All this created a perfect atmosphere for learning—for all of us. Because of my homeschooling, my mom gave all of us the latitude to study the things that interested us beyond the required course load we had each year. At this time, I was particularly fascinated by whatever might help me improve athletically, and so we turned the building of muscle and protein’s role in that into a science project, with an emphasis on any dangers or side effects from supplements and activities that would stimulate or affect the building of muscle. For weeks I did a lot of research in books, magazines, on the Internet, and at the nearby GNC store, putting together what I believed was a well-thought-out and articulated presentation.
After all, my athletic preparation was riding on it. In addition, I figured, why not go ahead and try to win the local middle-school science fair while I was at it? I tested my output of energy through a given workout and how much protein it would take to generate that energy. I even calculated how much protein I could take in through diet alone, and I was able to show that supplementation was necessary to get enough protein.
When I was done with my project, I presented it to my parents. Any grade I might receive was secondary to what I really hoped to achieve with this project and all the research that went into it. It worked. It really was a killer presentation, showing them that the protein shakes from GNC and similar places were completely safe, and I had the science to prove it. From that point forward, I was able to use protein along with my working out.
And yes, I won first place in the science fair.
The protein shakes, though, were just the start. I paid a lot of attention to what went into my body, and around this time I also decided to give up soft drinks for a year. My parents had witnessed over and over how committed I was to taking care of and improving my health, and so on this subject they had decided to challenge me, talking with me about, and demonstrating to me through their own research, concerns about the detrimental effects of ingesting too many carbonated drinks. As an enticement to quit, they offered me one hundred dollars if I went without having one soft drink for a full year. I did it.
I should have held out for more money, but in the end, it was worth it. To this day, I still don’t drink soft drinks.
While watching my diet and working out in the right way helped me train, much of my early strength came from working on the farm. Some days it was just for an hour before we’d begin schooling; other days it might be all day, especially if there was a particular project on the farm that needed our immediate attention. We put up fences, chased and herded cows back to where they should be, planted gardens, felled and cleared trees that were dead—or to create some clearings we needed for other things—chopped firewood, and did whatever other work that needed doing on the farm. We joked that we were getting ready to dial Child Services when the work got too tough.
And as if there wasn’t enough for us to do on our farm, about six times a year or so, Dad would loan us out to a neighbor friend, Mr. Bell, to help with whatever needed doing in raising and caring for his chickens. If you thought that I was complaining about working on
our
farm, trust me . . . I wasn’t.
Chicken farming was brutal. Mr. Bell had a hundred thousand chickens. Upon arrival each time Dad sent us over, we’d immediately begin putting the new biddies (young hens) into his chicken houses, while also removing any dead biddies and chickens that happened to be in those houses. He had four chicken houses, and it was common for us to easily fill up three good-size buckets with dead chickens from just a single house.
But the fun was just getting started. We would then take the dead biddies to Mr. Bell’s composter, where we alternated layers of chicken manure, which we had shoveled up from the chicken houses, and the dead chickens we had also just gathered up from the henhouses. The job—the smell, as the chickens cooked after being mixed in with the fresh chicken manure—would be a shoe-in for that
Dirty Jobs
television show. It was horrible.
Farmer strong
. On so many levels.
On occasion we’d need to empty the composter when it got ripe and ready, which, as you can imagine, could get full fairly quickly on a chicken farm with a hundred thousand chickens. This process happened shovelful by shovelful through a door down at the bottom of the composter, loading the end product of fertilizer into a trailer. We would then drive the trailer to our property and begin scooping it out, throwing and spreading it evenly onto the garden or pasture as someone slowly drove the trailer along.
How many times was the wind blowing—in the wrong direction—as we threw this concoction onto the garden plots?
Every
time. It never failed that it ended up all over us—in our mouths, on our clothes, and in our eyes, hair, and ears. It probably doesn’t have to be said that Mom would never let us in the house when we returned but instead forced us to strip and shower outside.
Looking back, I don’t know if it’s funnier that we only got five dollars for working all day or that I thought it was worth so much more when I was young.
Funnier still may have been the days when Mr. Bell would drive us to Burger King as an additional treat afterward, and before we’d had our outdoor shower. It must have been painful for other patrons and the Burger King manager and employees—not a treat for them, to be sure.
In the end though, being farmer strong, being trained, taking care of my body—it all felt like it would be futile if I couldn’t play quarterback. Despite the fact that I kept improving and had good practices when I was allowed to play at quarterback, the coaches still used a different starting quarterback. That was how my freshman fall at Trinity went, and as the season came to a close, my future as a Trinity quarterback didn’t look very bright. I continued to play hard and did what I was told at linebacker and tight end, while my dad kept filming each game every Friday night, dutifully making copies and delivering them to Coach Dorminey. But even with that loyalty, we were all beginning to see that something needed to change.
