BDS Mag December

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ISBN-13: 978-1517220457 ISBN– 10: 1517220459

In This Issue: 03 DREW’S TIPS 06 BROCK & BRAN 07 SCHOOL TALK 08 SCHOLAR ATHLETE: SHANNON REID 09 SCHOLAR ATHLETE: DEMONTAE HART 11 HOT TOPIC 12 COACHE’S CORNER: RECRUITMENT 14 STOP THE VIOLENCE

Featured Players 16 17 18

DEVIN THOMPKINS TERRY LINDSEY JR BENSLEY BORNELUS & WIDCHARD GUERVIL

DECEMBER 2016

BIG DREAMS SPORTS MAGAZINE

Have a Plan B

DREW’S TIPS

Fellas, the percentage of going to the NFL is very slim. NBA, Major League Baseball, your chances are low. So you must have plan B. So whatever you’re going to school for, business, doctor, lawyer. Have a plan B. Everyone understands when you play sports; it’s a passion.

But you need to find another passion, another love, something else you like to do and make that your plan B. Find something you love to do.

Don’t just concentrate on football. Because you can’t play sports forever. Playing football or any sports, you’ve proven you have a good work ethic. So it should be easy to translate into something other than playing. Please have a plan B. Even if you make it to the NFL, it doesn’t last forever, neither does the money. Have a plan B.

Know How To Change A Tire

1.

Make sure you have a spare. Ensure that you have the right tools.

2.

Righty Tighty Lefty Loosey. Loosen the lug nuts while the tire is on the ground first.Then find a sturdy spot on the car to jack the vehicle up. THEN you loosen the lug nuts all the way off. Make sure the jack is not on the grass.

3.

out

If you have any problems, pull your cellphone and Youtube it.

4.

If you’re riding with your girlfriend, and the tire busts, don’t make her do it! And don’t let your woman pump gas.

Be Careful Of The Company You Keep

Be careful of the company you keep. You have to understand your choice to hang around people who are doing stuff that is not aligned with your goals, can cause problems in life. You could be riding down the street, with that person, that person has a gun in the car. Now, most likely he/ she’s not going to take that charge by themselves. Then you’re going to be in the mix of that, and that can cause you your scholarship. So be careful of the company you keep. Bad Company corrupts good character.

You Are Your Brand Kids have to understand social media. You have to understand you are your brand. If I’m a recruiter, I want to know who you are, and t the best way to know who you are is by checking your facebook, your social media, your Twitter. I came across from quotes from college recruiters.

Jamal Singleton- Coach: “I had to unfollow and stop recruiting a young man this evening.

Still, amaze me by what recruits tweet and retweet.

Herb Haines- Assistant Coach at Penn State University: “Dropped another prospect this a.m. due to social media presence. I’m actually glad I got to see the real person before we offered them.”

Fellas and ladies, with that said, you have to understand. You are a brand like Nike. You do not want to tarnish your reputation when it comes to a college scholarship. If I’m a college recruiter, I don’t want to see you up there holding a gun, acting like you’re going to kill somebody. Or with these crazy wack names...I need to know your full name and make sure everything on your page is presentable. Because if your mom gets on your page and she doesn’t approve of it, trust me, college recruiters won’t approve of it.

Respect is key Fellas, ladies, I see you at these basketball game, football games, Pop Warner games, you have to have respect for your organization, your family, yourself and the people around you.

Respect is a key factor, and it will take you a long way. I see a lot of kids being very disrespectful. Me myself personally, I will call you out on it. A lot of you guys are using profanity, and you’re not grown. And I heard when you use alot of profanity, that means your vocabulary is not huge, so pull your pants up, act like you’ve been raised right and have some respect for yourself, your organization and everyone around.

You never know who’s around you. You’re being watched all the time. If you get caught in the wrong light, saying the wrong things at the wrong time, in the wrong way, you’re going to get labeled that way; especially if this is the person’s first impression of you. The bottom line is having respect for yourself and using the right verbiage.

And you need to respect your parents; you don’t have long with them, and you don’t want to wait until it’s too late.

Bran: Does the way your jersey look affect how you play on the field?

Because Bran has a problem with the way Dunbar’s jersey’s look but we beat them 28-0.

Brock- I didn’t say anything about it affecting how they play on the field, I just said Dunbar’s jerseys are ugly period.

Bran- I’m just trying to say the way your jersey looks doesn’t mean anything.

Jerseys do not matter.

