Pat Rooney
While watching Tim Jefferson step seamlessly into the role of the Air Force Academy’s starting quarterback as a freshman in 2008, it was easy to believe the young kid from Atlanta was a master at making smooth transitions.
Yet less than a year earlier, Jefferson was wondering just how deeply he had gotten in over his head.
Like many athletes at the academy, particularly those on the football team, Jefferson received his first taste of military life by spending a year at the academy’s prep school. Football-wise, the timing was perfect for Jefferson, who was able to focus on hitting the books and the weight room during the fall of 2007 while four-year starting quarterback Shaun Carney completed his AFA career.
Yet timing aside, the young man who would soon calmly stare into the face of Mountain West Conference defenses wasn’t nearly as confident about handling the rugged mix of discipline, academics and isolation forced upon the cadets who filter through the prep school.
“It’s easy to get unmotivated pretty quickly there,” Jefferson said. “The first couple days of basic training I was constantly asking myself, ‘Why am I doing the whole military route?’ Even into the school year, I would wake up some mornings at 5:30 and sit up in bed and think how much better life could be going to a regular school.
“But I definitely don’t regret it now. It’s opened up so many possibilities for me. You can’t beat what the reputation of being an academy graduate gives you. I don’t see how I can ever regret it in the future.”
Typically, the prep school is used as a means for incoming cadets to get their grades and academic standing in line before diving headlong into the full grind of academy life. In the case of football players, many of whom are recruited out of a talent pool that often is a notch below what the Falcons’ conference rivals feed from, that year also provides a means of getting bigger and stronger.
Ultimately, it is not too dissimilar to a redshirt season at a traditional institution, even though prep school athletes are unable to participate in official team workouts.
“For the military, I’m sure if they get through the prep school, it will make a more seamless transition into the academy,” AFA hockey coach Frank Serratore said. “If you’re not keen on the prep school, you’re probably not going to get through the academy.
“For athletics, for teams to succeed here you need to be deep, and you need to be old. The prep school helps our sports bring in athletes and get them ready for the competition. We don’t get a lot of quick-fixes here. We need to get them bigger, and we need to get them stronger. The teams I’ve had that have been good, we’ve been deep and we’ve been older.”
Serratore’s bunch, however, is one program that makes minimal use of the prep school program. Because hockey players have an opportunity to play at the junior level before beginning their college careers, those who need extra academic footing often remain at that level while taking the requisite courses at nearby community colleges.
One recent exception is forward Sean Bertsch, a senior from Woodland Park. While Bertsch was able to get his grades in order during his year at the prep school, his game suffered, as finding ice time became as much a challenge as anything the academy was throwing at him.
“I tried to stay in shape, but it was hard because I wasn’t on the ice much,” Bertsch said. “When I joined the team I was rusty. It probably was until Christmas before I felt like I was with it.”
Yet without the prep school to help prepare them, players like Bertsch and Jefferson wouldn’t even be donning the blue and silver. A chance to get them accustomed to the life they are about to enter into at AFA, the prep school has taken these players, and many more, and began the molding process, shaping them into both cadets and student-athletes.