Taking Charge: Coach Cristobal’s recruits step up as the senior leaders of the 2010 football team

For three years, Coach Mario Cristobal has been shaping a class of leaders among his football players. This year, for the first time, the team has a core of senior players who matured under Cristobal’s leadership. They stand in front of 90 players who are ready to charge onto the field.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to be freshman,” said senior linebacker Toronto Smith, who played in all 12 games his freshmen year and started in three. “We had to learn with the seniors and everyone else ahead of us.”

The 2007 recruits today are young men who understand what it is to be part of a football culture. Players like Smith and senior cornerback Anthony Gaitor on defense, and senior receiver Ty Frierson and center Brad Serini on the offense are part of the backbone of the team.

Barely into their twenties, they charge themselves with organizing training in the summer before the NCAA allows coaches to work with the players. They lead their cohorts into the weight and film rooms, and ultimately on the field.  At Strength and Conditioning Camp, the seniors lead junior players through drills, emphasizing repetition, repetition, repetition. They’ve had three years of repetition themselves, positioning them to pass on what they’ve learned.

“Every single drill, no matter how tired we are, we have to be in front” says Smith. “It’s perfection around here. We have to do things right, all the time.”

Every now and then when the moment calls for some tough love, the seniors aren’t afraid to set the younger guys straight. “When the time comes, you get aggressive and ready to go,” says Gaitor.

“It’s all brotherly love out here,” says Smith.

Gaitor said of this task “I wouldn’t call it pressure, as a leader you just have to mind your p’s and q’s and serve as a guide to the rest of the team.”

That guidance is vitally important to the success of the team. Without it, a team can become disjointed and undisciplined, which is then reflected on the field in the form of missed tackles, penalties, and players that are out of position. Some of that was still seen last year, a source of frustration for fans and players alike. Now players like Serini are getting up at 4:38 a.m. to put in the work a team needs to eliminate those errors, to make those blocks and tackles.

The team’s cultural shift is passed down from the seniors to the juniors and underclassmen. Says Serini, “It has changed a lot since my freshman year. Now football is the culture here. We are very respectful and disciplined. We are everything we need to be to be a successful team.”

“Football culture is a way of life,” said Smith, “Coach teaches us to have no excuses and to get it done no matter what, and eventually you will be on top.”

Off the field, Cristobal’s football culture demands that players show up early to class, do well in their studies and function as respectful members of the FIU family. Smith says of being a student, “being a football player is no excuse to have bad grades, we have to sit in the front row, we have to participate, and we have to be good students.”

“Respect ourselves and the people around us,” says Frierson, “respect whoever is in the building, if we see a freshman messing up we tell them.”

Each of the players knows they must work hard in practice to secure their spot on the team, and that pushes everyone harder. Through competition, the seniors not only push themselves and mature the younger players so they can vie for starting spots.

“They look up to us like older brothers,” says Smith, “every great team needs depth, and every team needs competition because great competition creates a great team.”

For the seniors, this year represents their last shot at a Sun Belt Conference title and a bowl game. They are hungry to be the first FIU football team to do it. Says Smith, “We look forward to seeing the fans at the games.  A great team is brought up by great fans, and in the fourth quarter we look forward to the cheers and chants to bring us up and help us win.

— Julian Kasdin ‘07