Brock- The numbers are like this small, and the jerseys are this big. They’re ugly.

Bran- Like you.

Bran- Another question, should you get a penalty for celebrating in the end zone?

Brock- Nah I don’t think you should get a penalty. The excessive celebrating, like taunting the opposite team. That should be penalized.

Bran- How I feel is, you should never let them score then they wouldn’t taunt.

What do you think is the difference between public and private school?

Korey- Definitely discipline. They set us to a higher standard when it comes to dress code; they just try to set us up for greatness. I like it; it’s just like a job.

Deven- Same thing as Korey, they have a lot of expectations of you. The work is harder. It’s more competitive.

I’m assuming you guys attended public school before?

Yes.

Deven Thompkins

With the academics. Do you feel like its easier in public school than in public school?

Both- Yes sir.

What about the sports competition? Do you feel that you guys are not getting the recognition that you deserve because you go to a private school?

Korey- To an extent yes. You have a lot of big name schools around here like Ft Myers. They usually deep into the playoffs. At Bishop Verot, we try to do big things coming off a great season last year, and we got a little recognition, but we want to keep building up the program.

Deven- People feel like since we’re private school, we’re not as good because of the people we play.

What do you dislike about your school?

Deven- The uniforms. I’m not used to waking up every day and putting on uniforms.

Korey- I agree, the uniforms can be a hassle, but you have to see what they’re trying to do. When you’re at a job, you can’t just wear what you want. So you gotta get used to that.

Korey Besse

Shanon Reid

I saw a comment, and it really touched me. It was a kid that reached out to you, because of your ability on the field, he wanted to train with you, and it was so humbling to see you say “I got you.” It was really great to see because what you must understand now is that you’re a role model. You put on that 21; everybody knows who you are. You’re in the Kappa League; that was huge! Because it shows you’re in that league, that you guys are becoming young men. You carry a 3.8 GPA, playing football. That’s huge! Can you explain to me a bit about the Kappa League?

The Kappa League is a youth program for younger kids who are trying to make something better in their life. Trying to teach each other how to be men in the Dunbar community. How we’re growing up, it’s so much violence. But at the end of the day, we can do something positive to change the world.

That’s a program we need to get our kids involved in. Is that program just at Dunbar?

No, they used to have it a James Stevens Academy, but I didn’t go there. It should be everywhere, though. Just to mentor kids, especially kids after football season, and what they’re going to choose after that. They won’t have anywhere else to go.

You went on a visitor mission; I loved it. Us at the show, we felt like we were right there with you.

You brought the city with you. I know you’re gonna go on to more and more visits, just stay humble, keep doing what you’re doing, you got the grades, that’s what’s up. You guys got a chance in the playoffs. How do you feel? You just had a great visit, a great win, and an opportunity to make a run for the big dance.

It’s kind of big to me knowing that God has been on our side this whole time, even though He’s testing us. Even after two big losses, I think he was testing us and our ability to remain humble and if we would stay forward and keep going on and not let it down us. On our bye week, we really took it seriously, knowing this could be our last chance to make it to playoffs. Our defense we had to step up big time like they say “Defense wins games.” So we had to step up big time.

Demontae Hart You have a 3.5 GPA How do you prepare yourself week in/ week out to be able to play football and keep up with the grades?

Usually, I do my work during school. I got a lot of free classes with my schedule as a senior; I have a lot of credits. So usually I do my work in class. And after school is football practice, when I get home from football practice, it’s time for homework.

So that means you actually did your job as a freshman so that you don’t really have to do too much as a senior. What college do you want to go to?

USF

Hot Topic "Fort Myers have selfish players and can't get it done" James Cook, Miami Athlete He has a point; we haven’t been to the playoffs. Not because of lack of talent. It’s more so that our kids when they get to high school they think more of what they can do for themselves as far as getting to the next level and getting scholarships. Instead of staying with one team, molding yourself and gelling. You can’t just throw a bunch of people together and expect them to win. It takes years and years of molding to do that.

-O.G. It starts from pop warner. It’s a lot of favoritism in pop warner. A lot of coaches are the fathers of some of these kids. Knowing their children are not the Quarterback, knowing their children are not the Runningback. So, how I feel about that is, a lot of people see that favoritism and say “I don’t wanna have my son go there.” That goes for any sport. So they take them to a different spot. It starts in pop warner.

