TJA athletes sign to play college ball this fall
Three Thomas Jefferson Academy students signed letters of intent to play ball at the next level during special signing-day exercises.
John John Durden will be attending Mercer University this summer as a preferred walk-on for its Division I football team. Whitney Wells will be attending Auburn-Montgomery on a softball scholarship, and Zoie Irby will be attending South Georgia State College on a softball scholarship.
“These three seniors are part of a senior class that has played for 15 state championships over the last four and half years and won 11 of them, including two in softball and four in football,” said TJA’s Head Football Coach Terence Hennessy. “They are beyond a shadow of a doubt the most successful senior class we’ve ever had at Thomas Jefferson Academy and we still have basketball and all of our spring sports to go, so we’re hoping to add to that. These students are shining examples of what you can achieve with hard work and dedication and when you are willing to sacrifice the time and energy that it takes to be successful.”
John John Durden
The first time John Durden stepped onto Mercer University’s football field he admits he was super nervous. It was his freshman season and his TJA Jaguars were playing for the state championship for the first time in nearly a decade.
“The stands were big,” Durden said. “The scoreboard was big. There was a big fieldhouse behind us. It was a turf field. I remember my dad telling me before the game that this may be a one-time thing, that I may never get the chance to go back. Little did both of us know.”
During his high school career he defended that title three more times, twice more on that field. When the offer was made to join Mercer’s football team this summer as a preferred walk on, taking part in camp and joining the team for workouts and conditioning weeks before the fall semester, he jumped at the chance.
In his four years at TJA Durden’s football team has gone 41-9-5 and won four straight state championships. Durden himself, has recorded 3,100 total yards, 44 touchdowns and 310 tackles. He is a three-time all-region, three-time-all state, two-time all-GISA or all-GACA player.
Durden said that while he has played football most of his life, it was during middle school that he first really fell in love with the sport. Then, his freshman year, he realized that if he were going to really be good at it, he was going to have spend time doing things that most other players were not.
“I realized I had to work harder than everybody else, harder than who we are playing against and harder than your teammates sometimes,” Durden said.
About midway through his freshman season a starting linebacker on his team got sick and was out for several weeks and Durden was called to fill his space. As they entered the playoffs, he started getting more and more time on offense as well.
In the second half of Durden’s first state championship game held at Mercer’s stadium, the Jaguars switched their strategy, becoming a tight end/wishbone team.
“John-John was thrust in the role of having to be one of those halfbacks,” Hennessy said. “Then as a sophomore he became a starter as a linebacker for us and was a starting running back. He did a really good job.”
His sophomore year Durden poured himself into self-improvement and by the time the season was in full swing he felt the difference that extra time in the weightroom made in his performance on the field. “I put on weight. I got a lot stronger and faster,” he said.
By his junior year, Durden said it had really all come together.
“We had a fantastic team on both offense and defense. We were playing so well and it was so much fun to be there,” Durden said. “I just thought, this is something I want to do for four more years, because of so much fun we were having.”
At Five-foot-eight, around 186 pounds, Hennessy said that even though Durden is very strong, it is not his physical characteristics that have made him so successful.
“He has a drive,” Hennessy said. “Christmas break after his sophomore year I’m up here and wondered why are the lights were on in the weight room. Who the heck’s here. It was John John, lifting on his own, doing a workout, up here every Saturday and Sunday the last two years. He’s a great athlete and one of the best football players I’ve had the pleasure of coaching, but he’s driven and he’s a leader.”
Hennessy said that Durden leads by example. Other students see his success and they know that he doesn’t miss a practice, that he works out every day all year and even on days he is practicing for basketball or baseball.
"Our kids see that,” Hennessy said. “We’re a small school but there are opportunities for our kids to play at the next level if you put in that time and effort to do it. You’re not going to be looked at by coaches beyond high school if you don’t have talent, but I think what separates him is his drive. On the football field, on the basketball court, in the classroom, he’s driven to be the best he can be.”
Whitney Wells
Andy Bonifay, TJA’s softball coach, said that it only took him about 30 seconds to realize what a special player she is.
“Whitney is just a superb athlete. You can put her on any playing field and she’s going to find a way to stand out and be competitive,” he said. “She plays with a lot of emotion. She gets pumped up and excited and it feeds the team. She's able to get the most out of everybody else through her words and her actions. She involves everybody and if they aren’t doing what they need to do, she’s going to let them know.”
Wells has been playing softball since she was 6-years-old and has loved the sport and everything about it for as long as she can remember. By junior-high she was following college fastpitch players, marveling at their commitment and the grit of competition.
Her eighth-grade year she was invited to be a part of the varsity Jaguars softball team and has been a started in the middle infield ever since. Being asked to step up that year, it built her confidence.
