Six years into his NFL profession, Fernando Velasco hit his lowest level.
On Nov. 28, 2013, in entrance of a nationwide tv viewers, Velasco—then the beginning heart for the Pittsburgh Steelers—ruptured his Achilles tendon in a sport towards the Baltimore Ravens. He missed the remainder of the season, and his profession gave the impression to be in jeopardy.
As he recovered bodily, Velasco BSEd ’08 spiraled emotionally. Whereas additionally coping with the suicide of a detailed buddy, Velasco plunged into melancholy.
Ray Jackson, the Steelers’ director of participant growth and a former NFL defensive again, helped convey Velasco again.
“He put his arm round me. He let me know that I used to be greater than a soccer participant,” Velasco recollects. “God had an even bigger plan for me. Throughout that second, I knew precisely what I needed to do. I knew that when my enjoying days have been over, I needed to get into participant growth and engagement.”
Each NFL staff and main school soccer program employs workers members in participant growth and engagement. Many are former gamers, they usually
Recruited out of Wrens, Georgia, Fernando Velasco performed all throughout the offensive line for Head Coach Mark Richt. He earned Second-Group All-SEC honors in 2007 and started his nine-year NFL profession in 2008.
serve in a mentorship position, serving to gamers navigate their lives and careers off the sector. With the fashionable sport’s many distractions, the regular hand offered by the participant growth workers is essential.
After working with Jackson, now vice chairman for participant growth with the Denver Broncos, Velasco rebounded. And his enjoying days have been removed from over. Velasco spent three extra years within the NFL and was a part of the Carolina Panthers staff that performed in Tremendous Bowl 50. He retired in 2016, and one in all his first calls was to Georgia head coach Kirby Sensible BBA ’98.
He served as UGA’s assistant director of participant growth below the tutelage of director Jonas Jennings AB ’00 for three-and-a-half years. He moved to the College of Arkansas in 2020 because the Razorbacks’ director of participant growth. And in 2022, he was named director of participant engagement for the Atlanta Falcons.
However Velasco credit his time as a student-athlete and workers member on the College of Georgia as foundational.
“Jonas stated to simply be myself,” Velasco says. “My friends had leaned on me. I had helped rookies once they got here to the NFL. It got here organically. I inform folks on a regular basis that my job doesn’t really feel like work.”
At 6-foot-3, 300 kilos, Velasco cuts an authoritative determine. However he brings approachability blended with gravitas to his presence. And he has for a very long time.
“It’s good to begin with the attributes of management—trustworthiness, exhausting work, being a man all people may depend on. Fernando is a kind of guys,” says Mark Richt, Georgia’s head coach from 2001 to 2015. Richt recruited Velasco to the Bulldogs and stays a guiding power.
“He did his job each day, and his coaches and teammates revered him for that. He had a want to be nice as a participant and an individual,” Richt says.
That want to be nice and to at all times be taught and at all times enhance started at an early age. Velasco was raised by his grandparents in tiny Wrens, Georgia, a city of lower than 2,500 southwest of Augusta. He labored on the Jefferson County rec heart in highschool, which was his first encounter with mentoring others.
“My friends had leaned on me. I had helped rookies once they got here to the NFL. It got here organically. I inform folks on a regular basis that my job doesn’t really feel like work.” — Fernando Velasco, director of participant engagement with the Atlanta Falcons
When he got here to the College of Georgia, he labored an off-campus summer time job to make ends meet. He earned his diploma in well being and bodily schooling with a plan to turn out to be a highschool trainer and coach in case his NFL profession didn’t blossom.
Because it seems, Velasco fulfilled his desires. And he continues mentoring others.
He and his spouse, Kamille BS ’09, lead the Velasco Household Basis. In July, the group ran a three-day “Life Prepared Retreat” for 40 children in partnership with Camp Lighthouse, Atlanta Mission, and Younger Males’s United of Wrens. Amid the enjoyable, the Velascos spoke concerning the significance of schooling, psychological well-being, and monetary literacy, and everybody accomplished dream-building imaginative and prescient boards.
Velasco doesn’t simply preach the significance of schooling; he practices it. When he took the Arkansas job, he additionally enrolled as a scholar in a Grasp of Training program and earned his diploma. Earlier this summer time, he enrolled in an Ed.D. program at Penn State College. He begins classwork this fall.
“After I was rising up, I believed being a physician solely meant being a doctor,” Velasco laughs. “Being a child rising up in Wrens, Georgia, I didn’t suppose an undergraduate diploma was potential. For me, I’m at all times serious about what’s subsequent. What can I higher equip myself so I can higher serve the individuals who belief me?”
“After I was rising up, I believed being a physician solely meant being a doctor,” says Fernando Velasco, who begins courses this fall towards an EdD from Penn State College. “Being a child rising up in Wrens, Georgia, I didn’t suppose an undergraduate diploma was potential. For me, I’m at all times serious about what’s subsequent. What can I higher equip myself so I can higher serve the individuals who belief me?” (Picture by Peter Frey/UGA)
