Wiedmer: Brainerd's 10 signees understand the big picture

Brainerd quarterback Malik Beavers (1) confers with head coach Brian Gwyn.  The Bledsoe County Warriors visited the Brainerd Panthers in TSSAA football action Friday night, October 23, 2015.
Brainerd quarterback Malik Beavers (1) confers with head coach Brian Gwyn. The Bledsoe County Warriors visited the Brainerd Panthers in TSSAA football action Friday night, October 23, 2015.

No ESPN television cameras were on hand to crowd the floor space inside Brainerd High School's library Wednesday afternoon. Nor did a single one of the school's 10 college football signees insist on playing musical ballcaps before placing one hat on his head to notify the world where he intends to spend his next three autumns before leaving early for his 3.3-year career in the NFL.

Instead, the Panthers' 10 seniors sat quietly and politely behind two long tables until Brainerd coach Brian Gwyn asked each one to step to a podium and announce his college destination.

Robert Evans Jr., Jamey Mitchell and Deonte Moorer will all attend Monterey (Calif.) Peninsula College. Roderick Holloway, Da'Mon McClendon and Corey Stallworth will play for Arkansas Baptist College. Gequan Landmom and Eddie Pitmon have signed with Globe Technological Institute in New York City. Malik Beavers will play for North Dakota State College of Science. Tevin Walker is headed to Mayfield State.

"These young men have put in the work to continue their athletic careers and academic careers," Gwyn told the crowd of fellow Brainerd students, teachers and friends. "Now they've got to grow up and become men."

That's supposed to be a key tenet of everyone in higher education. Make the graduates responsible, honorable adults.

But Gwyn felt the need to start that process long before the above five junior colleges came calling. He decided to request the help of 1987 Brainerd High grad Stanley Payne, who often makes the three-and-a-half-hour round-trip drive from his job at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., to Brainerd High for no other reason than to strengthen the values and judgments of as many students as possible.

"I grew up in Hampton, Virginia," said Payne, who enlisted in the military immediately after high school graduation. "But I went to Brainerd my final two years of high school. I used to ride my bike all over the place around here. You can't do that now. It's not safe."

Payne believes his continual harping about the need for some form of college education, either the two- or four-year variety, could change that. Standing barely a mile from where bullets had riddled the outside of an SUV carrying a pregnant woman only hours earlier on Brainerd Road, Payne said:

"I'm always telling them about the need for an education. You can't play football forever. But you can use your athletic talent to get a college degree and become a productive member of society. That formula for our young people is how you kill crime."

And how you give birth to hope.

"Seeing these guys get scholarships takes a negativity away from us," said Michael Hampton, a Brainerd sophomore. "I don't play football. I play basketball. But this gives our school a better name. It makes me want to go further than they have. I want to be a neurosurgeon one day. I want to go to Duke."

Now in his late 60s, Riley Walker Sr. has been a fixture around Brainerd youth sports for most of his life, especially as it pertains to the Brainerd Bills youth football organization. He's watched the community struggle with hard times in recent years.

"This school and this community have been beat down so much," he said. "But I see changes coming about because of Coach Gwyn's discipline. When he was hired, I heard more than once that one thing he'd do would put kids in schools. You've certainly seen that today."

Robert Evans Sr. didn't have the opportunity to go to college. Robert Jr. will be the first member of his father's family to have a chance to earn a college degree.

"He's like every kid who plays high school football," Robert Sr. said of his son. "He wants to play in the NFL one day. But he also wants to study music. He plays the drums. Now he'll have a chance to do that whether football works out or not."

You wonder how many kids inside the ESPN 300 rankings feel that way. Will they head off to Big State U. this summer with a Plan B? Or will they ignore the humbling stats that just eight in 10,000 high school football players will be drafted by the NFL?

Said Payne, reiterating his pleas: "If you'll get your education, your finances will take care of themselves. Who wants to pay 30 percent interest on a car loan because you don't understand the numbers?"

This isn't to imply that these parents and teachers and coaches don't care about the football part of these scholarships.

Da'Mon McClendon's grandmother, Wynona, can't wait to make the 950-mile round trip to Little Rock to watch Arkansas Baptist games.

"It's a good ride," she said with a smile, "but wherever he is, his family will follow."

Yet for the families of these 10 young men about to enter college football's less glamorous neighborhoods, the No. 1 goal remains both old-fashioned and newly welcome.

Said Holloway's mom, Tasha Parks: "I'm so happy he gets to play college football, but I hope he'll focus on his education. He knows that education comes first."

Now if we could just get more folks on the red-carpet side of national signing day to focus on that idea.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com

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