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Rewarded For Working Hard

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 7, 2008

Updated: 02/07/2008 12:15 am

TAMPA - It was crowded inside the principal's conference room at Sickles High School late Wednesday morning. Maybe three dozen people squeezed into a room built for half that many to watch a simple ceremony and share the moment. There were football, baseball and soccer players, parents, babies, and friends.

And there was Shawn Plastic. Her son, Craig, was one of four students seated at the front of the room. He was about to sign his name to a commitment to play football and baseball for Wingate University in North Carolina.

"I have tears of happiness, tears of sadness," she said. "He achieved, he excelled, and he got what he always wanted. But mom's little boy is leaving."

She smiled a bit, though her eyes were moist.

Across the land it was National Signing Day, when high school seniors make it known where they will attend college. It should be a day of celebration, but too often in recent years it has been co-opted and corrupted. We forget that this is about much more than whether Florida, Florida State or South Florida gathers the most five-star football talent.

It's about Corey Page and his 4.57 grade-point average. He committed to punt for the Holy Cross football team but he is more committed to learning the world of business and finance.

"My goal was always to use football to get into the best academic school I could," he said.

But surely he wants to play in the NFL. Everyone who ever played football wants to be in the NFL, don't they?

"Not my goal," he said.

Indeed, there was nary a Bull, Gator or Seminole in sight inside the principal's conference room. But there were balloons, bouquets and applause as four Sickles student-athletes - in the true sense of the word - made their commitments.

Oh, and cake. There was lots of cake.

They're College Athletes, Too

Keena Tsitsikronis is headed off to North Georgia College and State University, where she'll play soccer. Melanie Raimo is bound for the soccer program at Florida International, but most of her scholarship money - at least 70 percent - is coming from academics.

Whether they essentially walk on and mostly pay their own way, as Page will do, or get a scholarship package enhanced by good grades, they are all about to be college athletes. We talk all the time in the news business about realizing dreams, and this day is surely about that. But it's also about something more.

"The whole message we're trying to get across is that if you work hard, there is a reward," Sickles principal Jake Russell said.

That reward might not include an audience of 80,000 to watch you play on Saturdays, but that doesn't matter. One quick look around the room here Wednesday morning would convince you of that.

"You read in the paper all about kids wanting to go to FSU, Florida, whatever," said Phil Plastic, Craig's father. "Good for them, but, Craig is going to Wingate."

Recruiting has become a cottage industry for anyone with a hard drive and a mouse. There are Web sites now that track potential college choices for football players still in middle school, for heaven's sake. The amount of attention paid as these kids waffle back and forth between choices for college can be unseemly.

Big Day For Everyone

But there also is the good side of this day. There are a lot of schools with a lot of opportunities for kids to keep playing ball while pursuing an education. They won't be stars in the conventional sense, but years from now their memories will be as strong as anyone who signed on with a big school.

David Page, Corey's father, was off to the side, telling someone about the 10-to-1 student-teacher ratio at Holy Cross.

"The support system there is tremendous," he said. "And you know, they played Harvard and Yale the last few years."

Yeah, it's a day to celebrate all right and dream of Holy Cross at Harvard. For four kids from Sickles and a lot more like them all around the area, it's a day to look back while looking ahead. It's a day for kids to smile. It's also a day for moms to dread the moment they have to say goodbye.

"I had all those years sitting on hard bleachers, watching him play baseball," Shawn Page said. "Taking pictures. Buying french fries. Buying Gatorade. 'Hey, Mom, I need new baseball pants.' Probably three-quarters of all my Mother's Days have been spent at the ballpark."

And now?

She smiled. Her eyes were clear.

"I'm a Wingate mom."

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