Trio
Inderkum High School football stars C.J. Spencer, Jordan Thomas and Tyler Dean signed full-ride football scholarships to four-year universities Wednesday, further cementing the Tiger program’s reputation for gridiron excellence and academic achievement.
Twenty-one Tiger football players have signed college scholarships since 2008 and another, junior N.J. Falo, has verbally committed to the University of Colorado. Only four of the former Tigers later left school or transferred elsewhere, records show.
Wednesday marked National Signing Day, when prep football stars throughout the United States climaxed four years of gridiron battles by committing to college scholarships. Spencer will attend UC Davis; Thomas, Arizona State University; and Dean, Southern Oregon University.
Announcing the signings during a noontime ceremony at Inderkum, football Coach Terry Stark applauded their grade point averages as well: Spencer, 3.7; Dean, 3.2; and Jordan, 3.0.
Stark was as pleased about his players’ grades as he was about their athletic prowess. “There are a lot of schools across the country, not only in Sacramento, where you have great athletes – you read about them all the time in the paper – but when it gets time for them to go to school, they can get into a community college but not a university because they haven’t done their work in the classroom .”
“I’m super proud of them,” Stark said of Spencer, Dean and Jordan. “To be good enough as a student-athlete, to have the grades – that’s awesome.”
A fourth Tiger athlete was feted at the ceremony as well – Hailey Maxwell, who has a 3.3 gpa and signed a UC Riverside scholarship to play soccer. “It feels really good because it shows that all the work I put in the past couple years finally paid off,” she said, grinning.
Spencer, Dean and Thomas were quick to applaud the Tiger football program, in general, and its coaches – particularly Stark, Tod Hamasaki and Terrance Leonard -- on a special day that the teens characterized in different ways as a dream come true.
“It feels amazing,” Dean said. “I’m just honestly blessed to have this opportunity.”
Added Thomas: “It’s always been a childhood dream to go to a Division 1 school and be a Division 1 athlete, so it’s a great feeling.”
Spencer described Inderkum’s football team as a “second family” in which the countless hours of weightlifting, conditioning and team drills are well worth the trouble. “You lift, you get stronger, you don’t only grow as a football player, you grow as a person.”
Stark said his program is firmly committed to academics and consistently monitors football players’ progress – making sure they’re keeping their grades up, perhaps retaking classes or attending summer school, if necessary.
“We work really hard at the day-to-day and hour-to-hour effort that it takes to get on the field, and to have success on the field, and to have success in the classroom,” he said. “All that extra stuff is important and (the kids) know that we care – and we do.”
Principal Heather Garcia said the Tiger football coaches stress that “you have to be focused on academics, you can’t play around, you can’t wait, you can’t be ineligible – and that’s going to carry on as a life skill.”
“They understand that they will graduate as college and career ready,” Garcia said of student-athletes. “They have the goal of going to college and they see the school as a partner to help them get there.”
Athletic Director Matt Hinton said the football coaches are second to none in work habits and time spent on the job. “They’ve created a culture that the weight room is important, your grades are important, your ability to be at practice and want to learn is important. Isn’t that what teaching is all about?”
