Let’s Hear It For The Dads

The George Mason men's basketball team has shaken up the World! While the entire Washington area is waiting for Joe Gibbs and the Redskins to return to the field for what appears to be a legitimate run toward the Super Bowl, the Patriots heart stumping run toward a national Championship will due just fine!

The college basketball team from the little known school in Fairfax County, Virginia now belongs to all of us! I had the rare opportunity to visit the sprawling campus the Monday after the team defeated North Carolina to advance to the Elite Eight. From that point on I was hooked; not just on the team but the charismatic President Allan Merten and coach Jim Larranaga who met with us on a moment’s notice for TV interviews. We found Lamar Butler, a senior guard who recently made the cover of Sports Illustrated, in the student Union. The charismatic Oxon Hill High grad called us over for a chat and subsequent interview.

What a group! What a University! What a family! This brings me to the most impressive aspect of this team’s surprise feats on the basketball court. What about the player’s families? On Tuesday, March 28th I sat down with Festus Campbell in his cubicle, at the Amtrak offices in downtown DC. Campbell is the Nigerian born father of Folarin Campbell; sophomore guard for GMU. This is one proud Poppa! A copy of the New York Times with Folarin’s picture on the front page adorns his desk; dad is wearing a regional championship tee-shirt, but what’s really interesting is this father admits he knows very little about basketball. However, he does know a lot about life and how he wants his children raised. “The name Folarin means walk with glory”, he explains. Festus has a quick laugh! He stands about five feet seven inches tall while Folarin is six feet four! He says he reserved his tall genes for Folarin who was introduced to basketball by his older brother George, a senior at Baltimore’s Morgan State University.

“I’m just a supporter,” says Festus who attended every GMU game except for the first Wichita State contest because he was in Nigeria for his mother’s funeral. Festus and his wife Francisca have been together for 33 years and married for 27 of those years. Family has always come first with them. They prayed their "Washington Post All Met" super star basketball son would choose a college close to home.

Mike Durso, Folarin’s Principal at Montgomery County’s Springbrook High, says what impressed him most about Campbell is that after every game when the other players were leaving the gym with their friends and girl friends, Folarin was going home with his family.

Springbrook's athletic advisor, Joyce Amatucee, says Folarin wasn’t a good student when he first transferred to the Silver Spring school; but by the time he graduated he had taken Latin, Physics, Statistics and Algebra 2 in order to make himself a more attractive college candidate. “He did it, but he didn’t like it,” says Amatucee. Folarin Campbell it seems wasn’t allowed to fail or take short cuts beginning with his family’s expectations. The same can be said for Lamar Butler and the other GMU players who say they chose Mason in large part because they wanted their families to be able to see them play. Another factor; a lot of the bigger programs passed them by, most of the players say they were an inch or two too small; maybe too thin or too heavy. What the big schools couldn’t measure was the size of their hearts or the content of their character that was forged at home and at the high school level.

Go Mason! And thanks to all those Mason Dads and Moms!