Gerry Bertier - High School Career

High School Career

Bertier began his high school career at Hammond High School and joined the football team. He became a key player, soon becoming the backbone of the defense. As a sophomore, he was starting linebacker, a position for which he won many honors. However, he was only able to play three seasons, when Hammond H.S. was merged with two other Alexandria high schools to form T.C. Williams High School. The consolidation meant there were many new faces on the football team as well as on the coaching staff, which caused racial tension between team members. This new mixture of Titans was forced to come together as a single successful team, dealing with the issue of racial prejudice, a difficult battle for many members of the team. As a captain, Bertier, along with friend and teammate defensive end Julius Campbell, supported their teammates through this time of struggle. Even though the team was still struggling with prejudice as the season opener rolled around, the strife was not evident in the way the T.C. Titans began the 1971 season. The Titans went 13-0, including nine shut outs, and went on to win the Virginia State Championship. During the Titans' undefeated season, they also outscored their opponents by a 338-38 margin. Bertier's stats during the season included 142 tackles, 42 sacks. Bertier was named team Defensive Most Valuable Player. He was named National Prep School Football Player of the Year, and received First Team All-Region, All-State, and All-American honors. As he prepared to move to the next level, Bertier received many football scholarship offers from prominent colleges like Notre Dame.

Read more about this topic:  Gerry Bertier

Famous quotes containing the words high school, high, school and/or career:

    Young people of high school age can actually feel themselves changing. Progress is almost tangible. It’s exciting. It stimulates more progress. Nevertheless, growth is not constant and smooth. Erik Erikson quotes an aphorism to describe the formless forming of it. “I ain’t what I ought to be. I ain’t what I’m going to be, but I’m not what I was.”
    Stella Chess (20th century)

    As a thinker and planner, the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts, she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    And this school wasn’t keeping anymore,
    Unless for penitents who took their seat
    Upon its doorsteps as at mercy’s feet
    To make up for a lack of meditation.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)