Cornegay uses leadership class to teach students about football

A few weeks ago we happened to overhear a couple of school yearbook staffers talking about football and trying to learn the terms they were hearing on the sidelines.

While many of us take it for granted that football is understood by everyone, there are many people who don’t know much about the sport and it’s nice when others share their knowledge around their school.

Eisenhower senior Darique Cornegay is taking a class that shows the need for teaching others about sports and in this case football.

“One of my favorite classes is leadership, which has always been a good program here at Ike,” he said. “I try to be a good leader and we try to share things about our sport that can help the others understand them better.”

The senior free safety says that his classmates often have questions and he tries to give them good answers.

“Most of the time they want to know if we are going to win; that’s what we get asked the most,” he said. “Having us in that leadership class helps to bring football into the classroom and it allows students to get a better impression of what we do to prepare for games and then how we handle things like adversity.”

This year the adversity has come from injuries that have ranged from concussions to broken collarbones.

“I hated to see Jermain (Veu) go down with a broken collarbone because that is what knocked me out last season,” Cornegay said. “I hurt mine in a blue-white scrimmage and never got to play in the regular season.”

Missing a full season really set Cornegay back but he’s made up for the lack of playing time with hard work.

“The thing about playing free safety is you have to read several keys, like what the guards are doing or where the quarterback might be looking,” he said. “They always say don’t get caught looking at the quarterback’s eyes but it’s still something that happens. We play mostly man coverage in the back unless we have to put a guy over the slot receiver.”

Cornegay said that he’s gone against some good receivers but one stood out.

“That No. 6 (Trystan Graves) for Carl Albert was probably the best I’ve seen,” Cornegay said. “When you see one of those good ones like that you want to shut them down but you also come away with a great deal of respect on how they handle their job. You also learn by going up against that type of player.”

While Cornegay is like most students, he loves eating and his choice is a buffet with plenty of variety of meals and main dishes.

That might be something that is common among high school athletes, however, his favorite class is not one you hear very often. Well, it wasn’t until Wednesday when the two athletes I interviewed both had a special draw to the same class.

“My favorite class is welding which I’m taking at the (Great Plains) Technical School,” he said. “I think it’s interesting how to weld the various metals and how to set the welders up to handle different situations.”

Part of Wednesday’s Ike practice was reserved for situps and pushups after some issues that came up during last week’s win over Shawnee.

“Coach Harris wants everyone to learn what it takes to be good at something,” he said. “He tells us all the time that life isn’t always going to be easy and if you don’t have discipline on the football field you probably won’t have it at your job. He also tells us that for us to play together we have to be together; we have to get along and be disciplined. It’s just taking some of the guys a little longer to understand and that’s why we were doing those sit-ups and push-ups. It’s a way to keep us focused.”

Those lessons were especially important because this is an open date for the Eagles and while they don’t have a game, they continue to carry a heavy practice load because that’s how good teams get better.