Bryant gridiron scholars tackle life's challenges (Providence Journal)

Bryant gridiron scholars tackle life's challenges

Bulldogs linebackers Andrew McLarty and Greg Daniel buck the odds and excel on the football field and in the classroom.

May 28, 2006  / Link to Article at Projo.com

BY MIKE SZOSTAK
Journal Sports Writer

SMITHFIELD -- They met during their first college football training camp, just two linebackers trying to get on the field.

Andrew McLarty

One day, the kid from just off Broad Street in South Providence impressed the kid from a Washington, D.C., suburb with a hit so hard that the senior carrying the ball fumbled.

"From then on," the D.C. kid, Andrew McLarty, said, "we were really tight."

He and Greg Daniel, the Providence kid, forged such a close friendship during their four years together at Bryant University that they refer to each other as "my brother from another mother."

"We've been inseparable almost," McLarty said. "We kept on top of each other on the field and in academics. He made college a great experience for me."

"Andrew is just a great overall person. He comes from nothing . . . but he's successful in everything," said Daniel.

Eight days ago, McLarty and Daniel strode across the stage beneath a hangar-like white tent on the Bryant campus, shook hands with schoolPresident Ronald K. Machtley and walked off with their bachelor's degrees, McLarty in marketing, Daniel in accounting.

Greg Daniel

Nice story, but that's not the half of it. McLarty and Daniel are young and black and defying staggering odds. Like James Frazier of Brown, the football tri-captain who is graduating today, they are succeeding and getting ahead in a world in which so many of their contemporaries are failing and falling further behind. Poverty, poor schools, abuse, violence, uninvolved fathers and neglect are sucking the hopes and dreams out of many young black men in the United States.

Citing recent work by experts at Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown, The New York Times reported in March the extent to which young black men in the United States are in serious trouble. The statistics are sobering.

In 2004, half of the black men in their 20s who had graduated high school were unemployed, up from 46 percent in 2000.

In 2004, 72 percent of black men in their 20s who dropped out of high school were unemployed, up from 65 percent four years earlier.

In 2004, 21 percent of black men in their 20s who did not go to college were in jail, up from 16 percent in 1995.

"I see those statistics, and it saddens me," McLarty said, "but it also gives me the drive to keep going. I'll be one to change those percentages. I'll graduate, and I'll help others graduate."

How did Greg Daniel and Andrew McLarty avoid the traps that catch so many other young black men? Daniel has parents who care, McLarty a wider support system of family and friends.

But more than that, each possesses an inner strength that enables them to set goals and sacrifice to achieve them. They chose their friends wisely and were able to resist the temptation to return to the streets they left behind.

McLarty's journey to Bryant had more stops than an Amtrak Regional train. He finished high school in College Park, Md., while living with his friend Jamal Berry and his family in nearby New Carrolton.

He stayed with them so he wouldn't have to take a train and bus to Parkdale High School from his brother's place in D.C., where he stayed for a while because things weren't working out at his sister's place in Riverdale, Md.

He had moved in with his sister at the start of 11th grade because his father, Harold, moved to Atlanta from Tacoma Park, Md., where he had settled after spending four years in his native Jamaica with Andrew and his younger sister.

The stay in Jamaica followed a year in Buffalo, N.Y., where the McLartys landed after Andrew's mother, Valerie, died when he was 8. Home at that time was Fort Washington, Md.

"With all the struggles I've had, the greatest thing is the great people I think God has place around me. I've bumped into more than my share," he said.

People like Mike Rucker, his high-school football coach "who tried to instill in us the characteristics of a strong man and what you need to have success in life. He was almost a father figure to me." And Marty Fine, his coach at Bryant, who "also has been great." And the Berry family, Jamal and his parents and aunts and uncles. And the Daniel family, Greg's mother, Marie, and father, Greca.

"I love his mother to death. I love his parents. They took care of me, looked out for me, let me stay with them for a summer," he said.

