Representing the community

Published 11:27 am Saturday, July 19, 2014

While Minneapolis was playing host to the last MLB All-Star Game of Derek Jeter’s storied career, there was another last All-Star game going on recently a little closer to home, in Lynchburg.

At Liberty University Stadium this past Friday, Chris Lawrence and Terry Warren II suited up for the last time as high school athletes to play in the Virginia High School Coach’s Association All-Star Football Game.

Going forward, that pair, one from Southampton High School, Lawrence, and the other from Franklin High School, Warren, will now be considered college athletes, as the next time they lace up their cleats and put on pads, it’ll be for their respective universities.

Lawrence used high school football as an opportunity to get an education at North Carolina Wesleyan, while Warren did the same in respect to St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh.

But back to that moment, while they looked to it as fun, they also recognized the significance of the honor of being considered amongst the best Virginia has to offer in their respective high school divisions. In that, being two of only a few selected to represent the East side, they wore their programs, their families and their friends on their sleeves. And even more, they represented Western Tidewater.

Both of their coaches, Willie Gillus of SHS and Darren Parker Jr. of FHS, said beforehand and afterward that they couldn’t have picked better athletes to represent the community.

Each coach also had good things to say about the players.

And the coaches also said that the mentors picked to run the East team program had great things to say about how much of a pleasure it was to work with each of their students.

To top it all off, both of them were great in the classroom as well. Warren and Lawrence both graduated from their programs with honors back in June.

As their coaches have said, hopefully more kids looking to become student athletes will try to follow in their footsteps.