Portfolio at NYU

Posted 03.30.03
COLLEGES; Army Star Set to Serve on Another Field

By Erik Boland

WEST POINT, N.Y., Nov. 28 -- When David McCracken selected West Point over Syracuse, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Tennessee and a handful of other universities that had offered him a football scholarship, he made a promise to his concerned mother.

''He said: 'Don't worry. I'm not stupid. I won't go infantry,' '' Diane McCracken recalled this week.

Diane, who had strongly encouraged her son to take a more traditional collegiate route, laughed at the memory. Army cadets have 16 areas of concentration from which to choose. Her son, naturally, chose Branch Infantry.

McCracken, a starting defensive end, and his teammates have spent an emotional week preparing for the 102nd Army-Navy game, which has taken on greater poignancy since the Sept. 11 attacks. The game, to be played Saturday in Philadelphia, also has a special meaning for the 6-foot-3, 246-pound McCracken. Because of a medical redshirt granted by Army when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in 1998, McCracken will graduate Dec. 21, the only one of 22 seniors on the team scheduled to do so. If the American troop buildup continues in Afghanistan, McCracken could be deployed by the end of next summer, six months before the June graduates.

McCracken, a history major, will take final exams in three weeks and spend the holidays in North Brunswick, N.J., his hometown. In January, he will begin infantry officer school in Fort Benning, Ga. The training, McCracken estimates, will take six to nine months. His future will then be left to the discretion of the Army, a prospect that McCracken approaches unemotionally.

''I have a responsibility as an officer to support my superior's decisions and relay those decisions to my subordinates,'' he said. ''I do not question any of the Army's decisions in where to send me.''

Recruited by 34 Division I colleges as a linebacker out of North Brunswick High School, McCracken never doubted he would end up at West Point. His father, David Sr., said his son had made up his mind to do so in sixth grade, fascinated with the cadets' leadership and their sense of duty. When the Division I coaches went to New Jersey with scholarship offers and the usual promises of football glory, McCracken never seriously considered them. And his one official visit, to West Point, reaffirmed what he had hoped to be true. ''I realized this was the place for me,'' he said.

Chad Jenkins, the senior quarterback, was going to stick around West Point for another season as a graduate coaching assistant but the terrorist attacks changed his mind. Now, after graduation in June, Jenkins will also head to Fort Benning's infantry officer school.

''I could have been an infantry officer if I was a graduate assistant, but what I realized was in my four years at West Point, my mission had been primarily football,'' said Jenkins, a systems engineer major from Dublin, Ohio, who has coaching aspirations. Yet, after the attacks, he said, ''What I saw was once I graduate, that mission is over and I think there is a higher calling to serve my country as an infantry platoon leader.''

Jenkins's mother, Lee, had the same reservations McCracken's mother did.

''She was a little worried when I told her I wasn't going to be a G.A. anymore, but she is very supportive,'' said Jenkins, who was recruited by most of the Mid-American Conference teams for football and Ohio State for lacrosse. ''My dad understood and is behind me as well.''

McCracken said: ''The sense of duty is installed in you plebe year, when you find out what this place is about. And it represents what we're here for and our sense of mission, too.''

While their records are dismal -- Navy is 0-9 and Army is 2-8 -- the hitting for Saturday's game will be as fierce as in the Texas-Colorado matchup, and the crowd's passion will rival that seen at Tennessee-Florida also that day. But also expect both academies to show mutual signs of respect before and after the game. ''After the game, we're like brothers,'' McCracken said. ''We know we're going to be serving together afterward.''

McCracken will serve sooner than those he will take the field with, but he is as resolute about his commitment as he was in sixth grade.

''I think everyone who comes here has that in the back of their mind, thinking something like this could happen,'' McCracken said. ''My family and I discussed that before I came here and I came to the conclusion that this was the place for me no matter what happens. I can serve my country, and that's the job you have to do here.

''That's what the Army is here for, to fight the enemy. When that happens, you have to suck it up, get out there and do your job.''