Greg Daniel's journey was more stable than his "brother's" but it was far from smooth. Growing up in South Providence, he said, "you see a lot of stuff."

He chose La Salle Academy over Classical because of the neighborhood. If he had gone to Classical, he would have been tempted by Central kids hanging out on the street when they should have been in class.

"At La Salle, if you're late, they call your parents. They have systems in place, and they kept me moving," he said.

Marie Daniel, a registered nurse who is a native of Haiti, wanted her son to be a pediatrician, but Greg had other ideas. He took a business course as a La Salle senior and at graduation received an award for accounting.

"That really opened her eyes," he said.

Daniel went to Bryant because he wanted to play football and didn't want "the usual education" that many minority students pursue at schools such as the Community College of Rhode Island and the University of Rhode Island. He went determined to succeed on the field and in the classroom and sacrificed to do both.

He took out student loans. For three summers he was up at 6 a.m. for a early commuter train to his internship in Boston. He gave part of his pay to his parents. He resisted the urge to hang out in South Providence. He tried not to envy his old friends because they were buying clothes and other things with the money they made working some low-paying job.

"When I'm determined, there aren't a lot of people who can make me get off that path," he said. "This is something I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go to school. I'm supposed to graduate. I'm supposed to wake up and go to class."

Daniel and McLarty thrived at Bryant on and off the football field. Daniel finished as the school's career tackles leader and was a two-time All-Northeast-10 second-team selection. McLarty, always second in tackles behind his friend, made the NE-10 honor roll several times.

They became a presence in class and on campus. Daniel, a strong student, is trying to establish a Bryant chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants, and this month was one of three recipients of the William T. O'Hara Award for Leadership.

McLarty, who could not afford to buy textbooks for two years but still made the dean's list, had a 3.17 grade-point average when he last checked. A poet, he and teammate Saddi Williams wrote and produced a play last month. "Spoken Faith: A Man's Journey to Agape" is about man's struggles to reach God. Student feedback was positive, and proceeds of the production went to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

"He puts his life on paper. What he says really affects you," Daniel said.

The "brothers" are not alone in having beaten the odds against young black men. Williams, their teammate and friend from Washington, D.C., received Bryant's Community Service Award this year. Shane Cheltenham came from a tough section of Lynn, Mass., graduated last December and is working in a halfway house. Manny Holmes dropped out to help his mother in Miami and was working in a rat-infested landfill when Fine managed to get him back to Bryant. Holmes made the dean's list and graduated.

Similar stories exist at other schools. Frazier was one of the defensive heroes of Brown's Ivy League championship team last season. Rod Chance of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., graduated from URI last weekend. David Jamison, URI's career rushing leader, beat the odds and is working for DuPont in Philadelphia. Calvin Poole, whose grandfather was a sharecropper and whose family lives at the end of a dirt road in Albany, Ga., picked up his degree from URI last December and is coaching and taking courses for physical therapy at Florida A&M.

Daniel and McLarty know they are fortunate and are already striving to help young black men following them.

"I get the young guys and tell them rather than work at McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts, get an internship, and don't wait until the summer before your senior year. That three months basically means job or no job," Daniel said. "We have to keep talking and get it out that there are available things out there. You don't have to be a stereotype, doing nothing, hanging out on the street."

"Greg Daniel, Saddi Williams, we've all been on the same path," McLarty said. "I understand what they're going through, and they understand what I'm going through. We know when to step in and help. It's like a continuing shoulder to lean on. So many people have helped me that it would be kind of unthinkable for me not to help somebody else."

Daniel and McLarty have more than a degree to show for their four years at Bryant. In July, Daniel will join the Boston office of the accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm he interned with those three college summers. His work involves compliance with accounting standards put into place in the wake of the recent corporate scandals.

McLarty, who red-shirted in 2002 and has one season of eligibility remaining, will return to Bryant in August for training camp and the start of graduate classes. He has been accepted into the Bryant School of Business.

mszostak@projo.com/ (401) 277-7340