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USA junior football team provides boost during dreary summer, Terry Pluto says
by Terry Pluto, Plain Dealer Columnist
Tuesday June 30, 2009
NORTH CANTON -- There are seasons when Northeast Ohio sports fans need a story like this . . .
Maybe a summer when the Cavaliers were upset in the Eastern Conference Finals, when the Indians are in last place and when a .500 season for the Browns could inspire a parade down Euclid Avenue.
Perhaps time to hear about some young men playing football for all the right reasons.
Time to hear about Ohio kids heading to major colleges on football scholarships, and all of the Northern Ohio players have at least a 3.0 grade-point average. Maybe it's time to hear about Team USA, which faces Mexico tonight at 7 at Canton's Fawcett Stadium in the semifinals of the IFAF Junior World Championship.
A man with 10 state titles to his credit at St. Ignatius, Kyle found himself recruiting college coaches to allow some of their incoming freshmen to join the USA team. Kyle is too classy to mention the coaches who wanted to keep a firm grip on their recruits, but some big names from major powers did just that.
Instead, Kyle praised Ohio State's Jim Tressel.
"One phone call to him and we had two outstanding players," said Kyle, whose team is staying at Walsh University, along with the other seven teams.
Kyle was talking about Jack Mewhort and Storm Klein.
An offensive lineman from Toledo St. John's, Mewhort had a 3.4 grade-point average. He graduated in January and enrolled immediately at OSU. Klein is a linebacker from Licking Valley High. He had a 3.0 GPA and also graduated in January, then headed to Columbus.
Kyle said some players needed to spend the summer taking courses to help them start college on a solid academic ground, so it made no sense for them to play on this team. He also said the coaching staff also wanted to make sure the roster had young men who really do represent the best about high school football. No one figured out the team GPA, but a safe guess is that it's over 3.0.
None of Kyle's players were named first team high school All-Americans by USA Today. But there are nine players headed to the Big Ten, including Walsh Jesuit's Smith who is ticketed for Northwestern. In fact, Michigan State, Indiana, Northwestern and OSU each have two players on the team, the other player being from Wisconsin.
Syracuse supplied three players. Two each came from Oregon State, Baylor, Virginia Tech and Virginia. Then there's Kurt Stottlemyer, a safety headed to Yale who was named Seattle's top scholar athlete.
"We wanted great players with character," said Kyle. "And we got them."
USA junior football team provides boost during dreary summer, Terry Pluto says - cleveland.com
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