-Cap It’s different in Miami than it is here because they stick together. They believe in a system, because if you get a great coaching staff and they come together as one, and they get these kids to stay in the same school like we did when we were at Estero in 98, we literally stayed together from freshman to senior year in high school. And we had 28 players in high school. It was all about the accountability that I held for the guy next to me. I knew if I’m going to war, the guy next to me was about that and was going to war right along with me. But nowadays you have kids transferring from this school to that school, and you have no identity. I think the kids nowadays are scared of competition.

-Drew

With Anthony Dixon The number thing is the student.

We have to make sure that we’re student athletes and we have to handle our education.

Because if we don’t go out and handle our education when it comes down, every body’s committing early. People are committing early for a reason; people are committing early, so they’ll have somewhere to go but that also means that they already qualify, or they’re really close. So people will take a chance on them. If you guys have core GPAs of 2.1s and different things like that, or you’re starting out low on the 15 on the

ACT, you’re going to have problems getting recruited. So put everything together, and kids start out with your education. First, parents support your children.

Make sure you have the right resources to make sure your kids can be successful and make sure to let the coaches do their part. I really think the coaches do a great job, or actually trying to help your kids. But it really starts with your household first.

If there’s a kid that’s really struggling, or need the help, or maybe not have the support at home to help them.

What do you suggest they do?

The biggest thing is, wherever you go you’re going to have some type of leadership or guidance counselor maybe even your math teacher, these teachers, and these people they’re willing to help and do whatever they have to do for you. You just can’t go to class and fall asleep in class and then come back in class and ask the teacher for help. It’s a lot of resources at the school, and people really want to be there for these athletes, but at the same time, these athletes have to want to be there for themselves.

These coaches are coming, and they want to know the truth about you. They want to speak to the people you don’t talk to every day. They’re going to do their homework. What are you going to do to set yourself up to be successful? And that’s on and off the field. Going back to Drew’s tips, making sure who you’re with, what they’re doing, how you feel about them. You have to take care of yourself. It’s a me world; it’s always address first. You represent your address.

That means you’re taking care of your younger siblings. Your parents and whatever you need to do with that. To be successful.

They got a video out right now, Gotta Try, it’s huge. It’s explaining to us what’s happening in our community. It’s big. This video...people in the community, they’re just going around shooting, the beef is over little stuff. We’re taking lives around here, and it has to stop.

Quest: I produced the song because one night I was in the club and I got a text saying one of my friends got shot in the neck while sitting on a front porch. I was like “what can I do?” I’m not a politician, I;m not a community activist. Then I went home and sat in the studio, and I was like “music is the outlet, let me put my feelings in the music.” So I produced the song, and I reached out to a couple of friends, reached out to Tony Hood, and told him I had an idea for a song and it needs to provoke emotions. So he sent me back the hook, then I reached out to Steve Woodz and said the same thing “It needs to evoke emotions, we gotta make a difference through the music.” Because when you look at the music in SWFL its always violence, AK 47s, it’s time to put something positive out there. So Woodz laced it, and Bizzy Crook did the same thing, and actually Frank Lini also did a verse, he’s just not in the video. After everyone had finished their verses, I reached out to Will. The reason I reached out to this guy, is because of a couple of months prior, he posted that he wanted to start doing more positive videos. He didn’t want to do any more negative videos that promote violence, so I said: “Will is the perfect guy for this video.” And I hit him up and told him the same thing “We gotta provoke emotions with this video.” Because we need people to realize its a problem. And each time someone gets killed, we forget about the person that got shot the day before, and that’s the reason why in the video I made it a point to put Andrew Faust in there. Because a lot of people have forgotten that he got killed and that we’re losing innocent lives every day. The crazy thing is, we finished the song

a month before the club Blu shooting and a month after that, (Steve Woodz) sister gets shot at Club Blu. He didn’t know that a month later his sister was going to get shot. You don’t know when it’s going to affect you..

So Woodz, how did you go in the studio and lay this out?

I’m pretty much an OG out here in the music scene. I’ve been doing this for 7 8 years now. So I’m pretty much into the mentoring. I’m getting kids as young as 13 in there with their mom, wanting to record a track with me. I’m all for positivity in the first place. So when Quest hit me up I was like “Let’s go, I’m ready for that. I’m ready to take that place out here and use my voice.”

And like Quest said, we did that song a month before Club Blu and actually 3 of my sisters was at that party, and one of them got hit. She’s still alive today; she just celebrated her 18th birthday, and I’m thankful for that. I never thought it would hit so close to my door. It just made me feel real good dropping the track after that like this really needs to get out here. Save the city.

