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thedrifter
03-11-07, 07:42 AM
Meeting challenge on, off court
AFA players understand the tough path, but cherish the opportunity
By Robert Sanchez
Denver Post Staff Writer
Denver Post
Article Last Updated:

Air Force Academy - Don't talk about war. Not on the phone, not at home. And definitely not with Mom.

Never with Mom.

The players learned that lesson long ago, when they came from California, Texas and Florida to play big-time, Division I college basketball at the United States Air Force Academy.

Moms cry. They always do.

Today, the academy team has a chance to do something unprecedented in the history of Falcons men's basketball. Despite a late-season swoon, Air Force (23- could get a berth in the NCAA Tournament for the third time in four seasons.

But for that privilege, for these young men who were recruiting afterthoughts for most Division I programs, there is a catch.

There's always a catch.

"If I'm asked to die for my country, I'll proudly do it," says 22-year-old senior forward Jacob Burtschi, who will become a second lieutenant upon his graduation this spring. "I don't tell my Mom that, though.

"I don't want to see Mom cry."

Giving academy thanks

Standing in his dorm room, dressed in a pressed camouflage shirt and pants with black boots that shine like hot molasses, senior starting guard Matt McCraw gives thanks for the academy because it offered him a chance to play the game he loves.

Still, as he runs a hand over his letter-perfect bed - with the first fold in the top sheet exactly 12 inches from the tip of his twin mattress - he sometimes can't believe he chose this path.

"If I had gone to a psychic in high school and she told me I'd be graduating from the Air Force Academy, and that I'd become a commissioned officer in the Air Force, I would have thrown that crystal ball away," says McCraw, 22, who will head to Santa Barbara, Calif., this summer to study space and missiles.

"But look where I am now."

Most of the players say that.

They expected to play basketball somewhere, but their talents were more suited for Division II ball, or the Ivy League, where several of them had offers.

Still, in their minds, they imagined sinking the game-winning shot in front of thousands of screaming fans on national television. They imagined they could someday have their own sliver of March Madness.

But they never imagined the opportunity would come on a hillside in Colorado, where the iron gates around the campus are as much about keeping people in as they are about keeping others out.

"One of the most common sayings around is that this is a great place to be from, but not be at," says Eric Kenzik, a 22-year-old junior from Florida who wants to fly Air Force transport planes or bombers upon his graduation next year - a decision his parents support.

"It's one of those things where you can't explain it if you're in it, and you can't understand it unless you're part of it," senior center Nick Welch says. "Survive this, and then you'll know."

It's hard to call the academy a college because it is unlike any collegiate experience.

You're told when to wake up, when to eat, when to go to class, when to study and when to go to bed.

Academy life means basic training before you step inside a classroom. It means being told your zipper has been pulled too low on your military issued jacket. It means averaging 18 credit hours a semester when a five-year player at another college might take only 24 an entire year. It means calculus and aerodynamics classes even though you're an English major who has no interest in calculus or aerodynamics. It means eating with 4,000 other cadets at the same time every day while your buddy at the University of Utah grabs a Big Mac at midnight.

But for the players who took the challenge, for them, it means the opportunity to become a better person.

"Every day of my life here, I'm being challenged to be better than I was the day before," Welch says. "By going through this, I'm developing into a leader."

At most college programs, basketball is the most rigorous and scheduled part of an athlete's life. At the academy, it's just another thing to add to the pile.

"Sometimes I'll see the look on their faces that says, 'I was up until 5 a.m. studying, I've got practice and exams and someone chewed me out this morning,"' coach Jeff Bzdelik says. "I know then that I should ease my foot off the gas."

When he first arrived at the academy, Grant Parker, a 19-year-old freshman forward from Cherry Creek High School, spent hours memorizing nearly 100 names, hometowns, majors and graduation years of upperclassmen in his squadron. The information is used every day for proper morning greetings.

Miss a middle initial, pause too long when giving a hometown, and it's on the ground for push-ups.

"The upperclassmen do them with you, because it's all about responsibility and not letting things get out of hand," Parker says. "But I bet those guys can do 1,000 push-ups at a time, no problem. I've never been pushed this hard in my entire life."

War in Iraq part of equation

In the post-9/11 world, discussions among academy coaches and recruits' parents are as much about terrorism threat levels and war as they are about sports and playing time.

With each scholarship - every cadet has a full ride - comes a minimum five-year commitment to serve as an officer in the Air Force.

Hundreds of former cadets are deployed in Iraq; at least three played basketball for the Falcons within the past five years.

"I'll sit down with families, and that's one of the first questions they ask," says Bzdelik, a former Nuggets coach who once served in the National Guard. "They want to know if their son is going to Iraq."

There is no set answer. While the Air Force often is a support system for ground troops, there are no guarantees that young academy graduates will be out of harm's way. But that doesn't stop the worrying when that big envelope emblazoned with "Air Force Academy" lands in some unsuspecting high school hoopster's mailbox.

"My mom was like, 'No way,"' McCraw says.

"My mom wasn't so sure at first," Burtschi says. "She didn't want her son going to war."

Fifteen of the 16 players on this year's team signed up for the academy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which meant lots of soul-searching and long conversations with parents conflicted between wanting the best for their son and the chance that battlefields in the Middle East could take their boys away - maybe forever.

"The feeling at first was that I knew if my son went to a military college, then afterward he was going right to Iraq," says Donna McCraw, who encouraged her son to look at other colleges before he committed to the academy. "Now, I just don't think about that. I can't think about that."

McCraw's parents, who live in Southern California, have deep pride in their son's decision, even if they don't completely understand it.

"Sometimes I think (about a military commitment) and my heart just breaks for him," Ron McCraw says. "But you have to let your boy grow up.

"You've got to let go sometime."

Team brings pride to military

The e-mails for the basketball team come from bases worldwide. First from the Air Force, then the Army, the Navy and the Marines.

I don't know you - most begin - but thank you for bringing pride to the military.

"Eric told me about the messages, and how this team was helping people," Eric Kenzik's mother, Mary Lou Kenzik, says. "He told me how it might make people's jobs a little easier. I was so proud."

In the 1980s, Air Force teams won only 34 of 160 conference games. A decade later, Falcons teams failed to win more than three conference games in eight of 10 years. From 1970 to 2000, only four teams posted overall winning records.

And now the Falcons are on the cusp of history.

But these days, thoughts are gravitating toward graduation. Six seniors will be gone this summer - none to Iraq, yet - and most will study military contracts or computer programming or space technology at bases in the United States and around the world.

Kenzik, a junior, will soon learn if he has been selected for pilot training.

"You come here to play, but you realize that there are so many other important things in life," he says. "I wouldn't have said that four years ago."

The players have seen the black granite memorial on campus, with the names of former cadets who died in combat etched in the stone.

Kenzik's hero, Capt. Lance P. Sijan, is on there. A former academy football player turned pilot, Sijan was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor after being captured and tortured by North Vietnamese soldiers.

A handful of names recently have been added to the memorial, young cadets who graduated only a few years ago.

The men on the team downplay the memorial, but not the sacrifice needed to get a name on it. None believes they will ever be in danger. And their mothers hope their sons are right.

"You just put the good with the bad, and somehow you know it's all going to turn out all right," Kenzik's mother says. "These guys get a great education, and they get to play ball. But they certainly pay it back.

"I just hope the taxpayers know they're getting their money's worth."

Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-954-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.

Ellie