Andy Greenaway is a team player.
If there’s a team at Mooseheart, he seems to be on it, whether it’s football, wrestling, track or NJROTC.
Greenaway clearly likes to stay busy and in uniform. He also likes to belong.
Maybe that’s what happens when your family starts to unravel before you reach kindergarten and you wind up at Mooseheart, a private residential facility near Batavia that’s a haven for kids who often have nowhere else to turn.
Greenaway symbolizes the best in Mooseheart, which is why Executive Director Scott Hart chose him to deliver a speech at an International Moose Convention last May in Chicago.
“He’s a good role model for the kids here,” Hart said this week. “He came from a difficult background, but he persevered and was able to rebound from some tough issues.”
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Saturday at Cambridge, Greenaway will help lead the Red Ramblers into their first state football playoff game since 1997. With a high school enrollment of about 100, Mooseheart (6-3) is the smallest school in the state to field a football team on its own.
It is half the size of Cambridge (8-1), the fifth-ranked team in Class 1A, but Greenaway isn’t about to back down.
“I’m a small guy too,” the 5-foot-9-inch, 150-pound junior wide receiver/defensive back said. “We have huge pride in being the smallest.
“We’ll come out there, give our best and hopefully come out on top.”
Greenaway has come a long way from his early days at Mooseheart, when he was by his own admission a “little demon.” He arrived at the school in January 1996, just a few months after his 5th birthday.
His parents already had divorced and faded out of his life because of personal problems. Andy and his older brother Tim were living with their grandparents, but then their grandfather, a member of an Ohio Moose lodge, got cancer.
The next thing Andy knew, he and Tim were in a car with their grandparents heading west. Andy thought he was on vacation, and reality didn’t arrive until he watched his grandparents depart without him and his brother.
“I was scared and crying,” he said. “It took me awhile to take it in.”
His adjustment included occasional tantrums, but Mooseheart’s structure and discipline gradually settled him down.
Sports have played a big role in that. So has Mooseheart’s Naval Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. NJROTC is mandatory for Mooseheart high school students, but Greenaway loved it from the start. He twice has been selected to attend leadership training programs on military bases and has so many medals and ribbons that his uniform shirt hangs lopsided on its hanger.
He likes everything about NJROTC–the discipline, the drills and the weaponry.
“It’s fun,” said Greenaway, a quiet 16-year-old with a sly sense of humor. “I can’t see how people wouldn’t like it.”
He feels likewise about football, especially now that Mooseheart has reached the postseason. He and classmates such as wide receiver/linebacker Pedro Gonzalez, running back/defensive back Floyd Mays, quarterback/linebacker Chris Morones and tight end/defensive end Donald Niersbach have talked about this since at least 6th grade.
“We said, `We can’t wait till high school football. We want to go to the state championship game,'” Greenaway said. “Now here’s a chance. We want to take advantage.”
Mooseheart coach Gary Urwiler said Greenaway’s intensity has helped get the Ramblers this far.
“He loves to block and hit people,” Urwiler said. “He always gives 100 percent effort.
“He has some God-given abilities and good intuition on the field. He knows where to be and how to get there.”
Whether it’s in a football or military uniform, Greenaway revels in the teamwork that provides success.
“You belong to something greater than yourself,” he said.
Maybe that’s why he stayed put several years ago after his grandmother offered him and Tim a chance to return home.
“Mooseheart was better because there is more structure,” said Greenaway, who now has regular contact with his parents. “You stay out of trouble.”
He had one other reason in mind. As a Mooseheart graduate with good grades, he would get a college scholarship worth $36,000 and a chance to avoid working blue-collar jobs like most of his family has.
“That’s not what I want,” said Greenaway, a B-plus student. “I want to do something greater, different.”
He hopes to attend Ohio State, then serve in the military. Tim Greenaway enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from Mooseheart last year.
Eventually, Andy wants to become a marine biologist and help find a cure for cancer. The answer, he said, lies in sharks, which appear to be resistant to the disease.
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“You don’t have to be a millionaire to be successful,” he said, adding a piece of advice his late grandfather gave him.
“He always said, `Never settle for less than your best,’ so that’s what I give it.
“I give it my best shot.”
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