MOBILE, Ala. – Earning a scholarship to compete in football at the collegiate level — that’s an impressive feat; according to research, 1.4 percent of high school participants in the sport in a given year go on to do just that at a Division I university. And competing for multiple programs once an individual enrolls in the school is not unheard of.
What makes the cases of University of South Alabama football student-athletes Demetre Baker and Anton Graphenreed so compelling is that not only are they key players for the Jaguars in the fall, but they were able to qualify for the preliminary round of the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in the spring.
“Both guys were very good in high school, very good track athletes. It shows you the caliber of student-athlete that the football program is recruiting, they are doing a great job of bringing in some top-flight athletes — guys who have the ability to compete at a high level in both sports,” noted Paul Brueske, USA’s head track and field coach. “What they’ve been able to accomplish in track is extremely impressive, it shows you the type of athlete they are that they can do that without full-time training.
“It’s also a testament to what coach [Justin] Schwind is doing with the strength and conditioning program; it’s not like these guys are just hanging out, they are training hard in the weight room. What we do with them is more technical, so a large part of what they are doing is in the weight room through the strength and conditioning program with football. Coach Schwind deserves a lot of credit for their performance as well.”
So how does one not only pull off the feat, but achieve success in the process? On that, the two differ.
“At first, the hardest part of playing any sport is time management. It [competing in two] teaches you how to stay focused and how to break your days down; what time you have practice, class is at this time and you fit studying in somewhere,” explained Graphenreed. “Whenever you get home you know you’re going to be tired and just want to lay down, but you can’t do that.”
For Baker, the difficulty lies in the monotony of focusing on just one sport most of the time. In addition to that factor, though, there is also the matter of trying to practice or work out preparing for two sports where the skills do not necessarily overlap. “I think the hard part is being with one sport for a long stretch; you tend to get bored with a daily routine, nothing changing about it,” he said. “And one sport is team-oriented and the other is individual.
“I put football first, get all my workouts in, then go to track afterwards. Coach Brueske knows my schedule is tight, so I might only be out there once or twice a week with track just to work on technique and get the rhythm back heading into that season.”
As such, Brueske makes a concerted effort to not overextend student-athletes from other programs also competing in track. “That’s always a concern. I would say that we are very accommodating to these guys; because they are competing in another sport they are doing us a favor by coming out,” he stated. “We certainly adjust their training program and focus more on the technical side of things, we don’t want to double-dip with these guys training because that’s going to result in injury. We’re very conscious of that and communicate well with the football coaching staff and strength and conditioning personnel to make sure that we are not overtraining them.”
And working through the grind of extra practice sessions is not the only concern relating to time management. The additional sport does not alleviate the two from fulfilling the first half of the term student-athlete.
“We always think about that. And not only might one sport take away from another, but also academically,” commented USA head football coach Joey Jones. “We had an individual last year we had to take out of track because of academic performance — if they can’t handle it all, then we need to pull back.”
Still, both coaches agree on one key point — the ability to compete against outside competition is a plus for both programs. Jones goes a step further, as he believes if the student-athlete is good enough to compete in multiple sports, he is not interested in denying that opportunity since the individual has a small window to take advantage of their skill set.
“My philosophy is that these kids only have a short time to play sports in their lives — they can go off and play men’s softball after they graduate, but they only have a four- or five-year window to compete at this level,” he stated. “If they can run track, or play baseball or basketball and football, I’m all for it. We don’t want it to take away from our program, but I don’t think it does. Sometimes we get caught up in offseason conditioning, but those guys are out there conditioning running track so it really works hand in hand, so I like for them to compete in other sports.”
“A lot of these guys were multi-sport athletes in high school, and there is something to be said about their staying competitive year round,” added Brueske. “I think you’ll see that these guys are competitors not only in football but track, they are at a high level in both and that the different sports help each other.”
That appears to be the case for both Graphenreed and Baker once the results have been viewed.
