Roberts: An Interview With Liberty High School’s Larry Purnell

Larry Pur­nell, Lib­erty High School

PRISM Press Group’s Jason Roberts recently had the oppor­tu­nity to speak with Larry Pur­nell, senior cor­ner­back for Kissimmee’s Lib­erty High School, about the numer­ous tran­si­tions he’s faced over the last year  in mov­ing from Chicago, Illi­nois to Cen­tral Florida, the shift from play­ing bas­ket­ball in the Mid­west to foot­ball in the South, and what his plans for the future hold once he grad­u­ates at the end of this aca­d­e­mic year and looks to head off to college.

Please note all mate­r­ial which fol­lows is the sole pos­ses­sion of PRISM Press Group’s Jason Roberts and may not be repro­duced with­out his sole per­mis­sion, obtain­able by con­tact­ing him via email at jason@prismpressgroup.org.

In talk­ing to Larry Pur­nell, senior cor­ner­back for Kissimmee’s Lib­erty High School, one thing about the last year becomes crys­tal clear:  though he has dealt with his fair share of tran­si­tion and chal­lenges, he has done so with head held high and suc­ceeded where oth­ers have  given in to adversity.

Pur­nell began a whirl­wind of adjust­ment late last year when he arranged to move from his home­town of Chicago, Illi­nois to the Orlando area in order to reside with his father.  He then faced the deci­sion of whether to con­tinue play­ing bas­ket­ball (he played point guard in Chicago) at Lib­erty High as a senior, or try his hand at the game of foot­ball  – some­thing he fig­ured he’d do well in given time spent run­ning track in Chicago, where his speed – 4.41 in the 40-yard dash – had caught the eyes of plenty who’d seen him in competition.

It was foot­ball – a game Pur­nell learned to love while play­ing at a local Boys and Girls Club grow­ing up – ended up win­ning out.  But that  in and of itself opened up a new set of chal­lenges, as Pur­nell arrived on cam­pus slated to play run­ning back, but was even­tu­ally forced to learn the defen­sive side of the ball in order to bet­ter take advan­tage of his over­all speed and athleticism.

The tran­si­tion in learn­ing a defen­sive play­book wasn’t that dif­fi­cult, Pur­nell com­ments, but given his size – 5’6 and 150 pounds – it became clear early on that the senior was going to have to rely heav­ily on that same speed and ath­leti­cism coaches had noticed in pre-season camps in order to defend the often­times larger wide receivers he faced off against through­out the 2009 season.

That was a task Pur­nell learned to turn to his advan­tage, with his quick­ness and instinc­tive abil­ity to adjust to the ball mak­ing the young­ster a dan­ger­ous tar­get to throw against in cov­er­age out in the Lib­erty secondary.

Both were also gifts that even­tu­ally worked in favor of Pur­nell see­ing addi­tional play­ing time on spe­cial teams, where he evolved into a role as a punt and kick­off returner.

They are also tal­ents that the defen­sive back hopes to fur­ther hone in col­lege, where, though he hopes to play at the Divi­sion I level, his over­all inex­pe­ri­ence may – at least ini­tially – make him more attrac­tive to a Divi­sion II or Divi­sion III insti­tu­tion such as Bethune Cook­man, one of the pro­grams Pur­nell acknowl­edged as cur­rently tak­ing a look at him head­ing into the 2010 foot­ball season.

Bethune Cook­man seems in a lot of ways a good fit for Pur­nell, par­tic­u­larly given his desire to stay in the state of Florida for school and to play for a pro­gram that empha­sizes team first, not the indi­vid­ual, in terms of tak­ing the field and win­ning foot­ball games.

Of con­sid­er­able weight, too, is his empha­sis on attend­ing a school with a strong aca­d­e­mic tra­di­tion, as edu­ca­tion will always remain at the fore­front of what Pur­nell does in an aca­d­e­mic environment.

That’s he’s main­tained all A’s and B’s so far this year ought to help him to achieve just such a goal.

Pur­nell should also only fur­ther build his stock as he explained he is cur­rently prepar­ing for the upcom­ing track sea­son at Lib­erty High School, where he rel­ishes in the free­dom of run­ning unre­strained from the weight of all the tran­si­tions and deci­sions he’s faced in the past and will be forced to deal with in the near future.

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