Harding athletes learn to Play It Smart

The academic coach empathizes with athletes.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Student athletes at Warren G. Harding High School have a special advocate and mentor to advise and motivate them in their academic pursuits.
"If you're good in sports, but you don't have the grades, I'm trying to pull that all together," said Adrian Brown, academic coach for Harding athletes.
Head football Coach Thomas McDaniels said Brown is "not concerned about formations or drills or technique or tackling or running the ball. He's concerned about our kids academically."
The academic coaching program, known as Play It Smart, is sponsored by the National Football Foundation -- an affiliate of the National Football League.
The program, new this year at Harding, is funded locally by the Wean Foundation and Anthony Payiavlas, president of AVI Foodsystems Inc. The NFF and local money pay for Brown's salary and program materials.
Founded in 1998, the program has achieved a 98 percent high school graduation rate and an 80 percent college enrollment rate among student athletes. Besides Warren, Play It Smart operates in high schools in Alliance, Canton, Akron, Maple Heights, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
"In a big school like this, it's hard for a coach to concentrate on every student or every player, and that's where I come in," Brown said. Harding has about 1,700 students, about 400 of whom are athletes.
"We're seeing kids getting help in an area where many of them need help. In urban settings, quite often, we've got first generation kids who are going to go to college," McDaniels observed.
Having played football under McDaniels at Canton McKinley High School and having played fullback and tailback on the 1996 national championship Youngstown State University football team, Brown is in a unique position to empathize with today's student athletes.
Coaching for college
All student athletes at Harding on both boys' and girls' teams are included in the academic advisement portion of the program.
Brown keeps track of the schedules, attendance and academic performance of all student athletes, and of which ones take the ACT and SAT and when they take them.
Play It Smart participants are also coached on the college application, acceptance and financial aid procedures and on the importance of academics. They have access after school to computers, where they can take online sample ACTs and have them scored.
Athletes whose grade-point averages fall below 2.5 are required to participate in study tables before, during or after school. Some 120 Harding athletes participate in study tables.
In the study table program, students report to a classroom, where Harding teachers and tutors from YSU help them with their studies; some students do their homework under supervision. "We want our kids to understand that it's a privilege to play a sport. It's not a right," McDaniels said.
Play It Smart participants are also engaged in community service activities, such as reading to grade school children and distributing dictionaries to them, and even helping with the demolition of an abandoned house.
Student support
"It lets you know that you can do anything that you want to do as long as you put your mind to it," football player Marlin Parker said of the program.
Parker, who plays defensive end and tight end, said the program helps students get their academic work done early in study hall periods, not when they're tired after practice.
The program helps students who may not get the attention they need at home, Parker said. It also helps boost students' grades early and prevents them from being disappointed by inadequate grades on a report card, he added.
Play It Smart also informs athletes about which colleges offer the best programs in their intended fields of study, he said.
"It helped me bring up my grades, and it helped other athletes bring up their grades," said Tyon Flowers, a study table participant.
"It helped me stay focused so I could get my letters from colleges and be ready and be prepared for life," said Flowers, a junior, who is on the football and track teams.
On the football team, he's a running back and outside linebacker. In track, he runs the 400 meter dash and 4-by-400-meter team relay. "It motivates me to stay successful," Flowers said of the academic coaching program.
Harding Principal William E. Mullane said Play It Smart makes sure athletes get on the right track as freshmen.
Too often, students have suddenly realized as seniors that they can't take advantage of college opportunities because their GPAs aren't high enough or they didn't take the ACT.
"Adrian is here to help them not make those mistakes," Mullane said.