The former — a 6-foot, 170-pound senior from Columbus, Ga. — has started 19 of the Jaguars’ first 24 games the last two seasons. In 23 appearances, the cornerback has been credited with 58 tackles, broken up nine passes while posting three interceptions, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery; that includes 20 stops this fall as USA enters a season-ending three-game homestand that begins with Saturday’s 4 p.m. contest against Henderson (Ark.) State. He made at least three stops in each of the Jags’ first six outings this fall, including a career-high-tying five in a double-overtime victory at Texas-San Antonio Oct. 8.
Last spring, Graphenreed qualified for the preliminary round of the NCAA Championships in the 200-meter dash where he advanced to the quarterfinals before finishing in 17th place. He scored 16 points at the Sun Belt Conference Championships two weeks prior after finishing second in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes, while his best time in the latter event — a clocking of 20.86 seconds at Troy’s Coach “O” Invitational — was tops in the league.
“I don’t want to sound cocky because I am going against people who run year round, but I put in the time. I may have had only three weeks to prepare for it, but I put in the extra work and expected to go,” he observed of his performance in the spring. “I didn’t expect to do as well as I did because I was hurt; I was just a millisecond off, and being that close to the [NCAA] Championships hurt. I wasn’t at peace with it, but I’m glad that it was an injury that I could bounce back from that wasn’t going to stop me from doing something else that I love, which is football. Even before that, when I hurt my hand, I was running with a cast. I wasn’t going to let anything slow me down.
“That was something that coach Brueske and [assistant] coach [Randy] Flach really pushed, that I was so close and could make it. At the beginning of the season my times were OK, and then I started working on the little things and the times kept dropping and I was No. 1 in the conference out of nowhere. I was shocked because I’m always going to feel like I’m never good enough; not that I doubt myself, but I want to always push to get better.”
A 6-foot-1, 215-pound running back from Orange Park, Fla., Baker is on the verge of completing his first year at USA; after one semester at Georgia, he transferred into the program in January. After taking part in spring drills, he made the effort to seek out Brueske to be able to compete in track during the outdoor season.
“I waited until I got here to get ready for football, because I knew that was going to pay the bills since that’s who provided me the scholarship,” he said. “I knew coach Brueske knew about me, all I had to do was go find him and ask him if I could try to walk on to the track team.”
By the end of the season, Baker not only qualified to compete at the East Region preliminary round of the NCAA Championships in two events — the discus and shot put — but had broken a school record in the latter event that had stood for 43 years with a 17.17m/56-04 toss in the shot at the Coach “O” Invitational, going on to earn all-conference honors in the discus with a mark of 50.75m/166-06 — which was good for a third-place finish — at the SBC Championships.
“I didn’t think I had enough to qualify for the first round, but I knew I had the potential to,” explained Baker. “Once I got there I thought I had the potential to make it to the national championships, but it was a more of an experience that I could build on — going out of town travelling, I had never done that, and competing with other big throwers. I had never been in that situation, in high school I was the big dog, so being in that environment was new. I expect big things in the spring next track season.”
On the field, Baker has wasted little time making an impact in the USA offensive backfield. Through seven games, he’s second on the team in rushing with 379 yards on 80 carries, second in scoring with 42 points and first with 532 all-purpose yards. Prior to last weekend’s game at Georgia State, Baker had reached the end zone in five straight contests, the second-longest streak in school history, and had led the squad in rushing twice; with 82 yards in a Sept. 10 victory over Lamar, and a career-high 87 yards in the win at UTSA.
“It’s been very exciting, I’ve been very happy,” Baker stated. “I expected to come to college and compete against other great athletes, so I learn from it and feel that I’ve gotten better going through the process.”
In a day and age in which specialization in one sport is becoming more popular at a younger age, it is becoming rare to see two-sport stars. For Graphenreed, though, he didn’t just get a late start in track. He didn’t get serious about football until enrolling at Murphy High School in Mobile — as the son of parents in the military, he was born in New York and lived in several places until both mom and dad enrolled in school at South Alabama — while his track career didn’t get underway until another move took the family to the Peach State and Shaw High.
