New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
A day in the life of two VoTech student-athletes
HAMDEN — They are students and they are athletes. They also are carpenters, plumbers, car mechanics and hairdressers in training.
For the past few years, we have discussed and — at times — argued here about exactly what division level the Connecticut tech schools belong competitively with other high schools in state tournament play.
It is a genuine issue. It also is not one we’ll be arguing in this space today.
Instead, GameTimeCT senior producer Pete Paguaga and I will walk through the halls of Eli Whitney Tech, down the street from Southern Connecticut, and pop into some of the fascinating spaces for career training ...
The spacious garage with a number of vehicles. The carpentry workshop. The class where plumbing theory was being taught. That one can be a drain. Sorry, a little tech joke. The kitchen areas. The health tech area with beds and mannequins.
We will meet sophomore Valerie Garcia and junior Qayvier Johnson, or as he is known at Eli Whitney, Big Q or Q1.
Amid our Hearst Connecticut and GameTimeCT planning calls, we’ve periodically speculated about the school experience of tech kids versus the more traditional high schools. While soliciting story ideas for spring from the state’s athletic directors, we hit on a happy coincidence. Whitney Tech AD Eva Esposito asked if we’d like to come out and see the students in specific trade settings and feature two spring athletes.
Done.
I did not necessarily expect to watch Valerie Garcia — only a few hours before pitching in the softball opener at home against Kaynor Tech — visiting a “patient” and doing hand and wrist exercises with the mannequin.
Or Big Q baking away underneath a big chef ’s hat a few hours before taking to the outfield in a baseball opener at Kaynor Tech in Waterbury.
“My grandma was a fighter with cancer,” Valerie said of the late Maria Cecilia Ramirez. “That inspired me and drove me toward the health tech field. The
shops, the trades, everything I heard about the school kind of influenced me toward coming to Eli Whitney.”
The Connecticut Technical Education and Career System operates 17 diploma-granting high schools, one technical education career and two aviation maintenance programs from one end of the state to the other. There are 12 career clusters in 31 occupations. There are more than 11,000 students at tech schools. If you examine the CIAC student enrollment figures, you’ll find declining numbers in recent years. The tech school numbers are an exception.
“I enjoy it a lot,” Valerie said. “Mostly we do a lot of theory work (in health tech), but when we do come out and learn skills it is a fun opportunity to work sometimes as a team and sometimes individually.
“We’ve learned so much. We have gotten certifications. We learned how to deal with patients with dementia. Obviously, right now we’re working with mannequins, but eventually we will go out and do clinical.”
There are 91 days spent in shop and 91 days in academic classes. Eli Whitney is currently in its alternating two-week shop cycle. There are generally around 20 students per class in an individual trade focus. On a day like Monday, Garcia explained she’d be in shop until 12:10 p.m. and then have math and English. During the academic cycle, she’d be in her traditional subjects with all the school’s other students.
As a freshman you are allowed into an exploratory program before choosing one trade as a sophomore.
“I want to be a registered nurse in oncology,” Garcia said. “One of my main goals is to work at Yale
New Haven Hospital.”
Garcia and Johnson are members of the newly formed Athletic Leadership Club.
“I came to Eli Whitney because I thought it would be a better opportunity to advance in everyday skills,” Johnson said. “I went into culinary to advance my cooking skills for everyday use. I plan to go to college, get my bachelor’s degree and then potentially open a restaurant or bakery.”
In interviewing tech school students at different schools, one thing that strikes you is their focus. There are various business partners out in the community and 11th- and 12thgraders are eligible for Work Based Learning for hands-on experience during the school day where they get course credit and get paid. On this day, a number of plumbing students were off campus.
One thing that jumps out at you in the trade classes is the kids are doing. There is a beehive of activity. Teaching and learning obviously is a two-way street, but I think we can agree that students in traditional high school classrooms are not always, ah, fully engaged As a sports writer who has unsuccessfully chased writing the perfect sentence for 45 years, I counted at least six trade classes Monday I wished I had taken somewhere along the line.
While my wife has never once asked me to quote Chaucer, she has many times asked me to fix the toilet or do something with the circuit breaker. My response is invariably a blank look.
As parents we’re also among the millions who have looked at astronomical college education tuitions and costs. Despite society’s pressures, not every noble occupational pursuit needs a college degree. I’ve heard stories of kids going to tech schools from masonry, carpentry, plumbing, heading to community college for business for a couple years and doing incredibly well at a young age.
There is nothing at the tech schools that prevent kids from going on and excelling at college in nursing, criminal justice, bioscience and environmental technology. Often with less costly pathways, much better focus and multiple certifications in hand. I’m not preaching. I’m just saying.
Parents and kids obviously attack academics and athletics from various angles. Some remain in their school district. Some choose private and prep schools on the strength of their specific sports programs, hunting for college scholarships. Some participate in sports outside the high school system.
“We have some different days with trade schedules that could affect how we play,” Garcia said. “It’s mostly normal. Obviously, we usually play against other technical high schools. I have a lot of friends in public high schools and we’d like to play against each other and there are times we can’t. I compare my schedule with my friends’ schedule, that’s fun. Most of my friends are very competitive. I am very competitive.”
Eli Whitney does play Wilbur Cross this spring.
Garcia, who attended Fairhaven Middle School and lives in the Wilbur Cross district, has been pitching for only three weeks. She played volleyball and street basketball in her youth. She decided on serving as volleyball manager as a freshman and sophomore and this year managed the girls basketball team.
“I’ve always had a passion for sports,” Garcia said. “When the opportunity got thrown my way as a pitcher, I went for it.
There’s pitchers-catchers conditioning and even though I had no experience my coach told me to try it.”
Johnson, meanwhile, has played sports since he was 8. He is the starting center on the basketball team. He plays right field while his younger brother Qeanu, also on the basketball team, plays left field.
Q1 says football is his favorite sport. Eli Whitney does not have a football team. Some tech schools do, while many are part of co-op programs involving tech and non-tech schools. Co-ops have become a larger piece of CIAC sports and are only growing — another reason for parents with athletes to look at the local technical schools.
Baseball in city schools, especially among young African American students, is not a study of success in the late 20th century and early 21st century. I could go on for hours on this subject. Let’s leave it at this: to see the starting center in basketball also playing outfield for the high school team makes me smile.
“I started playing baseball when I was 11, fell off and decided not to play for a bit, but in high school decided to play again,” said Johnson, also from New Haven. “I find there are a lot of people interested, but you’ve got to look in the right place.”
And basketball? “Everyone loves basketball,” Johnson said.
In the baseball dugout he counts future plumbers, automotive specialists, health technicians, carpenters. And, of course, Q2, who is also in culinary.
How are Qeanu’s cooking skills compared to yours?
“I’d say he’s got a little bit of work to do. He is improving,” Qayvier said. “I can make a mean cupcake and pie.”
Not only that: Big Q hits the cutoff man.