DO YOU KNOW THIS YOUNG MAN?

By Frederick A. Hurst

Well, if you don’t, let me introduce him to you. His name is Marc Antone Gomes, an unassuming young athlete at Springfield’s Commerce High. I came to know him through his track coach, Larry Libow, who responded to my request for names for the Point of View Sports Heroes column. He wrote, “Marc is a B student and is well-liked by his teachers. He is a self-professed jokester with a good sense of humor…Marc deserves some recognition as an extraordinary student-athlete. Perhaps if the “regular” media wonprovide some recognition, his community newspaper will.”

Well, that last sentence certainly appealed to my Point of View ego and made me give serious thought to whether or not to change the rules of the game. You see, normally our sports column is about past heroes. Coach Libow was asking us to write about a current hero. I let his e-mail sit on my desk for a month before finally deciding to give Marc a call.

Marc answered the phone and immediately impressed me with his polite demeanor and cool command of the English language; i.e., he didn’t sound like an imitation of your favorite “rap” artist. And his modest response to my request to interview him helped to keep our conversation short and to the point. We set a time to meet the next morning and he arrived at the office right on time and immediately impressed me with the ease with which he began to respond to my questions—with a measured humility that you might expect to find in a confident adult but not in a seventeen year old student.

Marc is one of 11 siblings. He was raised by his mother, Cindy Ferguson, and his stepfather, Tom Nichols, with whom he was very close. He attended the predominantly white Frederick Harris Elementary School and Kiley Middle School. His first year of high school was in Virginia’s Potomac High, but when his stepfather died, he returned to Springfield to be with his mother and enrolled in the tenth grade at Commerce.

From an early age, Marc’s stepfather played baseball with them in the backyard. His stepfather was also active in basketball and football and whenever he went to play or coach, he took the kids with him. He taught them to be gentlemen but to give their best and to never give up. One day in 2000, Tom Nichols was hit by a car. He remained in a comma for three years and in 2003, he died. Marc is not embarrassed to tell you that he carries fond memories of his stepfather and follows the lessons that he learned from him to this very day.

And those lessons are reflected in Marc’s accomplishments. In Virginia, he participated in football, basketball and track and was generally successful but didn’t stay long enough to peak. Commerce was different. In his sophomore year, he played on the junior varsity football and basketball teams and on the varsity track team. In one memorable football game, he returned four kicks for 243 yards, and as the point guard on the basketball team, he led the team in steals and was the team MVP, while also serving as team captain.

But Marc’s best results came in track. His specialties are the 100 and 200 meter races. He runs the 100 in 10.7 seconds and the 200 in 22.2. In his sophomore year, he was the Western Mass. champion in the 100 meter and was second fastest in the state track meet. As Coach Libow wrote, “This he accomplished in his junior year at Commerce having only attained 5^th place in Western Mass. the previous year. Next year I expect Marc will move up to the 200m at Western Mass. because we believe he is a better 200m runner and we expect Marc to be both Western Mass. and state champ in that event.” Coach Libow related to me by phone that he also expects Mark to eventually participate in the national Olympic tryouts.

That is very likely since Marc does not intend to quit soon. He has a B average and has already been recruited by five colleges, who want him for his track skills and scholastic potential. Marc thinks he will go to Wheelock College, which he visited and expects to attend on full scholarship. Inspired by sports broadcaster, Stewart Scott, Marc plans to major in journalism and specialize in broadcast journalism. You can bet that he will do all of that as well as participate in the Olympic tryouts. And don’t be surprised to see him in the China Olympics!

But there is a downside to all of this. It seems that media coverage for the Commerce team is sparse. Coach Libow’s description of this phenomenon is one of the reasons that I decided to interview Marc. He wrote, “In general, track and field is given very little coverage by the media (national and local). Here (the media) provide copious coverage of the spring high school sports of baseball and softball. Maybe I’m not seeing the complete picture, but my perception is that coverage is always of White, suburban kids….And when the opportunity came where Marc Gomes might have been acknowledged, after the Western Mass. Championships or the State Track Championships, he was given a single sentence. The coverage went to suburban kids whose performan-ces were no less or (no) greater than Marc’s.”

I tested Coach Libow’s theory with Marc and he not only agreed but gave more discouraging news of neglect that is much closer to home. He feels that the media cover baseball, LaCross, tennis and even track at schools like Minnechaug and Longmeadow but give little coverage to inner-city track. But this didn’t seem to bother Marc as much as the little attention track gets at home.

He explained, “People at school don’t come to track meets. Few seem to care, not even the principal. I won the Western Mass. and State Meets and the principal was not there and I got no recognition at school. I broke the school record four times this year and still no recognition. No assembly, no honors from the school…just awards from the events.”

I want to make it clear--Marc was not complaining. He was simply responding to questions that I pressed him to answer. The real significant point is that Marc keeps going. His goal and determination is to do his personal best in school and on the field whether or not he gets publicly honored for it. I pressed for answers because it seems to me that he is a role model in our midst whose accomplishments should not be hidden from view. When I asked him what the difference was between himself and the 18 year old young man, Tyrone Jones, who was just arraigned for murder in a drive-by shooting, I was especially moved by his simple answer. “I want a better life for myself,” he said.

If you didn’t know Marc Antone Gomes before, let’s hope you know him now at least as well as we all know Tyrone Jones, whose arraignment photo covered half of the front page of the Local section of The Republican on August 16, 2005. Marc is a tremendous young man on a tremendous and inspirational career track. He comes from a family of modest means and was raised by his mother after his stepfather passed. He shares many of the same friends and acquaintances as Tyrone Jones, whom he knows. But he is going to college. Jones is going to jail. We need to study why. n