“I didn’t really get into football until my freshman year, and my sophomore year was when I really started to play. When I moved to Georgia I started running track too, and I have been doing both since then,” he recalled. As for why he began competing in track, “One of my coaches decided for me,” he laughed. “I wanted to when I was here [at Murphy], but I hurt myself and couldn’t do anything. When I got to Shaw, my coach said ‘Sir, you’re going to run the 400 for me.’ I asked him what it was, he told me it was a whole lap and my reaction was, ‘What?’ He told me it was a sprint, a man’s race; he was trying to get me up for it.
“Being a straight-forward person, I thought I was going to speed through that thing — I killed it the first 200, but when it got to 210 I died. He taught me how to pace myself and I actually got really good at the 400, I won state and went to the Junior Olympics. And I did all the other sprints and relays.”
Like Baker, though, he initially enrolled elsewhere. After being recruited by schools including Georgia and Tennessee to compete in just track, he began his collegiate career at Lenior-Rhyne in North Carolina in 2007. “Growing up, a lot of people have those big dreams about where they want to go and what they want to play but I didn’t; I didn’t grow up playing sports, everything was so new to me that at the time I really didn’t know what I wanted to do,” said Graphenreed. “Then it kind of hit me that I had a love for both. I don’t like when people tell me no or that I can’t do something. I wanted to do both, and felt that I could excel at both so I picked the place that was going to give me that opportunity.”
Graphenreed competed in both sports for the Bears, but word of the Jags’ fledgling program led him into investigating a return to Mobile.
“It was a good school — especially for my major at the time, which was biomedical then — and I was in all advanced classes, and being a dual-sport student-athlete was tough. The class sizes were smaller, but I just didn’t like the area I was in and my mom was sick so I left,” Graphenreed said. “I used to live in Mobile, everyone was telling me about the new team, so I thought I would try my luck here. I called down and was told to send a DVD, which I did, and they asked when I could get down here. I came down the next day and signed.”
For Baker, experiencing success in both football and track is nothing new. Since he started competing — Baker began playing football in sixth grade, and throwing the following year — his performance at the prep level led to him earning national accolades throughout his high-school career. In addition to be chosen a High School All-American by both SuperPrep and PrepStar magazines, he was a two-time champion in the shot put at the state 4A meet.
“When I first started with both it came very easily, I picked up on it and tried to get better every day,” Baker recalled. “And I had great coaches that taught me good techniques and ways that I could improve myself and reach the potential that I showed.
“I had a coach in junior high school who said that he could coach me up, that I looked like I should be out there throwing the shot put and the discus. We didn’t have a track team and he wanted to start something up and run with it, so he trained me individually and I made the championships that year so it wound up being a good thing.”
Baker too received attention from high-profile schools in the recruiting process at Orange Park High School, including from those in both the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences. “It started with track, actually,” he remembered. “Miami [Fla.] wanted me to come down there on a full scholarship, and once they knew I played football and watched some film they offered me a scholarship. Most other schools in the SEC recruited me as a football player, but knew I competed in track as well and could benefit them in both sports.”
After settling on UGA — “I chose Georgia because it was close to home and not too far away; I wanted to stay in the south, but Florida — which was another offer I had — was too close,” Baker stated — he was practicing with the football team and planning on participating in track in the spring, but an off-the-field incident led to him looking for a program to transfer to. After weighing the options of either enrolling at Tennessee State and playing immediately or Arkansas, where he would have to sit out a year, Baker wound up in Mobile.
Not only have both the South Alabama football and track programs benefitted from the performance of the duo, but both have found the experience competing in both to be rewarding personally.
What has Baker enjoyed most? “Coming out and doing great in both sports, helping the team win games and going out on the track and breaking school records,” he responded.
For Graphenreed, who was in school during the 2008-09 academic year when the Jaguars only worked out in the fall while other schools played and practiced, the experience of helping USA football grow from day one resonates most.
“Being a part of this program. Being blessed with the opportunity to be a part of something that was never here, to build it from the ground up,” he said he is most thankful for. “And then, coming into another program and making an impact too, to just make a mark. I get hit with that ever single day; when I wake up I may not want to do it, but then I think that I am a part of something that is way bigger than myself.”
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
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