Will, you got some great stuff you’ve people, were like “there goes so and so produced. How did you use your who also got killed, and there goes so creativity to inspire this great video? and so, ” and I was like “when is this going to change?” And it’s the youth I had chopped it up with Quest. The out there doing this and it’s not like song is self-explanatory. It wasn’t too they’re killing people who don’t matter hard to come up with a concept with in the community, they’re taking the everything that’s really going on in the youngest and brightest in our commucity. This is really touching the inno- nity. Who could actually come back cent bystanders. Which is what we keep and change things in the community? hearing in the news. I chopped it up with Quest, I heard the track a couple This is our community, we have to of times and came up with a concept. stand up, we have to make a statement, make a point to change our own stars.

Quest: we made it a point to connect Right now, it’s a little quiet; it needs to with the families. Stephan Strauder’s stay that way. When you do a situation mom, she’s amazing. Stephanie. We like that you’re not only putting your sat there and talked to her for about life in jeopardy, because if they catch 2 hours. While we filmed the foot- you they’re gonna book you for a long age and she gave us the motivation time and then, you’re taking the life of to keep going. I was like; we have to somebody else, or messing somebody get in touch with Toyetta and talk to else up, and they have a family out here. her about Andrew Faust. So we linked Not only are you killing your family, up with her, talked to her for a while. but you’re also killing their family by About her son and about the violence. taking somebody away from them. So We did the memorial walk with her at think, is the beef really that serious? Bethe cemetery. We spent a lot of time cause it’s not. Take a chill pill, put your just connecting with people. A lot of pride aside and just let it go. Because time at the cemetery. It’s crazy. And we don’t need to keep burying our kids. the craziest thing is while we were at So kids put it down, stop the violence.. the cemetery filming, Stephan’s grave,

I have with me, mr 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 CLASS A Player of the Year. He is the number 1 player for all 5 classes. Huge! How does it feel?

Feels great. Amazing. I really wasn’t expecting it at all. My coach told me at practice; I was speechless. I feel great about it.

Terry Lindsey Jr From Pop Warner To Varsity This is one of the unheard of things that would happen back in my days; you didn’t just get a freshman making varsity. With that said, how hard was the transition to go from Pop Warner to varsity?

Honestly, it wasn’t really hard. I just had to stay focus on what I had to do. I was worried about myself; I wasn’t worried about how different the atmosphere was. I just did what I had to do.

And it all came along.

You’re at North Fort Myers High with Ernest Graham and Ed Gant. You’re in a great system right now. You played Runningback in Pop Warner, are you still playing Runningback at North?

They’re kind of using me as a versatile. I’m playing Runningback, receiver, and on Defense: corner and safety. So I’m basically all the over the field, it’s different. With me moving from positions, it’s different, but it’s coming along good. It’s great.

How hard was that transition from being Runningback, a guy that carries the ball to turning into that guy who’s catching the ball?

Well, it was kind of hard in the beginning because I wasn’t familiar with the way you do the positions, and this and that. But training at BAPC, you helped me a lot. From me starting, I got off to a great start from the help that you gave me. So I used that along with what my coaches are teaching me.

So what number will you be rocking this year?

I will have on number 21 this year.

Ok, so people look out for #21, Red Knights this year.

Bensley Bornelus & Widchard Guervil What I understand from the Haitian culture is that you don’t get that much support from your family, because you know it’s probably not a big sport in Haiti. But you guys are coming in the rankings like ; literally, you guys are putting on for Haiti.

Bensley Bornelus: I just want to do it for my family. I just want to make it big.

You are one of premier defensive and one of the fastest kids in the city.

Widchard Guervil: I’m just trying to make it for my people. Go out there and grind and treat everyday differently.

What I like about you guys is that you work.

You work and play ball and go to school. And you do all three things well. And Bensley you have a 3.9? That’s big ups for you guys. How is it that you guys don’t really have a huge support system? Is that a big thing for you guys?

Bensley: It motivates you. Because when your parents come to the game you want to do your best. My dad, he tries his hardest to come to the games. My mom really doesn’t. She goes to church a lot, so she doesn’t really come to the games. But I try my best when my dad comes.

Widchard: My dad barely comes. Sometimes he shows up, sometimes he don’t. But when he do, I feel happy. I just want for my family to know what I’m waking up every morning for and what I’m in school doing, so I just want to show it to them. He doesn’t really understand the game like that, neither does my mom, but still I try to do my best and explain to them how it works and why I’m doing it.

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