Recruit found his true calling on defensive line
FIU recruit Travonte O’Neal had virtually no experience playing football before enrolling at Vero Beach High. Initially, in the spring of his sophomore year, he tried receiver.
But that didn’t last. Randy Bethel, a former Miami Hurricanes standout and the Vero Beach defensive line coach since 2012, had a talk with his head coach, Lenny Jankowski, that spring.
“Let’s be honest with each other,” Bethel told Jankowski, who also calls the offensive plays. “He ain’t no wide receiver.”
Bethel was right. O’Neal, who was just 5-11 and 175 pounds as a freshman, moved to defense for his sophomore year and became a starter his junior and senior seasons.
Jankowski said O’Neal was not upset when he switched him from wide receiver to defensive end.
“If you ask him to hang onto the hood ornament of your car and ride around town for 30 minutes,”
Jankowski said, “he would do it if that were the best thing for the team.”
Last month, O’Neal signed with FIU, adding to Vero Beach’s impressive legacy of developing defensive line talent, a tradition that stretches back to former Hurricanes star Kenny Holmes, who became a first-round pick in 1997.
“[Bethel] is second to none as a D-line coach,” Jankowski said. “We’ve built a pipeline on the Dline.”
Bethel estimates he has helped send a dozen Dlinemen to college football in just the past six years, including his son Pat (Miami). Also on that list are Jahfari Harvey, who is a rising star at Miami; Keanu Koht, who signed with Alabama last month; David Reese, now listed as a linebacker for the Florida Gators; Grayson Long (Murray State); and Isaiah Byrd (Georgetown).
“I give it all to Coach ‘B’ [Bethel],” O’Neal said. “The way he transformed me is amazing. You can’t be anything without a good coach, and he’s a great coach.”
O’Neal, now a 6-3, 240pounder, fits right in with those ex-Vero Beach linemen, according to Bethel and Jankowski.
In 23 games over the past two years, O’Neal produced 95 tackles, 25 quarterback hurries and
7 1⁄ sacks.
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“He’s one of the toughest football players I’ve ever been around — mean as a rattlesnake,” Jankowski said. “But if I turned you loose on our campus, you wouldn’t find anybody to say a bad thing about him as a person.”
“Something flips when he gets on the field. He plays so stinking hard. You have to fight to get him off the field.”
O’Neal was ready for a fight on Dec. 4, when Vero Beach lost 10-7 to Miami Palmetto in a Class 8A regional final. Vero Beach trailed 10-0 after the first quarter before shutting down Palmetto’s offense.
But Vero Beach couldn’t handle five-star Palmetto defensive tackle Leonard Taylor, a Hurricanes signee.
True to his reputation for toughness, O’Neal volunteered to block Taylor, even though he has never played offensive line.
“He was working us, and I was frustrated,” O’Neal said of Taylor. “I told [Jankowski] to put me in at offensive guard.”
That never happened, but O’Neal showed yet again he was there for his team.
“If you’re going to get into a fight, Travonte is the one you want on your side,” Bethel said. “He brings intensity to practice. Even with a player as good as [Koht], Travonte will call him out in practice and say, ‘That was BS. That wasn’t good enough.’ ”
O’Neal is so fierce, Bethel said, that he played the final three games last season with a separated shoulder.
“He never missed a practice or a game,” Bethel said.
O’Neal, who wants to study forensics at FIU, is a hard worker — and not just on the football field or in the classroom. He also works five nights a week at Ocean Grill, one of the priciest restaurants in Vero Beach.
His biggest tip so far has been a whopper — $100 — but his real future is at FIU, where he hopes to develop for the NFL.
“My family is the reason why I keep playing football,” O’Neal said of his mother, stepfather and three sisters. “That’s why I want to be successful at football. I want to take care of my family.”