Eagles turn to friend, faith to find a way

By Michael Thayer
SPORTS WRITER

Photo by Mike Pratt. SPORTS INFORMATION Mike Maciejewski leads the Golden Eagles with 32 catches and four recieving touchdowns

Although everybody has their bad days, some people have plenty more.  When you are a football player, you may have more bad days than good.  Of course every player has done the two-a-days, the 6 a.m. weightlifting and the dozens of suicide sprints before coach will let them call it a day.  Sometimes, when your life off the field is harder than what you do on the field, it’s amazing what you do to strap on the helmet every weekend.  For one Brockport Golden Eagle, this has been the story of his football life since before the first time he stepped onto the gridiron.

Mike Maciejewski may be one of the leaders on the Brockport offense, catching passes in the wide receiver slot and even playing in some reverse running plays, but his story goes further than what he has done to earn his starting position on the team.

Living in a tough community in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo New York, Maciejewski has been through enough to toughen up quick.  Coming from a home that didn’t have much to brag about beyond the everlasting love of a single mother, daily support through life situations was not always available.

Finding a way out, while simply trying to survive, is never an easy task. Between the gunshots that can be heard most nights, there is football, and that is what Maciejewski found.

“All you have is football, and when you start to get good at something, you realize that this could be your way out,” Maciejewski said about the sport that may have saved his life.

Modified football came to the young athlete in eighth grade and it brought a role model and life-long friend, as well. When Maciejewski came to practice day one, he met Scott Zipp, the new modified coach.  It wasn’t until later in his high school years that he would learn just how much the two had in common. Zipp would move up to coach Junior Varsity, before taking the Varsity program, only leaving Maciejewski with a different coach in his junior year.

In what seemed like a routine practice one day, Zipp saw something in the young athlete that told him things weren’t right.  Sending the rest of the team with his assistant coach, the coach walked with Maciejewski to the soccer field, where they both released everything they had to talk about.

Both remember the day as if it were yesterday, when Zipp revealed that he came from a single parent background, one of the many common bonds the two shared.

“There were a lot of things going on at home, and in life that just had me down that day,” Maciejewski said.

After plenty of talk, and several tears shed, the two walked away from that field with a friendship that would go far beyond graduation day.

“I’ll call him or e-mail him, and it may take him a few days to get back to me because he is busy, but he always gets back to me,” Maciejewski said. Coach Zipp always enjoys the phone calls, “whether he failed a test, or he had a few more plays in Saturday’s game.”  When things get bad, Maciejewski fears letting his long-time coach down, but the man who is now principal of Cheektowaga High school never thinks of it as failure. 

As much as Maciejewski credits the coach for the years of support, Zipp says the debt of gratitude is his.  “Coaches have plenty of bad days, but when you get one bad day, you look out and think, somewhere in those kids at practice is a Mike Maciejewski.”  The coach still tells his teams each year, that if they play as hard as Mike Maciejewski, they will be great.  Although few of the players know who the alum is, they understand that he was as good as they may come.  “Hard work beats talent everyday, and Mike always worked the hardest.”

Mike has more support now as a Golden Eagle.  His brotherhood with the rest of those who strap on the green and gold, and his growing bond with offensive coordinator Jason Mangone keep his motivation high.  Maciejewski found another friend that will always be a supporter, and he found it through religion.  “I always wanted to be saved, but I wanted to do it when I was ready.”  Alone in his apartment, Maciejewski answered a knock at the door that would change his faith.  He talked with the man at the door for over an hour, and even though he was always religious, he now has a little extra support when things seem too tough to continue. 

Through it all, there was always his number one fan, his mother.  Attending all three of the home games to start the season, she was also there throughout his high school career.  “It’s important to have her there cheering me on,” he said, saying that even though he’s working hard to help himself, he is also working to help her find a way out too.  When games go bad, such as the St. John Fisher game in week five, Maciejewski feels that he has failed.  It scares him, because when he doesn’t play as well as he wants it might hurt his chances to go far, and it also gives him the sense of letting down his biggest supporters.  As for his high school coach, and the staff at Cheektowaga high school, he has already reached the big time.  “They don’t see many kids go as far as Mike has, so it is always good to hear the stories,” Zipp said on behalf of the entire staff, who still drop Maciejewski’s name in the faculty lounge from time to time. 

As for Mike, he hasn’t gone far enough yet.  In his senior year, he plans to take a leave of absence from college.  “People say it’s dumb, or it’s not the right thing to do, but you can always finish school, but you can’t always play football.”  In his prime, the wide receiver will take part in tryouts and meet with scouts to try to find the promise land in the professional world of sports.  For a kid from a rough home life in an even tougher suburban neighborhood, he may have found his way out. 

Maciejewski has the understanding of what it costs, even when you have nothing but hard work to give.  “All you have is football, and when you start to get good at something, you realize that this could be your way out.”