[Tuck4Bama]

Auburn defensive end marries Trinidad runner

AUBURN - On July 31 of last year, unbeknownst to even their closest friends, Auburn defensive end Quentin Groves and Treska Baptiste, his fianc, slipped away to the Lee County courthouse and became husband and wife.

"It was a secret," Treska says. "Nobody knew."

The ferocious defensive end from rural Mississippi and the willowy Auburn quarter-miler from Trinidad came together. On that day, Quentin says, his life changed forever.

"She's helped me grow from a boy to a man," Quentin says. "I really didn't have a father figure in my life to teach me. I didn't know how to be a husband at first. She stuck with me. She's helped me become a better man that I ever could have imagined.

"During two-a-days, I get up at 6 and don't come home until 11. Sometimes I'm mad. Sometimes I'm throwing fits. She's still right there."

Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium, when Auburn plays South Florida at 8 p.m., Quentin could break the school record for sacks in a career. He's one behind Gerald Robinson. Whether it happens or doesn't, Treska will be in the stands, intently following the game she knew nothing about on the day in 2003 when she met a brash freshman in the Sewell Hall computer lab.

"I was doing a paper," Treska says, laughing as she remembers. "He was on one of those rolling chairs. He rolled over there to me and said 'Hey, what's your name?' I was like 'uh-uh.' "

Quentin wasn't going to go away that easily.

Unlikely couple makes it work- al.com