These lessons designed to last a lifetime
Play It Smart program helps at-risk student/athletes learn there's more to succeeding in life than playing football.
By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published August 22, 2006
TAMPA - Marcello Trigg may have possessed uncommon athletic abilities, but when it came to school work, he fit right in with the rest of the crowd at Robinson High.
"I was always the kind of person who would wait until the last minute," he said.
Typical teen stuff, even though Trigg's stepmother is a teacher who, naturally, hammered home the importance of excelling in the classroom as much as he did on the football field.
Although he did okay in school, he ultimately changed his all-too common study habits - for the better - as he became increasingly involved with the Play It Smart program.
Conceived and sponsored by the National Football Foundation, Play It Smart is designed to help bolster the academic, personal and career development of football-playing students at selected high schools across the country; usually players who are at risk of being able to graduate, let alone qualify academically for a Division I-A football scholarship.
"We, as a foundation, needed to do our part to give back," said Steven Hatchell, the National Football Foundation's president.
Since its inception in 1998 at four schools, the program has enjoyed meteoric growth. Last year, it was in 136 schools in 35 states, including six in Florida (Robinson, Pahokee, Glades Central, Jacksonville Raines, Booker T. Washington and Oak Ridge.) The NFL and the NFL Players Association have stepped up with financial support and Ronnie Lott, a member of the College and Pro Football halls of fame, was named in April as chairman of the Play It Smart national advisory board to help raise $5-million. As it is, Play It Smart has enjoyed dramatic results:
- About 98 percent graduate high school compared to a national rate from recent studies put between 64-71 percent;
- More than 80 percent of the seniors involved enroll in a college compared to 64 percent nationally.
- Some of the nation's elite are Play It Smart alumni, such as Southern California's Dwayne Jarrett and Ohio State's Ted Ginn Jr. This fall, there will be 156 alums in Division I-A, including a trio of freshmen from Robinson, Javier Arenas (Alabama), Delbert Alvarado (USF) and Darrell Stevens (Kentucky).
"The whole goal is to get these kids to understand that football is just the tool that's going to allow them to pay for an education," said Kent Wilson, the academic coach at Robinson and a Play It Smart regional coordinator, "and the education is what's going to get them to wherever they want to go."
An academic coach like Wilson is in the school 20-25 hours a week, if not more, year-round for a salary of $15,000. The coach works with the kids not just on course work and studying techniques, monitoring their progress weekly, but on preparing for college entrance exams as well as imparting invaluable life skills.
"He (Wilson) sat down with us and told us we had to have everything on a schedule so we could be organized and prepared for anything that would come," said Trigg, Hillsborough County's all-time leader in touchdown passes.
How much did it help his GPA? "There was a pretty big jump," he said.
Trigg, in fact, was graduated with a 5.1 GPA and scored close to a 1200 on his SAT and is now heading to Bucknell, a prestigious university that doesn't offer athletic scholarships; he earned an academic ride.
"I don't think I would be attending Bucknell if it wasn't for the Play It Smart program," Trigg said.
He and the other nearly 12,000 participants in the program nationally combine to perform 25,000 hours of community service each year they're in the program.
"These are kids who have nothing and they're turning around helping other kids," Hatchell said. "That's pretty powerful stuff ... and the results have been fantastic on every level.
"Our whole goal now is, how big do we want to make it, how far do we want to go. It's expensive, but we think we're making a difference."
Here are three collegiate players who will attest to that:
While at Pahokee High, Antone Smith, above, knew football alone wouldn't punch his ticket to a school like Florida State, and he long set the goal of becoming the first in his immediate family to go to college.
"I always took academics seriously," the Seminoles' talented sophomore tailback said. "I had something to fight for. ... Some guys try to distract you from doing the right thing. Some guys I hang with back home, they like to smoke and drink. That was never my thing. I knew what I had to do to get where I am."
But Smith, who rushed for 2,814 yards and 44 touchdowns as a senior, credits Play It Smart for helping him.
Study halls were mandatory, and if you skipped, you ran wind sprints after practice or lost playing time.
"It starts in school, taking care of the books," Smith said. "I wasn't straight A's, but you didn't see any D's on the report card either. I guarantee you that."
In his first year at FSU, Smith earned a spot on the Atlantic Coast Conference's academic honor roll.
Just as lasting for Smith were the leadership lessons that came through speaking to elementary school kids or washing fire trucks.
"It's a great program," he said. (Pahokee won't be in the Play It Smart program for this year, nor will Oak Ridge, expected to be replaced by other schools in Miami and Orlando.) "It not only teaches you to how to do well in the classroom, it teaches you how to be a young man. I grew up a lot in that program."
Delbert Alvarado, below, a freshman punter on scholarship at South Florida, credits Play It Smart and academic coach Kent Wilson for turning him around.
"It's been the biggest impact in my life, academic-wise and also as a person," he said. "It's made me more responsible, taught me how to manage my time, which is very essential when you get to college."
Alvarado had a leg strong enough to earn a college scholarship, but he said Play It Smart set him on the right path in the classroom.
"I started my freshman year. A couple of buddies of mine and I weren't doing well in class, falling asleep, GPAs struggling a little bit," he said.
"Coach Wilson brought us in and told us if we wanted to keep playing football, we had to try to pick it up in class. He literally woke us up, told us what we had to do. From that day, we focused a lot more on schoolwork. If it wasn't for that ... I wouldn't be here."
Nyan Boateng's talent earned him a scholarship, but the Play It Smart program helped him get to the University of Florida.
When Florida recruited him, it worked through his counselor, Alison Carbona.
"I didn't know what I needed - GPA, core classes and all that stuff," said Boateng, a sophomore wide receiver. "But she broke it down and made it easy for all of us."
It was part of Carbona's role as a counselor and adviser. By the time Boateng got to Florida, he acclimated quickly.
"It was like college counseling," Boateng said. "When I got here, it was something I was used to, always going to counselors if I need some help."
Boateng's high school, Abraham Lincoln in New York City, joined the program just before his senior season. Though a preseason ankle injury ended his high school career, academics kept him involved in the program.
"You had to have a good GPA. She (Carbona) kept all the records of who was doing well and who was not," Boateng said. "It was kind of like a reward program."
Oh, yeah, and there were the perks, too, which included frequent trips to Giants Stadium for games, clinics and the like. He even met Tiki Barber.
"It was cool," Boateng said. "The whole thing was just a great experience."
- GREG AUMAN and ANTONYA ENGLISH, Times staff writers, contributed to this report.