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Back row, from left: Mouhamed Dioubate Tarique Foster Miles Rose Connor Dubsky Alberto Cantalini. Front: Sophia Fontaine Genevive Wedemeyer Jada Mills.
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Miles Rose took the microphone and thanked, looked to his peers sitting throughout Putnam Science Academy’s auditorium, and delivered a message.
“I want to say, ‘congrats’ to everyone else who is committing,” he said. “I know how much I had to sacrifice to get here. I know how hard you had to work.”
Rose was one of eight PSA student-athletes whose years of time and hard work paid off Wednesday when they signed their National Letters of Intent, making official their earlier commitments to colleges next school year.
Joining Rose, a member of the Prep basketball team who is headed to St. Bonaventure University, are his teammates Mouhamed Dioubate (University of Alabama), Connor Dubsky (University of Rhode Island), and Tarique Foster (Virginia Commonwealth University); girls basketball players Sophia Fontaine (Stetson University), Jada Mills (James Madison University), and Genevive Wedemeyer (University of Alabama-Birmingham); and baseball player Alberto Cantalini (Southern New Hampshire University).
Dioubate and Dubsky both drew laughs, first Dioubate for thanking “myself for staying focused and heading off every distraction I had,” then Dubsky for thanking his girlfriend – “I had to, she’s the one,” he said. Foster thanked a teacher at his former high school in the Bronx, N.Y., for teaching him many life lessons, including the advice to stay true to himself. “I’m quiet, but when you get to know me, I’m a really good person,” Foster said.
Fontaine thanked her parents, first her dad for “putting me first and going above and beyond for me when he didn’t need to,” then added “I appreciate my mom for making the effort to come to some of my games and pushing through her own struggles and still finding a way to support me.”
Mills thanked her coach and NY Gauchos AAU program “for taking me in seventh grade and allowing me to showcase my talent at a high level, and for being the reason I got to network and meet girls chasing the same goal as me, and building some everlasting bonds.”
Wedemeyer paused to collect herself as she thanked her coaches from the Natural Basketball Academy in Hamburg, Germany, where she grew up for “helping me develop the skills I have today because before that, I didn’t have any.”
Cantalini, PSA’s first baseball player to commit and sign his LOI, thanked his family, including “my dad, too, who got my involved in baseball but he’s not here now. Everything has been for him, all the hard work. It’s all for him.”
Cantalini’s teammate Enger Paulino recently committed to Assumption University but did not sign his letter Wednesday. Likewise, men’s basketball player Blake Barkley a Northwestern University-commit, did not sign his letter. Both intend to do so at a later date, however.
According to statistics, roughly 2 percent of high school athletes receive college scholarships and play at the next level, regardless of whether it’s Division I all the way down to NAIA.
“I don’t want anyone to take this day for granted,” PSA Athletic Director and prep basketball coach Tom Espinosa said later. “There is a lot of hard work and sacrifice that goes into this. It’s the kids, it’s the parents, it’s the coaches. And only 2 percent ever get to do what these kids did today. It’s a testament to them and to their discipline, and they should be proud. They worked hard for this. And now the work continues to thrive at that next level.”
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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