everything that you want to see out of a kid coming through your program. I first noticed the size, but when he first got on the field, watching him move around, the way he’s able to bend, run, explode… I knew he was pretty good,” Kirkwood head coach Jeremy Maclin said.
And Eberhardt’s talent has been apparent from his Little League days.
“Breaking 6, 7, 8 tackles and the same stuff you see him doing now. Take it 70 yards up the sideline, that’s where he got coined with ‘Bibby the great’, and it’s kind of sticking now,” Eberhart’s brother, Antonio Phillips, said.
The talent and physical skills leap off the page, but it’s not until you learn Eberhart’s full story that you understand his drive.
“I thought it was over for me, really in life. I’d just be sitting in my room and thinking, ‘What am I gonna do with my life?’,” Eberhart said.
Eberhart lost his brother, Jason, in a shooting in St. Louis. And then in high school, he lost his father as well. Jacob and Jason bonded over football.
“We used to put on our pads and hit at the house. We’d put on our helmets and pads and hit in the living room. I’ll never forget it. We broke a vase once, and our mom got mad. But that was just us playing,” Eberhart said of his brother.
And with the loss of his dad, the weight became even heavier.
“When I lost my dad, I was a sophomore, still a freshman mentally, because that stuff had set me back. I’m not going to lie, I started slacking. I had probably about 73 tardies at St. Mary’s, and I was all over the place. I had lost my dad, and then a week later, my uncle got shot in the head and died, and my other uncle had been shot 10 times. And I just got really set back because I was really the only guy in my family there right at that moment,” Eberhart said.
But in a time when it would have been easy to fall, Eberhart stood tall.
“There were times when I walked into the locker room and just broke down. Nothing happened, I just broke down, because I thought it was all going to be over. I wasn’t getting offers by the end of my sophomore season that I thought I deserved. I got on the Bible app, and something just told me to keep persevering. So I started praying, and I just remember all the days when I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it. And when I finally got that Ball State offer, it felt like it all paid off,” Eberhart said.
And the football phenom has had some notable mentors helping him through it all…
His brother, Antonio, played at Ball State and in the XFL.
“My brother’s there to keep me disciplined. He quit the XFL to step in for me. So I said no way, I don’t make it, now,” Eberhart said.
“I always tell him, ‘Dad would want us to keep going and pushing forward, keep striving to be the best we can on and off the field each and every day.’ And that’s what I was really proud of him for. To take those trials and tribulations that he carries with himself each and every day and keep progressing,” Phillips said.
His cousin is Mizzou great and 9-year NFL pro Markus Golden.
“Markus flew me out to Arizona and got me noticed by (Mizzou head coach) Eli Drinkwitz,” Eberhart said.
And his high school head coach is just one of the most-celebrated St. Louis players of all-time, in Jeremy Maclin.
“He (Eberhart) can play on Sundays. The sky is the limit for him. It’s not that is just comes very natural for him, but he’s going to work his butt off,” Maclin said. “To have gone through what he’s gone through in the ways that he’s gone through them, to still show up every day with a smile on his face being a light in the room and give me everything he has each and every day, I think it says a lot about him.”
There aren’t many recruits who have a trio of role models like that.
“We all just feed and pour into him. And it’s good because he gets three different perspectives. Three like-minded guys, but three different perspectives. So sometimes when we’re all saying the same thing and we haven’t even communicated, it’s like, ‘Oh, ok maybe they’re right.’” Phillips said.
Now, Eberhart is about to be a high school senior, with the entire college football world clamoring for his talents.
He’s embracing the mentors he has and the loved ones, like his brother Jason, he’s lost along the way.
“I was like, ‘I’m gonna see you in the league’… When (Jacob) he died, it hit deep. But I’m still gonna see him in the league. He won’t be on the field; he’ll be up above. But I’ll still see him,” Eberhart said.
“Of course I want to make it, not only for me, but for the countless people I’ve lost… But I really just want to show people who got influenced in the wave of gang violence that my brother got into, and unfortunately he did, and I’m not here to hide anything… but I just want to show those kids that there’s a different way to help your mom out.,” Eberhart said. “Don’t ever let anyone stop you from being yourself, and I just want to show the youth that.”
