A) Home Grown: like Andrew Datko and Jake Rudock. These guys are both products of years of football in Weston, one of the most affluent neighborhoods of Broward County, and then another four years of football at one of the more preeminent programs in the country. Neither of these boys were on scholarship. Their families paid their way and their academics reflected their athletic talents. Perhaps even surpassed them. Datko was an Academic All-American coming out of high school and I’m sure Jake Rudock was somewhere close to that. Ryan Becker, if you’ll remember the walk-on QB for us, played at STA and received offers to play at such universities as UPenn.

2) Students who transfer: this includes our standouts like Lamarcus Joyner and Bobby Hart. Guys like LJ were VASTLY different from the players who had been in the program from the beginning of their time in HS. As I’ve mentioned before, LJ even asked what exactly the “glutes” were during a session with a pilates instructor during summer workouts, and all of the kids who went through a biology class at STA already laughed. However, the thing that Lamarcus did better than anybody else was WORK. He worked harder than anybody else, he worked longer than anybody else, he appreciated the opportunity that he had at St. Thomas and listened to Coach Smith and earned his #1 CB ranking coming out of HS.

Bobby Hart’s another one. He was a lot more lazy and soft than LJ. The coaches did not like him nearly as much as LJ, who they fawned over (again, this is because LJ was the complete package and didn’t know when to quit whereas Hart felt entitled already [keep in mind, he was 15 when he was playing for STA Varsity, though]) however he learned how to play his position from a coach with a LOT of success at the high school level and whose philosophy for the position group that he coaches is incredibly sound. In fact, there are very few high school coaches who have had success on the OL like Coach Connelly at STA has had. Besides Bobby Hart and Austin Barron (whose talents we saw on the field this year after not even having a spring camp under their belts) he’s sent numerous guys to college to play OL. The name you’d probably be familiar with the most after Bobby Hart would be that Sam Young who also received a lot of notoriety for starting at ND as a freshman or Dan Wenger who joined Sam Young on ND’s OL. That was only a few cycles before Bobby left STA, too.

I guess despite the differences in where the players come from, coming out of STA sort of reduces the affect of whatever outside influences would have over its players. The coaches are top-notch and demand 6 days of work per week, every week for most of the year. Discipline comes with that. The facilities the kids have access to are also simply unbelievable.

When you have all of these coaches who have won multiple national championships screaming in your ear six days a week breaking down film with you and hitting the weight room with you, and when you work out in a multi-million dollar athletic facility and play on a field that Michael Irvin bought the school, in a stadium that was named after Brian Picolo… you feel real pressure and you want to be the best.

Coming from all of that, college isn’t that big of a deal. STA is probably as close as you can get to a college-style program in high school. It’s like the Notre Dame of HS ball.. except that STA wins championships still.