“I realized I was better than I gave myself credit for being,” Wells said. “It made me think that if I could really hone those talents, maybe I could go somewhere with it.”
She says that she loves playing short stop and the other infield positions, be it on her high school team or in travel ball.
"You have to be on you’re A-game all the time, talking to the players around you,” Wells said. “There is a lot of pressure, but I think those moments when people are depending on you help you mature.”
Bonifay said that Wells’ will to win in clear to anyone who sees her play.
“She’s fast and she knows the game,” he said. “When we played Crisp Academy to go to the state championship game, it was the last inning, bottom of the seventh, Crisp was up one to nothing. Whitney led off the inning and got a base hit. She was on first and our next batter hits a line drive to left field and Whitney was able to score all the way from first. She tied up the game and we ended up winning a few pitches later.”
Wells says that is those high-pressure, game-on-the-line moments, that she loves the most.
And knowing what to do at those times and being able to pull it off, Wells says it all comes from long hours, lots of sweat and tremendous sacrifice. And she says she realizes that it isn’t just sacrifices that she herself has made.
“My mom (Clarissa Miller), she has put her life on pause for me,” Wells said. “We’ve driven through the night to get to tournaments. She has worked while watching me play softball on Sundays. She’s an amazing person. I couldn’t have done any of this without her.”
Wells’ travel ball team plays two or three tournaments a month and practices on the weekends when there are no games.
“Our practices are from 9 a.m. to 5 in the afternoon with an hour for lunch,” she said. “You are conditioning for the first two hours and then you are hitting and fielding workouts the rest of the day. It helped prepare me for going to colleges where there were all-day camps. When other girls are sweating and dying, I’m able to stay up and going.”
Bonifay said that Auburn-Montgomery went to the Division II College World Series last year and it says a lot that they are bringing Wells on now.
“They are trying to take the logical next step and win it and so for them to think of Whitney as the next piece of that puzzle, that’s special,” Bonifay said. “I have no doubt that she is going to step right in and make an impact on that program.”
Zoie Irby
Irby says she got a late start playing softball. She was 12-years-old when she joined her Georgia Aftershock travel ball team.
Damarius Zachary, her Aftershock coach, said that she started off a little clumsy, but that she improved every time she walked onto the field. In the last few seasons, Irby said she felt like she had something to prove every time she went out there.
“Coach Zachary had me run a lot of drills and do a ton of agility work,” Irby said. “Over the years he transformed me into someone I didn’t know I could be.”
Bonifay said that the first time he saw her warm up he watched her take the barrel to the ball swing after swing.
“I mean, she can really hit the ball,” he said, “but it’s Zoie’s work ethic that really makes her stand out. She’s just all out all the time. Even if it’s just a practice rep she’s going all out, superman dive to try to make a catch. She’s going to run to the fence for you.”
Going all out, placing every ounce of everything she has into every play, Irby says she feels like she has to do that for her team.
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what I could have done,” she said. “And if you’re not going all out in practice, you’re not going to do it during the game.”
That kind of effort has led her to turn a few double-plays this year from center field and during summer ball, a triple play against Glascock’s Lady Panthers.
Irby spent just as much time working on her swing.
“I could always hit, but I feel like I’ve worked really hard off the tee and done extra reps after practice,” she said. “I hit three or four buckets of balls every day off the tee and on the weekends I’ll go and hit on the field and in the cage. During school ball, I’d always ask for extra reps so I could be ready for the game.”
While she has hit several homeruns in travel ball, she hit her first homerun for Thomas Jefferson Academy in game against Trinity early in the season. She was the lead off batter, Bonifay said, and that hit set the tone for the rest of the game.
Later, during the All-Star game after the regular season, Irby hit what she calls a “bomb” off player who has signed to play college ball for Div. I Kentucky.
“She was really smoking it in there,” Irby said. “I realized, if I could hit off of her I could play at that level.”
Bonifay said that he has seen Irby get stronger and this season marked a big jump in her development. He attributes all of that to how hard she worked in the off season.
“As a college coach you are looking for contact, power, speed, defensive ability and throwing strength and Zoie checks those boxes,” Bonifay said. “There weren’t any teams we played this season when they (Irby and Wells) weren’t the best player at their position on the field. They both put themselves out there, going to the showcases and doing what they needed to do on their own to get seen.
“Whitney’s going to a really good softball program and Zoie’s going to have a chance to play for a year or two where she’ll be seen by some other four-year schools. I can’t tell you what it meant to have both of these girls on the same team, what it meant to me as a coach, but what it also meant to the other girls on the team. When the young girls watch them, they know that’s what a high-level softball player is.”
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Thomas Jefferson Academy athletes sign to play college ball this fall
