USF Youth Impact Program, Part Two: USF Football Players Not The Only Student Athletes Involved In Youth Impact Football Camp

Thomas Markey

In Part Two of our cov­er­age of the Youth Impact Pro­gram at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida, PRISM Press Group con­trib­u­tor Jor­dan Lop­er­ena dis­cusses the role of student-athletes from other sports pro­grams located on cam­pus and the progress these indi­vid­u­als have seen in the youth involved in the camp — even though one of the main focal points of the pro­gram is bet­ter­ing one­self on the foot­ball field.

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.

Angelique Waller. Stephanie Augus­tavo. Jordy McGillis. Jesus Ver­dajo. Thomas Markey.

What do all of these names have in com­mon? If you fol­low USF ath­let­ics, there’s a good chance you rec­og­nize all of these names as cur­rent or for­mer Bulls.

Yet aside from that com­mon bond, you may won­der to your­self, “What do all of these names have to do with each other?” After all, each indi­vid­ual ath­lete men­tioned plays / played a dif­fer­ent sport for USF.  None of them are teammates.

Check that, none of them were team­mates — that is, until these fel­low Bulls joined forces with each other, along with select mem­bers of the USF foot­ball team, in becom­ing men­tors for the Youth Impact Foot­ball Pro­gram cur­rently being held on the South Florida cam­pus in Tampa.

Why would all of these ath­letes be par­tic­i­pat­ing as men­tors in a foot­ball camp? The answer to that ques­tion is easy: These are all student-athletes.

In a camp focused on get­ting inner-city kids on the right track, it is impor­tant to let the par­tic­i­pants know that foot­ball is not the only option there is to become a student-athlete at a big-time, up-and-coming pro­gram like the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida.

For­mer USF bas­ket­ball stand­out Jesus Ver­dajo explains, “Basi­cally, we show the m what an ath­lete goes through when they get to col­lege.   Go to class, go to prac­tice, or go to prac­tice before class, be tired, then have to come back to prac­tice in the afternoon.”

Ver­dajo, a  native of Puerto Rico, also men­tioned, “I wasn’t able to go to this type of camp when I was grow­ing up because my mom couldn’t afford it; plus, in Puerto Rico, they didn’t have these [type] of facilities.”

Augus­tavo, a USF vol­ley­ball player, men­tioned mean­while the sur­prise the kids first faced upon real­iz­ing the dif­fer­ent aspects of the camp:  “At first, they were thrown a lit­tle off-guard that we’re doing school work dur­ing the sum­mer …  now that they’re into it, I think they’re notic­ing it’s not really a strict class­room and they’re actu­ally enjoy­ing them­selves in the class­room. [Dur­ing] the first few days, the kids were mis­be­hav­ing a lot and now most of them, the major­ity of them, are very respect­ful and are hav­ing a good time.”

Augustavo’s recog­ni­tion of the pro­gram par­tic­i­pants’ pro­gres­sion was just the first from many of the USF student-athlete men­tors involved in the camp.

USF women’s soc­cer player Angelique Waller had this to say about the pro­gres­sions she has seen in just the short amount of time the kids have been involved with the camp: “They were rebel­lious …  the nor­mal mid­dle school kids; but it’s weird, because they seem to catch on and they know what’s right and they’ll do what’s right. It ties in to things like going to jail. They don’t want to go to jail so they’re not going to steal. They are respect­ful kids and I think it’s going to help them out in the long run.”

USF men’s soc­cer player, Thomas Markey, high­lighted not only the pro­gres­sion the kids have shown through­out the camp, but the appre­ci­a­tion they have shown towards the out­stand­ing oppor­tu­nity that has fallen into their laps in the form of the Youth Impact Program.

“The pro­gram is school. It’s an inter­est­ing dynamic of kids. You know, a lot of them come from not-as-privileged back­grounds, so it’s fun to work with kids like that where they are a lot more appre­cia­tive of a lot of things. They don’t have every­thing that Mom and Dad can buy for them so they can come here and we give them a lot of good stuff. You notice that they look for­ward to every­thing, not just the foot­ball. They enjoy the class­room, they enjoy the talk­ing, they enjoy the books, they enjoy all of that stuff, so it’s fun to work with them.”

When asked if this type of pro­gram should be show­ing up around more col­lege cam­puses around the coun­try, Jordy McGillis, a USF bas­ball stand­out, said, “Most def­i­nitely. This is a great pro­gram and we’ve seen just in the two weeks we’ve had them that these kids have devel­oped and they have really been act­ing more mature …  I think it could ben­e­fit any city to have this sort of pro­gram at [an] university.”

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