Here comes another batch of world beaters. The latest AJC Super 11 is out, alpha males all in the sprawling realm of Georgia high school football.
Time, however, does not freeze in the pose of a teenager in all his glory. None of today’s Super 11 knows it yet, but life isn’t football and a fawning public for ever and ever.
Look at Mike Fredenburg today. Two decades ago, he was one of them. When he signed with Georgia out of North Cobb High School, his photo was front and center in the newspaper, heralding the blessings of national signing day. The proof is yellowed and framed and hanging mostly out of sight, in the garage of Fredenburg’s home in Ball Ground.
He is 38 now, and carrying on a real, productive life well out of the range of headlines. Memo to the latest Super 11: Bask in this moment, but know that, odds are, you are going to have to do likewise, and sooner than you think.
Those who knew Fredenburg then as a 6-foot-5, 325-pound bruiser of a lineman — an athlete whose competitive crockpot was always set on high, not a dude to be trifled with — may be shocked to see him now. He’s a cream puff. A moving playhouse for his four kids. A patient presence for the autistic teenagers he teaches in Cherokee County.
He is still a hulk, a little under his playing weight, even if he hasn’t lifted a weight in about a year. Who has the time?
“Now he uses his powers for good,” laughs his wife, Jennifer.
“That’s the funny thing, with the image I had with some people. And what am I doing now? I’m a teacher of the year, actually helping behavioral problem kids,” Fredenburg said.
“There’ll probably be some eyebrows raised when people see what I’m doing now.”
Intense attitude
North Cobb was far from a football powerhouse in the early 1990s. Nor had Fredenburg been groomed to play the game from infancy. Because he was always too big to play in weight-restricted youth football, his freshman season at North Cobb was his first taste of the game.
But it didn’t take him long to start attracting attention. As he filled out and began bench pressing the world and tossing aside opposing linemen like so many wet towels, the right people noticed.
Fredenburg wrestled, too, and the rugged mano-a-mano nature of the sport suited his personality. He would have been a back-to-back state champion had it not been for that little incident at McEachern High his junior year. Kids do dumb stuff. Big kids do oversized dumb stuff.
In the 1990 state final, wrestling a McEachern kid in his own gym, Fredenburg was the biggest target for the home crowd’s wrath. After appearing to win the match, 6-5, he celebrated by turning to his detractors in the stands, doing a quick crotch grab and raising his arms in triumph. Officials assessed him a point, and eventually awarded his opponent the title as a result of the infraction.
In the aftermath, North Cobb briefly considered suspending its star before cooler heads prevailed. Embittered, he vowed to never wrestle again, but relented just in time to go unbeaten and sweep to the title his senior season.
“I was a lot less cocky. I came out, destroyed people, helped them up and that was it,” he said.
“I got a lot of my reputation from just being intense. I played football intense. I wrestled intense. I think I was born in the wrong era. If I was [playing] in the ’70s, I probably would have played for the Raiders, I had that kind of attitude and mentality.”
In one of life’s karmic twists, Fredenburg years later would find himself a wrestling coach in South Florida, preaching to his kids to be careful how they carried themselves during a match.
Today’s generation of big men on campus will go through an ego-warping courting process. Anyone who gets out with a shred of humility intact is lucky. Twenty years ago, when Fredenburg was a prize, his father had to limit recruiting contact to “only” 10 coaches a day.
Michigan was a most attractive suitor, but Fredenburg eventually signed with Ray Goff’s Georgia Bulldogs in order to stay close to home so his parents could watch him play in person.
His folks didn’t get to see much. Redshirting his freshman year, Fredenburg was bounced between offense and defense, back to offense. He chaffed under offensive line coach Wayne McDuffie. Fed up, he quit midway through the 1993 season. He transferred to East Tennessee State and finished his football career as an All Southern Conference performer.
New perspective
Moving to Florida in the late 1990s, he coached football and wrestling at schools in Miami and West Palm Beach. He was convinced to come back to Athens in 2002 to work a football camp. It was a healing experience. He was won over by Mark Richt’s welcoming nature. “From that point forward, we switched back over. We are Bulldog fans,” he said. He has Georgia decals on both his family cars as signs of loyalty.
By late 2006, married and with a child on the way, Fredenburg gave up an athletic director job at Royal Palm Beach (Fla.) High to move closer to home. Having earned a masters in special education atop the criminal justice degree he had from East Tennessee State, he knew he could find work.
Today, he has a full house in Ball Ground. His children, Joseph, 10; Adison, 4; Madden, 3; and Elysse, 1, provide all the homey background noise. He teaches at the Tippens Education Center in Canton, where his size now serves as a reassuring presence for autistic teens who require a strong base from which to learn new behavior.
“He has a difficult class. He is very positive with his students, and is creative with the curriculum,” said Marsha Iler, principal at Tippens.
“He has a lot of empathy for his students. He doesn’t use his size to intimidate. By wrapping an arm around them or just being in their proximity, he can lend a soothing effect.”
Winning on the football field can be a loud, definitive experience. Now, Fredenburg seeks small victories every day, slight changes in the behavior of a handful of exceptionally challenging kids.
“Since I took the class over last year those guys have really calmed down,” said Fredenburg, who was named teacher of the year at Tippens last year. “These kids I teach hit themselves, bite themselves. Just to change that behavior a little bit is rewarding. If a kid can pick up a speaking device and tell you what he wants, something you thought he could never do, that’s huge.
“[Progress] comes from who’s teaching them, the attention you give them, the patience you have with them. Like it is in coaching.”
For all the promise that comes with being identified as one of the top players in a football-rich state like Georgia, Fredenburg never played a down professionally. The funnel to fame and wealth in the NFL narrows to practically a pinpoint, even for those who are gifted with much potential.
Sometimes if they work it right, those who don’t quite fit through that tiny opening can reshape their views of success and use the game as transportation to higher ground.
“It paid for my college,” Fredenburg said when asked what being a high school football phenom ultimately meant. “No way my parents [his father is a retired sheet metal worker] could have afforded to send me to UGA. It was the only way I could have gone to a major school. It got me two degrees, gave my family a lot of joy, gave me a lot of life lessons. You have to take from it what you can.”
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