Quentin James '19 Recruiting Profile

Ever since I was young, I have dreamed about attending college on an athletic scholarship.  As a mathematically minded person, I have kept the statistical data for football, soccer and basketball on a vision board, pinned to my bedroom ceiling.  Every day for the past 7 years, I have been reminded how many athletes are fortunate enough to play basketball at high school, collegiate, and professional levels.  I also have posters and signs all over my room emphasizing the character, faith, work ethic, determination and leadership qualities required to accomplish my dreams.

I have been playing the game of football for the past five years. My parents wouldn't allow me to play until middle school. I gave up soccer to transition to high school football honing my knowledge, skills and football IQ to position myself to achieve my goal.  I am currently a junior at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Northern Virginia.  As a freshman I became the record holder for both passing and running quarterbacks in our school's history. I started on Varsity as a Corner Back my sophomore year and this year I started as a Wide Receiver, Corner Back and Kicker. Next year I plan to focus on fine tuning my skills as a Wide Receiver and Corner Back.  As a sophomore and junior, I was named 2nd Team All-Conference and next year, I hope to achieve 1^st Team recognition.  

What most people don’t know about me is that I started elementary school a year early.  Because I am academically gifted, my neighborhood school would not allow me to start kindergarten with my peers so I was advanced to first grade. I was smaller than most, but because youth athletic programs were split by grade, I played up for my first six years in organized sports.  Although I remained competitive and it pushed me to be smarter, faster and stronger athletically to keep up, I quietly struggled with feeling pressured to grow up too soon.  After I completed sixth grade and all of my friends moved on to middle school, my parents advocated for me to be moved to the gifted school in our area to repeat sixth grade and take back the year that I missed.

The Fairfax County school system did not support the decision, but were forced to honor their request after an appeal to the school board.  Although I was apprehensive at first, it was the best decision they could have made for me academically, socially and athletically.  The lessons learned through that experience were; 1) to become exceptional at anything you must get comfortable being uncomfortable; 2) you shouldn’t make big decisions based on what you want in the moment; 3) you MUST have a clear vision that keeps you focused beyond tomorrow; and 4) my parents told me that despite the naysayers, the outcome of this and all experiences in life will be determined by my ability to keep an open mind and my attitude towards growth and change. To this day, those lessons have served me well.

I believe that my greatest assets as a player are my work ethic, football I.Q., vision, raw athleticism, leadership qualities and the fact that I am teachable. I have learned good time management skills to be able to maintain a 3.6 GPA while pursuing my athletic endeavors, but what I am most proud of, which won’t appear on a transcript or on the field is that I am a respectful, trustworthy, and caring person.  Given the opportunity, I am confident that I would be an asset to any college program as a student-athlete and collegiate citizen.