Position grows on Gulf lineman

By CRISTINA LEDRA

NEW PORT RICHEY - Gulf's incumbent football players couldn't help but think someone had made a mistake when they saw Steve Reid show up on the offensive line - either he was lost, or Coach Jay Fulmer had lost it.

Reid was 6-foot-5, which was fine. He was also a gangly 165 pounds.

"I saw him and I was like, 'Why is this scrawny guy on the offensive line?'" said senior weakside cornerback J.J. Walton, who was on junior varsity last season and will join Reid on varsity this season. "But he's a hard worker and it's like he's a little apple seed."

Reid was indeed like a seed that would grow into a sturdy tree, but at a much more remarkable rate.

Heading into his senior season, Reid says he weighs 250 pounds - an 85-pound increase from the time he was plucked out of Fulmer's weightlifting class and off the bench of Gulf's junior varsity basketball team a year ago.

"He is just living proof that anybody who works hard can play this game and be good at it," Fulmer said. "And he's not just playing football, he's our left tackle. He is a key in our offense and once we spread the word that he was the kind of size that he is and the kind of student he is, it didn't take long to start getting letters from colleges all over the country."

Reid had devoted most of his time to his schoolwork prior to getting scouted by Fulmer. Reid has a 4.3 grade-point average and hopes to study engineering in college.

He was always tall, but never thought of himself as athletic - and neither did anyone else.

"I was slow, awkward, uncoordinated," Reid said.

And he got picked on by kids around school.

Fulmer, however, saw potential.

"I saw him in class and I told him, 'Steve, I think I might be able to help you become a better basketball player and get stronger and gain some weight,'" Fulmer said.

Fulmer invited him out after school workouts last spring and to spring football. They made a deal: if Reid came out for spring football, survived it but didn't want to come back, he didn't have to. There would be no hard feelings.

"The first time I suited him up, literally his knees were knocking together because he was so nervous," Fulmer said.

Reid's first experiences on the football field went about as well as he expected.

"All these other guys had played football for five or six years and they were aggressive and I didn't know how to hit or anything so I was basically getting thrown around," he said.

He kept trying to quit. Fulmer convinced him not to.

Slowly, Reid saw the results. He was gaining more muscle, eating more, and adding more weight, until he was finally comfortable roughing it with some of the Buccaneers' toughest guys.

Since he first came out, Reid has only missed one workout after a brief illness.

"The work ethic came from people pushing me around, so I had to work to get bigger and stronger and now all those people have stopped," Reid said.

Now Reid can't imagine his life without football.

"I liked watching football, like NFL and college, and now that I get to play it, it's a lot of fun," Reid said. "I'm not 100 percent sure if I want to play football in college for four years but I'm pretty sure that I will."

Reid hasn't slowed his progress since he started and wants to eventually weigh about 280 pounds by the time he's in college, using what he has to this point - hard work, protein shakes, supplements and lots and lots of food.

"With only one year of playing football under his belt, the sky's the limit for him," Fulmer said. "I think he can get better and better and take this game as far as he wants to."