• • •
Between football,
homeschooling, and farm labor, that freshman year I kept pretty busy. And when I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was busy at our church. My family attends First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, and I was involved in their plays and youth meetings and activities whenever and as much as possible. Every Sunday morning we were all there, and the other times were a bit more sporadic, weaving things in with the pretty regular schedule of sports, which was often easier said than done.
First Baptist always had great kids’ musicals, directed by Miss Nancy, who has supported me through my acting and football careers. I would never try out for special parts in the Christmas musicals because of football, but I had some memorable roles in the summer ones. My first role, however, did not exactly portend greatness on stage. I was in second grade and was cast as the back end of the camel. Please, no comments. The next few years, I played some “front end” roles, but I only had action parts, never ones that required speaking. That would come later. In third grade, I was a sailor, a supreme court justice in fourth grade, and in fifth grade, I was chosen to play Superman. It was a fun action part with a great costume, but I had such a dilemma when I realized that the required dress rehearsal was the same time as the semifinals for the city baseball championship. My mom and I prayed (Dad was in the Philippines), and my team won without me. That meant, however, that the championship game was the same time as my musical. We prayed again. To their credit, my coaches made an appeal to the city, and the final game was changed to Monday. I learned a lesson about giving the Lord my burdens, and this was a huge burden to me at the time. With no game on Sunday, some of my teammates came to the musical. And we won the city championship on Monday. My final action part in a children’s musical was the first summer after I started college. I returned home to play Goliath and had a ball with all the kids.
With football season behind me, I moved on to the other sports I played for Trinity—basketball and baseball—both of which had rigorous schedules. In basketball, it seemed that my strength helped me to level the playing field a bit, balancing my basketball abilities and performance against my young age. When we played against Hawthorne High, just outside of Gainesville, I faced Cornelius Ingram, even at that time a great football and basketball player who was taller than I was and two years older. He went on to play both sports at the University of Florida. When we played Jacksonville Country Day, their lineup included a seven footer. It was obvious each time out that I needed to find something else that would give me a bit of an advantage—a balance against taller as well as older and more experienced players.
On both of those occasions, I was the one assigned to guard the tall guys. I was able to more or less hold my own due to my strength and by playing physically. It wasn’t pretty, however.
Baseball was still in the sports mix as well. In fact, it was probably my best sport and the one that seemed to come to me most naturally—I had played varsity since the seventh grade. We even played some golf on occasion. But we did it on the cheap—it was not one of those sports that at the time fit into a missionary’s salary. So Dad let us take the weed whacker out into the pasture and create our own putting greens, and then we used the posthole digger to create the cups. We were able to create four holes on our own farm this way—one of them was even a water hole over the pond—and messed around with playing a few holes whenever we could.
As much as I enjoyed playing sports for Trinity, though, my parents and I were still troubled with the quarterback situation at the school. And so we came to the conclusion that the time had come for us to look for other schools where I could play football. It was disappointing for all of us in the Tebow family. Trinity had always had great talent. More important, I had played with Peter, and our football team was on a run that culminated with our being crowned as state champions—the first time in school history. Peter had a great year and a great experience at Trinity and was named best defensive player for the year, but as a family, we came to a place where we knew we had to figure out a different plan for my future. We weren’t going to say a word about our leaving during the season, but once the decision was made, our search began in all seriousness to find the best environment for me to fully develop my passion, and what seemed then to be talent, for playing quarterback.
No one in the Tebow family was pleased about reaching the end of the trail they had been running, walking, and filming at Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy.
It was a disappointment to us all, but somehow we all knew it was the right thing to do.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
—P
HILIPPIANS 4:6–7
Homeschooling allowed
us to pick my next school much in the same way we’d picked Trinity all those years before, and it didn’t take long for my family to start looking around for another school where I could play quarterback.
Dad visited several select schools and spoke with their coaches. Some coaches weren’t interested in taking a homeschool player, and some coaches and schools didn’t seem as though they would be a good fit. Dad was talking to people about the types of offense that schools were running, the character of their coaches, and other pertinent matters. To him, the goal was trying to match my passion for playing football with a situation that would more fully develop my abilities. He likened it to when my sister Christy showed a passion and aptitude for playing the piano. For quite some time, they saved money and eventually bought a piano for her, so she could practice, learn, and more fully develop her God-given abilities. The way my dad and mom looked at it, finding the right situation at the right school was a matter of being a good steward of my talents. They felt like it was always our responsibility to identify and fully develop the abilities, talents, and gifts God created within us.
That and the fact that I couldn’t stand playing linebacker anymore.
Dad looked at schools in Jacksonville and even considered schools in south Georgia and Ocala, Florida, trying to find the right setting for me to play.
