USF Youth Impact Program Coverage, Part One: All-American George Selvie Highlights Distinguished List Of USF Football Players Involved In Youth Impact Camp

George Selvie

The fol­low­ing is the first of four arti­cles col­lect­ing the thoughts of ath­letes, men­tors and pro­gram direc­tors involved in the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida’s Youth Impact Pro­gram as pro­vided by PRISM Press Group con­trib­u­tor Jor­dan Lop­er­ena, with addi­tional parts released at the rate of one a day between now and Wednes­day, July 15th.

Images for this arti­cle are pro­vided by PRISM Press Group’s Nick Han­son and may not be repro­duced with­out the direct con­sent of Nick, who can be con­tacted at nick@prismpressgroup.org.

“They’re used to me now, they’re like ‘Ok, that’s George’.”

Those were the words of Uni­ver­sity of South Florida two-time First Team All-American George Selvie on the rela­tion­ship he has formed thus far with par­tic­i­pants in the First Annual USF Youth Impact Program.

Do you know how many grown adults would like to have an “Oh, it’s just George” type of rela­tion­ship with a two-time All-American Foot­ball player, let alone any Divi­sion I NCAA ath­lete?  Those kids lucky enough to be involved with the USF Youth Impact Foot­ball Pro­gram have been pro­vided the oppor­tu­nity to do just that, and are appar­ently appre­ci­at­ing every moment of the experience.

“I like the pro­gram  …  I think it’s a really good pro­gram get­ting kids [under­priv­i­leged] to come play foot­ball, do some learn­ing dur­ing the sum­mer … and actu­ally [have] us in the class­room to be there with them and [teach] them,” says USF’s star defen­sive end.

Selvie also talkes about the reac­tion the kids par­tic­i­pat­ing in the camp have had to this point, stat­ing, “I see them really react­ing to it and they love going out there and play­ing foot­ball.”  “We can impact these guys at a young age,” he con­tin­ues.  “Right now, they’re look­ing at us, they see us on TV. Of course, they like NFL play­ers, but some­one that’s already in col­lege, closer to their age, they really look up to us.”

As if Selvie’s com­ments on the camp didn’t praise the Youth Impact Pro­gram enough, I had the oppor­tu­nity to talk with four other USF Foot­ball play­ers who also spoke very highly of the camp as well.   Senior wide receiver Jessie Hes­ter, safety Nate Allen, punter Del­bert Alvarado and wide receiver Don­tavia Bogan all had great things to say about their expe­ri­ence with the USF Youth Impact Program.

Hes­ter, son of for­mer NFL Wide Receiver Jessie Hes­ter, Sr. noted about the Youth Impact Pro­gram, “It gives the kids a chance to inter­act and show them another side of life than what they’re liv­ing back home.”

When I asked Allen about his thoughts on the event, he responded sim­i­larly, com­ment­ing, “It’s been great giv­ing these inner-city kids some good influ­ence and just being men­tors to them and show­ing them all the good oppor­tu­ni­ties that are out there, being able to give them some­thing to do to stay out of trou­ble.  It’s been really good so far.”

Alvarado men­tions that he can “see the dif­fer­ence, that we help them to under­stand the impor­tance of school, the impor­tance of want­ing to be an ath­lete, and the steps it takes to get there and I think a lot of them, for the most part, are really grasp­ing it. In the end, it would be cool to look back and see some of these guys play­ing Divi­sion I foot­ball someday.”

Alvarado also added, on a more per­sonal note, that he “had a lot of men­tors in high school that helped me when I was strug­gling with my grades and time man­age­ment, so I know per­son­ally the impact it had on me hav­ing peo­ple that cared for me and tried to lead me in the right direc­tion … It’s going to end up ben­e­fit­ting them and being the best for them in the end.”

Alvarado’s per­sonal expe­ri­ence truly seemed to high­light the impact that a pro­gram like this can have on its par­tic­i­pants.  When speak­ing with him, I couldn’t help but bring up the approach­ing kick­off to the 2009 foot­ball sea­son, to which Alvarado was quick to point out the goose­bumps he got on his arms from just talk­ing about the program-changing games of past sea­sons, exem­pli­fied by the mem­o­rable 21–13 vic­tory over West Vir­ginia in 2007.

Bogan men­tioned he felt things “started off a lit­tle slow, but we’ve got it back on track. It’s going really well, everybody’s been lov­ing the kids. They’ve been pro­gress­ing day by day … They’ve been doing good not only in foot­ball, but in the class­room [as well].”

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