But if you want to see a much bigger picture, you need to follow two of the Golden Eagles players — senior team captain and standout middle linebacker Zac Rogal and junior wide receiver and safety Trey Schwieterman — every week as they leave behind Friday night’s lights and spend Sunday afternoon at The Gospel Mission on Burns Avenue near downtown Dayton.
That’s where a bunch of young kids are waiting for them. And if you’re looking for some tough times, you can find them there.
“If you heard some of the kids talk, you’d hear stuff you wish you didn’t have to ... about drugs, condoms, abuse, rape, suicide, murder, prison, you name it,” said Andy Leakas, the youth director at The Gospel Mission. “I could tell you stories that would make you start crying.”
The Gospel Mission — with its daily chapel services, adult classes and activities, regular meals and various youth programs — is an oasis and Zac and Trey are two star attractions.
Yet, for the two football players — and Harry Kennedy, a sophomore junior varsity player from Northmont, who also helps out there — personal resumes and team records hold little sway at The Gospel Mission.
The only thing that matters there is how they give of themselves each Sunday afternoon, whether it’s in sharing a meal, a conversation and a few minutes of Bible study with the kids or in going all out in a game of touch football or dodgeball in the gym.
“When Zac and Trey walk in, the kids run and hug them,” Leakas said. “A lot of them don’t have any structure in their lives. They don’t get any real affection or attention and here’s someone willing to give it to them. The kids love it.”
But rather than take his word, listen to Justin Wolfe, a fifth-grader at nearby Emerson Academy, who said his dad was scheduled to be released from prison today:
“Zac and Trey ... they’re just awesome.”
A special team forms
Two summers ago, Zac was coaxed into taking a mission trip to central Mexico.
His mom, Tina, and his older sister, Kristen — through connections with their Southbrook Church in Centerville — had gone the year before and this time they’d talked him into coming, too.
“Even when I got off the plane I was draggin’ and really didn’t want to be there,” Zac admitted. “But it ended up being the single most influential moment in my life.
“It was wild, crazy. Suddenly, I was out of Bellbrook — and the little bubble where everything is perfect — and I was going to three different orphanages and seeing poverty and need and feeling I just wanted to help.”
That feeling stayed with him when he returned home and that led him to Leakas, who had travelled with Tina to Mexico that first year and whose work at The Gospel Mission was an inspiration to the entire Rogal family.
Leakas, whose grandfather ran Leakas Furriers on Ludlow Street, once had a title insurance company.
“But I came downtown here and met this boy who had no mom or dad — both had passed away, one was shot I think — and he was caring for his four siblings by himself,” Leakas said. “They had nothing and here I was living in the suburbs with everything I dreamed of. It kept haunting me and I knew I had to do something.”
What he did was mind boggling, said Tina’s husband Mark, the defensive coordinator of the Bellbrook High football team and now a volunteer himself at The Gospel Mission:
“Andy gave up everything to work here. The guy is a saint.”
Leakas sold his stocks, convinced some 20 friends to chip in from $25 to $300 a month and set up an account from which he draws a meager weekly salary — less than $400 — to work 60-plus hours a week with the children.
He was in dire need of help on Sunday afternoons and for more than a year now, the Rogal family has been showing up. Soon Trey — who had done some inner-city mission work in Memphis, Tenn., through his church — was joining them.
The pair — still huffing from the grueling goal line-to-goal line wind sprints that had ended Bellbrook’s drills — plopped down on two old tractor tires near the practice field the other day and talked about Sundays in the inner city.
“The thing that really surprises me is how I look forward to it,” said Zac, whose football exploits — he’s the area’s third-leading tackler — have him being recruited by the likes of Harvard, Dartmouth, Holy Cross and the University of Dayton.
Trey feels the same: “Every Sunday I keep waiting for the text message from Zac telling me they’re on the way to pick me up. I love it and I think we get as much out of it as the kids do.”
Mark agreed: “For us, struggling through an 0-4 season is tough and you might be hating life, but the second you walk in there on a Sunday afternoon and one of the kids comes up and hugs you, you forget all about the season you’re having.
“It gives you some real perspective, some real appreciation. That’s the wonderful thing here.”
Showing another way
No sooner had Zac and Trey walked into The Gospel Mission last Sunday than they were all but engulfed by George Martin, a seventh-grader at Rosa Parks Elementary.
He was wearing the No. 54 jersey he wears for his youth league football team. Sometimes he also sports the wrist band that holds his game day plays and, once in a while, he shows up with his helmet, too. Like Zac, he plays offensive line as well as linebacker for his team.
The other day after school Tina even went to see one of George’s games. She videotaped it for the rest to see, but Mark and Zac got the first-person report from George, who called them afterward with the details.
George’s dad, George Sr., a Dunbar High basketball player in the 1970s, said he was homeless just before his son was born and remembers the help he got at The Gospel Mission. That’s why he brings his son there now.
Alfonso Torres’ mom wants her 10-year-old son there because he was hanging around the streets with a kid who was bad news and was getting into trouble, Andy said:
“Now he’s back here around some good influences and he has a great attitude again.”
Trey understands the role he and Zac can play: “Maybe at their school or on the street some of the kids feel they have to act wrong to get respect. But I think we can show them another way.”
After Zac and Trey took part in a 10-minute discussion with the kids on Proverbs 6:16-19 — The Seven Things God Hates — they joined Mark for a spirited game of three-on-four touch football with the kids. As he watched, Andy explained what you were seeing:
“I think you have a case of a mom and dad (Tina and Mark) who just love their children and want to show them that it’s not all about yourself all the time. It’s about other people and investing in their lives, too. It’s about caring about more than just your own small world.”
It’s about more than just a Friday night scoreboard.
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