HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL SENSATION
All the right moves
Decision at age 12 to move in with father has paid dividends as N. Babylon’s Gwaltney shatters LI records
BY MICHAEL DOBIE
STAFF WRITER
October 8, 2004
Jason Gwaltney makes dozens of decisions every time he carries the football. Which hole to hit, which blocker to follow. Cut right or cut left. Put a move on a tackler or run him over.
Gwaltney, a senior running back at North Babylon High School, has made enough good decisions to shatter a host of Long Island records and land scholarship offers from the top college football programs in the nation. As he and his teammates prepare to host neighborhood rival West Babylon on Saturday, Gwaltney is on the cusp of two major milestones.
He needs to score one touchdown to reach 100 for his career; no Long Island or New York City high school player has done that. And with five games left in the regular season, he is 257 yards away from becoming Long Island's all-time leading rusher.
Former East Islip football coach Sal Ciampi, who graduated from Lawrence in 1962 and played college ball at Purdue with future NFL quarterback Bob Griese and against Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith, said the 6-foot, 233-pound Gwaltney is the best running back he's seen on Long Island (though Ciampi said he never saw NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown play at Manhasset).
"He's a man amongst boys," Ciampi said. "For his style of running, his power and his strength and his ability to break tackles, I have never seen anybody better."
New home, new start
But for all the good moves he has made with a ball tucked under his arm, Gwaltney was far from a football field when he made the most important decision of his life.
Five years ago, Gwaltney traded one home for another.
"I was 12 years old," Gwaltney said. "I didn't know that I was going to make the biggest decision of my life at 12 years old. Nobody could have told me that. I would have never knew that except now being 17 looking back, that was a big decision for a 12-year-old to make, let alone it was the best. decision I probably made or will make in my life."
Until he made his move, Gwaltney had been living in Bellport with his mother, Jeanine, and two other siblings.
"I was real energetic," Gwaltney said, "a regular kid who loved to have fun, got in my share of trouble, but nothing too bad."
When he entered middle school, Gwaltney said, he started getting bullied. Hot-tempered, he started fighting back.
"I was getting in trouble because I was the one getting caught fighting. It was a lot of crazy stuff," Gwaltney said. "I had to make the right decision, which was to get away from what I was doing."
Switch to North Babylon
Gwaltney decided he had to leave Bellport and move in with his father, Richard Berry, an auto mechanic and nightclub bouncer who lived in North Babylon.
"Things weren't panning out when he was living with his mother," Berry said. "He was getting out of control."
Berry agreed to take Gwaltney in April of 1999. Gwaltney, who wrote about his decision to leave Bellport on his college application essay, entered sixth grade at Robert Moses Middle School. The move did not produce an immediate turnaround.
"He was having a lot of problems," Berry said. "I would be at the school every day trying to sort out whatever was going on with him -- academics, getting along with the other kids in school and the teachers as well."
Life at his new home also was stormy at first: Gwaltney did not get along with half-brother Scooter Berry, who always has lived with Richard.
"You've got two siblings who haven't seen each other in 12 years," Gwaltney said. "I didn't want to be in that situation and I'm sure he didn't, because him being an only child... and me coming back out here."
A month after arriving in North Babylon, Gwaltney went back to Bellport. For a day. Then he returned, this time for good, and patched things up with Scooter. Now the two -- Scooter is a senior linebacker and fullback at North Babylon -- are inseparable.
Dazzling abilities for junior high
As Gwaltney careened through junior high, his football exploits were garnering a different sort of attention. It was obvious there was a prodigy in town.
Varsity coach Terry Manning pulled Gwaltney up to the ninth-grade team midway through Gwaltney's eighth-grade season and put him on the junior varsity when he got to high school. Manning, whose program is one of the strongest on Long Island with a storied history of standout running backs, told Gwaltney a promotion to varsity was contingent on his performance on the field and in the classroom. No absences, no trouble with teachers or classmates, no disciplinary actions.
Gwaltney did what Manning asked, scored six touchdowns in the first half of his first junior varsity game, and joined the big boys. His first varsity carry produced an 82-yard touchdown run. By season's end, he was the featured back.
It's been mostly a steady march forward, but there's been a lot of ground to cover. Gwaltney was on academic probation his first two years, Manning said, had a couple fights here and there, and was suspended for a game as a sophomore for violating team rules.
He still projects an air of extreme confidence. That doesn't bother Manning. "The better football players have a little attitude to them," the coach said.
Growing up off the field too
More importantly, Manning said, Gwaltney went from taking "two steps forward and five steps backward" as a freshman to "five steps forward and a half-step backward" as a senior.
Gwaltney improved his grades and is fully qualified academically to play as a college freshman. His attitude toward teachers and fellow students has improved. And he's worked hard to control his temper.
"Sometimes people they'll get me going and I'll get caught up in the moment," Gwaltney said. "If it was me in ninth grade then I'd be, like, I'm swinging or whatever the case may be. But now it's like I know I've got more at stake. I can't stoop down that low."
Manning is pleased with Gwaltney's progress.
"I didn't teach the kid to run, that's a God-given talent," Manning said. "The strides he's made and seeing him grow as a man and mature as a person, those are the things I'm most proud of."
Others outside North Babylon have noticed, too.
When East Islip played West Islip last month, Gwaltney approached Ciampi's son, East Islip coach Sal J. Ciampi, and said, "Good luck, coach," before entering the stands as a spectator.
"You can see he's matured," said Ciampi's father."He's become a class person ... I have a lot of respect for the young man."
A slew of colleges are recruiting Gwaltney. He will visit Southern Cal, Nebraska, Ohio State, Pittsburgh and West Virginia, to whom he gave a nonbinding verbal commitment last winter. Michigan State also is in the running. Virginia, Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee, Syracuse and Boston College offered scholarships.
Gwaltney remains a workaholic in practice and the weight room as he piles up numbers. His 99 touchdowns dwarf the previous Long Island record of 77 set by North Babylon alum Barry Baker (1995-98). The state record is 204, set last season by Michael Hart of upstate Onondaga Central. High School. Long Island's yardage record is 5,841 yards, held by Jerone Pettus who played for Freeport in 1996 and Roosevelt in 1997 and 1998.
Gwaltney likes records but would trade all of them for a Long Island championship. He was injured and missed the title game won by North Babylon two years ago. Gwaltney refused to buy one of the rings the team picked out to commemorate the victory. He didn't feel he had earned one. Getting that elusive title is his prime motivation.
"I want it real bad," Gwaltney said. "That's the most prolific goal, I would say, because it's not just one person. It's a team doing it, and it takes a team to get there."
That's a formula that's been working for Gwaltney, who made a big decision five years ago and never looked back.
