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Sistrunk Has a Finger on Grand's Pulse
Wolves get inspiration from leader

By John Boell
STAFF WRITER
November 8, 2002

Many city football observers thought Grand Street Campus didn't deserve to make the PSAL playoffs.

The Wolves, a 1-rated team (the lowest in the PSAL's 1-3-5 rating system), believe they made the postseason by the margin of a pinkie; namely, the right pinkie finger of senior Javon (pronounced JAY-von) Sistrunk.

Flashback to Sept. 14: the season-opening game against Bryant. Sistrunk, a 6-1, 205-pound senior tailback/linebacker, was walking back to the huddle when a teammate pointed at the aforementioned digit.

The bone, which was dislocated during the previous play, had actually ripped through the skin. "If he hadn't said anything," Sistrunk recalled, "I would have kept playing."
Coach Ed Gazzillo was both horrified and amazed. "It was dangling and you could see the bone," Gazzillo said. "It looked like a white eyeball."

Gazzillo said that even the doctor, "looked a little shaken up." Eventually, the doctor pulled the skin back over the bone and stitched Sistrunk's finger.

"Javon wanted to go back in, but I told him, 'You have to sit this one out,'" Gazzillo said. "I felt so bad, because Javon practically was crying he wanted to play so bad."

Sistrunk, incredibly, missed just two days of practice and the Wolves, who won the game, 14-0, have rolled to a 9-0 overall record. Thanks in large part to Sistrunk, who leads GSC with 1,181 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns. He also has 63 tackles and five sacks on defense.

GSC, seeded 12th and the PSAL's only unbeaten team, travels to No. 5 Wagner at noon tomorrow in a PSAL first-round game.

Gazzillo firmly believes that Sistrunk's fortitude galvanized the team.

"That set the tone for the rest of the year," Gazzillo said. "Any time anyone had a bump or bruise, they remembered Javon's finger."

For Sistrunk, the final days of his high school football career find him a bit more reflective. He remembers transferring from Van Arsdale in November 1999, just after GSC's first year as a program. The Wolves are in their second varsity season.
"I didn't get along with a lot of people [at Van Arsdale]," Sistrunk said, "and I didn't like their [academic] program."
Things weren't much better, in the beginning, at Grand Street Campus, either. "He was a real troublemaker," Gazzillo said. "He liked to bump heads."

That included clashing with Gazzillo, but eventually, Sistrunk - who had never played football before high school - realized his coach had his best interests in mind.
"Coach guided me in changing myself, and turning my life around," Sistrunk said.

It wasn't easy. Sistrunk, who never knew his father, moved in with his aunt, Gwendolyn Jones, when he was all of 3 years old.

"I call her my mother, and the [GSC] coaches are like my father," said Sistrunk, 18.
Gazzillo said: "I always felt there was something good about him ... The improvement he's made in his own life is amazing ... I love him like a son."

"This year, oh my God, has been like a dream," said Sistrunk, who has an 84 academic average. "I feel like all our hard work is paying off. We deserve to be here [in the playoffs]."

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.