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Trinity's Sweat ruled the rest in three sports
With his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar and a tie knotted loosely around the neck, Andrew Sweat hobbled down the hallway behind Hiller Hall toward the athletic trainer's room.
Only a few days had passed since Christmas and Sweat was in the midst of a whirlwind journey of college football's powerhouses. Trinity's boys basketball team had just played rival Canon-McMillan in the finals of the Trinity Tournament, a game won by the Big Macs.
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"I'm not much of a basketball player," he said.
Sweat's not the type of guy to make people feel bad, but what does it say when Sweat is better at his worst sport than the majority are at their best?
Despite Sweat's opinion, he not only started for Trinity, he was one of the Hillers' leading scorers, rebounders and, possibly, their most determined defender.
Sure, he's not much of a basketball player.
"He is a ferocious rebounder and he has a great first step to the hoop. From a defensive standpoint, you may get to the hoop on him once but you won't get there unmolested a second time," Trinity boys basketball coach Joe Dunn said. "He's such a staunch competitor and a superior athlete, and his basketball skills are overshadowed by everything else he does."
Name the sport and Sweat can play it. He makes basketball and baseball look easy but the senior-to-be excels on the football field. That's where Sweat earned his reputation and where he became nationally recognized.
"When you get to the point where his third-best sport is basketball and he's one of the best players without having to go to 47 summer camps, you know you have something special," Trinity football coach and athletic director Ed Dalton said. "This guy has been blessed with that kind of talent. He's earned his reputation."
Athletic freaks of nature normally come in the same package - tall, fast and built with an ego to match their abilities.
That's not Sweat. Yes, at 6-2, Sweat is not short. And, yes, he's quite fast. Ask opposing quarterbacks and running backs who failed to elude his pursuit during the 2006 season. And, no doubt, he's quite strong. Pat him on the back and you'll walk away with a bruise.
Still, no matter where Sweat was, first-time observers were surprised.
"You could hear it from the dugout," Trinity baseball coach Levi Bristor said. "People were always like, 'Where's that Sweat kid? Which one is he?' We got a lot of that."
It happened every time Sweat put on a Trinity uniform. When, you're that good, people want to know, and those same people are quick to judge.
"I think all that says is, sometimes, people make all this too complicated," Dalton said. "He is probably the best pure football player I've ever coached and he's one of the best players I've ever seen on film. When you watch what he does on film, you wonder how he really does it."
Sweat was so good as a junior, Trinity fans praised him, opponents offered rave reviews - some called him a better high school player than Paul Posluszny, universities across the country recruited him and Sweat was the easy selection as the Observer-Reporter's Boys Athlete of the Year.
"My sophomore year, I had the intangibles but I still wasn't mature and I didn't develop a strong enough work ethic," Sweat said. "College was not something I was thinking about."
Things changed shortly after Trinity, then in Class AAAA, upset Penn Hills in the opening round of the playoffs and the Hillers narrowly lost to Mt. Lebanon in the quarterfinals. Suddenly, Trinity football found itself in the spotlight and colleges were beginning to notice Sweat, a starter since his freshman year.
By his junior year, Sweat weighed 225 pounds and maintained his exceptional sideline-to-sideline speed. The WPIAL's next great linebacker was about to be uncovered.
"My dad (former Syracuse receiver Gary Sweat) always preached to me that your junior year was really important," Sweat said. "I went in there and just tried my hardest."
At times, Sweat played like a one-man wrecking crew. Against West Mifflin, he made tackles on 20 of the Titans' first 23 plays. He made a one-handed interception against Canon-McMillan. He put up another 20-tackle game against Hopewell. He became the focal point of game plans, particularly that of Thomas Jefferson, and he evolved into an all-state linebacker. In 10 games, Sweat had 165 tackles, two interceptions and too many tackles for losses to count.
"He put it all together. You could tell from the beginning of the year that he was a totally different kid," Dalton said. "But even from the point where he was in eighth grade, we knew he was so much better than everyone else. He's a special kid and we knew he was going to keep progressing."
Sweat, who carries a 3.9 GPA and a top-20 class rank, rapidly became one of college football's most sought-after recruits. He received scholarship offers from Penn State to Florida to Southern California and all points in between. He selected Ohio State, the second Trinity player (Andy Miller) in as many years to do so.
The ESPN 150 named him the nation's 11th best player, and the top-rated linebacker, and he was recently selected to play in the ESPN All-American Game.
After a year off from baseball, Sweat returned and batted third for the Hillers. He batted .419 with three home runs, including a game-winner against Hickory in the first round of the PIAA Class AAA playoffs, and 27 RBI.
"It's been amazing," Sweat said. "I'm just a kid who likes playing sports. I'll play baseball all day. I'll play basketball all day. I just went out and played. All of a sudden, people started saying a lot of nice things about me."
Oddly enough, most of what you hear has little to do with his athletic prowess.
"We had more Division I football coaches at our basketball practices and games than most schools get at their football games," Dunn said. "And you would see Andrew Sweat talk to my 4-year-old son Michael the same way he talked to Jim Tressel, Charlie Weis or Dave Wannstedt. That says an awful lot about the type of young man he is."
