Treasure Coast Sports Journal Spring 2014 Spring 2014 | Page 21

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Terms like “drive to succeed”, “learn all that you can”, and ing football under Coach Fed as a freshman was a huge
“distraction box” were part of everyday locker-room con- part of that. It set the academic tone for us before we ever
versation.
saw a high school classroom. That tone continued with us
until we graduated, because as we walked the halls we
A few funny things happened that season. First, we had a knew there was a chance that we’d run into Coach Fed. If
few freshman that played in varsity games, which was al- and when we did, he would stop us and chat for a bit. The
most unheard of at the time. The reason that happened first question he asked was never did you get any faster in
was that the varsity team was short a few players due to the forty, has your bench press gone up any, or are you
injury, so they dressed freshman players to fill out the ros- doing your offseason conditioning? He always started with
ter. None of us expected to play. By the fourth quarter the “Son, are you learning all that you can?” And after his lesgame was in hand and the coaches looked to put some of sons had proven so true, we all deeply wanted to honestly
the back-ups in. The problem was that it was early in the be able to answer “Yes Coach, I am”.
season, the defense was going on the field, and many of
the players who weren’t starters weren’t up to speed on As a School Board member, this is one of the perspectives
the defensive calls and formations. When the coach asked I wanted to share. Stories like this help to show some of
the players on the bench, “Who knows the calls and for- the many positive links between athletics and academics
mations if we run Cardinal on defense?”, the only players for the students in our school system. The discussion went
to raise their hands were the seven freshman who had on to cover other aspects of how my son-in-law’s athletic
dressed for the game. We played the next three series and and academic careers over-lapped and supported each
helped to close out the win. Why? Because even though other. My next column will cover the segment of our conthe Freshman team never ran the Cardinal defense, we had versation that explores that overlap as in relation to a stulearned it. We had learned everything we could and were dent’s views on diversity.
therefore prepared when an opportunity presented itself.
That underscored for us that what Coach Fed had taught Dr. Donna Mills is Vice Chair of the St. Lucie County
us about having the drive to learn was very true.
School Board. She is running for re-election in August.
The second funny thing that happened was our freshman
team went undefeated. In large part due the fact that after
we proved ourselves at the varsity game, the Head Coach
opened the playbooks for us to be taught different
schemes. During a team meeting he made the comment
“If some of you seniors would learn the playbooks like our
freshman have, the varsity team could be undefeated too”.
It was a huge moment in our eyes. We were well liked by
the varsity coaches, because they considered us to be
“smart”. That taught us something. Again, Coach Fed was
right, learning is in fact a big part of the path towards success.

The third funny thing that happened was what Coach Fed
described as his “proudest moment of the season.” Mind
you, this is during the first undefeated freshman season in
school history, so the statement was significant. He made
the statement after first term report cards were distributed. Our school had three teams: a Freshman team, a
Junior Varsity team, and the Varsity. The JV team had
seven players who were academically ineligible after we
receive our report cards, the Varsity team had five. The
Freshman team? Zero. Not a single member of that Freshman team was ever academically ineligible throughout our
entire high school athletic experience. I believe that play-

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