Football dreams rekindled

After a year away from the game, Parkdale grad travels juco route to Jackson State

Photo courtesy lackawanna college

‘‘I want to be the best running back in I-AA,” Dorzon said. ‘‘Everything I do, I like to be the best at what I do.”

Dorzon, known as ‘‘Tee” in his days with the Panthers, started at running back and corner back from his freshman year onward, until an ankle injury the summer before his senior year cost him the whole season. He couldn’t be on the field while the Panthers ran to the Class 4A state title in 2002.

‘‘It was unbearable to watch,” Dorzon said.

It wasn’t just the ankle injury that tried Dorzon’s football hopes. He had a scholarship offer from Virginia Tech, but Hokies’ coaches wanted him to spend a year at Fork Union Military Academy, a boarding school in central Virginia, to improve his grades. Dorzon didn’t like the sound of a military school at the time, so he tabled his football aspirations.

‘‘I wasn’t thinking too clearly,” Dorzon said.

In his first year out after high school, Dorzon spent a few months working construction, waking up for eight-hour shifts that started at 6 a.m., and doing various other jobs. None of it made him happy the way football once did. He wished he had taken the Hokies’ offer when he’d had the chance.

‘‘I took not going to Fork Union for granted,” Dorzon said. ‘‘Fork Union was going to be free and I took it for granted and didn’t go. I had to sit out football for two years, and I realized I liked football more than I thought.”

Encouraged by his family, Dorzon returned to football a year after high school. He joined the P.G. Jets, a winter semi-professional squad that played in District Heights, and started putting all of his attention toward football, constantly working and making the sport his full time job, even though it didn’t pay.

His skills and work ethic impressed coaches and teammates, and he stood out against the rest of the crop whose best days were behind them. And playing with those semi-pro veterans helped him rediscover the game, Dorzon said.

‘‘Most of the people who come to semi-pro, their careers are washed up,” said Jason Blackman, a Jets assistant coach. ‘‘It’s over. They’re just playing for recreation.”

When Mike Balogun, a onetime Suitland player who also had been out of football since high school, joined the Jets for their 2006 season, he and Dorzon worked together with Blackman to get out of the semi-pro ranks and into a college, where they could make the most of their promise.

Dorzon also had a contact at the next level, his former backup in the Parkdale secondary, Yemi Shonibare, who was at Lackawanna College, a renowned junior college program in Pennsylvania. Shonibare recommended Dorzon and Balogun to coach Mark Duda, and when they visited Lackawanna in the spring, Duda gave them spots on the Falcons for the 2006 season.

Dorzon quickly became a force in the Northeast Football Conference, finishing eighth in rushing his freshman year and gaining 6.9 yards per carry while helping the Falcons go 10-0 and win their fifth championship in 10 years. Last year, he was second in rushing and averaged more than 82 yards per game. He was named to the all-conference second team, despite missing three games due to injury.

Sixteen of Lackawanna’s graduating sophomores last season signed with larger schools. Ten signed with Division I programs, including Balogun with Oklahoma and three others with Jackson State.

Dorzon’s impact and return to the recruiting radar after being out of high-level football for several years was no shock to Duda. He draws players with mistakes or detours or delays along the usual route to college, and Dorzon was just one of the latest to find that it’s not too late to keep following football.

‘‘You say, ‘How does this happen?’” Duda said. ‘‘It happens. It really does.”

E-mail Kevin Hilgers at khilgers@gazette.net.