Dad called Kerwin Bell, the former University of Florida quarterback and current head coach at Jacksonville University, who ran the BMW Camp that I had attended and who at the time was a very successful head football coach at Trinity Catholic High School in Ocala. Coach Bell told us that he was very interested in having me come to play for him at Trinity Catholic. My parents were considering and exploring the significant challenges involved in my playing at a school that was a couple of hours from our home, when Dad also asked another good friend who he would recommend I play for.
He was clear and direct in his response. “Craig Howard,” he said, “who has just been hired for the Nease High School head football coaching position, runs a wide-open, creative offense.” When we met with Coach Howard, we knew in three minutes that he was the right coach.
Because Nease was a public school, Dad started checking into the Florida statutes, as well as the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) rules and the rules of participation governing play in St. Johns County. Under Florida’s homeschooling law, homeschoolers can play at the public school within their district. However, as it turned out at that time, if you lived in St. Johns County, you could participate in sports at any one of the four high schools in the county, regardless of the particular district the school was located within.
It also happened that my dad’s sister Sharon was just finishing some work on an apartment in St. Johns County that was meant to be for their parents’ use in the future. Apparently the future was now, and she made it available for us to use so that we lived in the same county in which Nease was located, even though we weren’t in its district.
My mom spoke to her good friend, Brenda Dickinson, whose deceased husband had authored Florida’s homeschool law in 1985. In 1996, Mrs. Dickinson, now a Florida homeschool lobbyist, wrote the legislation that allows homeschoolers to participate in extracurricular acitvities. She carefully went over every necessary requirement with my mom.
Dad spoke to the head of the FHSAA and four different lawyers to make sure that our understanding of the law and governing rules was correct and that we were doing everything in an above-board, upstanding, and legal manner.
1
We were assured that we were. Dad knew that if I enjoyed any success, some might move to challenge my eligibility. Sure enough, challenges came from two quarters: one expected and one that was not. The one we expected might be forthcoming was from one of the other three high schools located within St. Johns County. The other one that had some people making some noise (though it never grew to a formal challenge of my eligibility) came from Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy, the school we had just left. That was hurtful—we had wanted to stay.
We helped my dad’s sister complete the work on the apartment, and then Mom and I moved there to live in order to make me eligible to play. By then all my siblings were off at college or married, and Dad was traveling a good deal, so this worked out well for Mom and me to live in St. Johns County. On the weekends we headed back to Jacksonville to visit with Dad, but during the week we did all our homeschooling in the apartment in St. Johns County.
Convenient as it was, it was still quite a change and transition for us. I missed life on the farm and regularly being around our dog, Otis. Dad was traveling both to the Philippines and within the States a great deal, so while we missed him, that wouldn’t have changed even if we were home. Plus, I was staying so busy each day—schoolwork, workout, practice, workout, schoolwork, bed—that it was probably tougher on Mom than on me. Once I started taking recruiting trips, however, even many of those weekend trips home ended.
In this transition, I could see both my parents playing different yet vital roles for me, roles that have always been crucial to my success—whether in school or on the field. My father is fiercely loyal and helped us to pursue our passions. My mom, meanwhile, is more nurturing, and a peacemaker. She always told us to never let the sun go down on our anger, but rather that we should address our issues before bed, if not earlier.
And then there was the team itself. I started at quarterback my sophomore year, and I was surprised by how much strength training and overall improvement we needed to make as a team. That first year, we played in six homecoming games—every one of our away games was for some other school’s homecoming. One of the games was for ours, but we were everyone else’s homecoming opponent—not ordinarily a sign of respect for a school’s football prowess. It didn’t seem to bother my teammates as much as I thought it should have. After all, they had only won two games the year before, and they seemed a little too willing to accept this as normal.
We quickly improved, however, at least on offense. We had one of the best offenses in the state, but we had an undersized defense. We lost a number of high-scoring games, scoring 45 points in a loss to St. Augustine, and losing in triple overtime to Palatka, the number one team in the state. That Palatka game, a much bigger and faster opponent, and that year as a whole, were both important from the standpoint of building confidence. We realized we could play with anyone.
They had no idea what they were in store for—after all, I was the nutty kid who would watch football whenever I could. I certainly didn’t intend to be a part of a team where being every other school’s homecoming opponent was accepted.
I worked as hard as I ever did and did my best, through my words and my example, to challenge my teammates to reach for something much more for themselves and the team. I even pushed one of my receivers when he mocked my use of the word
lackadaisical
(directed at the receivers, I might add) as “a pretty big word for a homeschooler.” I didn’t mind jokes about going to school in my pajamas, but I didn’t want anyone to say I was soft. I probably shouldn’t have pushed him, but I could see a change that day in how he viewed me. He wanted to pigeonhole me as this soft homebody. He realized soon enough that I wasn’t. Before long, though, we were all on the same page.