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Studying is no game, Erickson says Photo by Bob Pennell Chris Bouman, a music teacher at McLoughlin Middle School, dances with OSU's Beaver mascot while the school's jazz band plays a swing tune. Work hard off field, OSU coach tells students By VICKI GUARINO They've heard it before from parents and teachers. But on Wednesday, McLoughlin Middle School students heard Oregon State University's head football coach tell them a world of opportunity stands before them, if only they would study and work hard. "You have a lot of choices and you have great opportunity," Coach Dennis Erickson told some 900 seventh- and eighth-graders. "The opportunity to go to college and get a scholarship really is there, but you have to take care of business. Erickson "Be successful academically." Erickson, known for his winning college teams at the University of Miami in Florida, and most recently for coaching the Seattle Seahawks, is spending a few weeks on the road trying to inspire middle school students to study at least as hard as they play. He became head football coach at OSU five months ago. Sharing the podium with Erickson were OSU women's basketball coach Judy Spoelstra and university athletic director Mitch Barnhart. Together they staged a pep rally of sorts for academics. Barnhart told students they would have a growing number of opportunities to make choices for themselves. Good or bad, decisions about whether to drink, smoke or skip school would be on their shoulders. Even small decisions, like attending a class or completing a homework assignment, can have big payoffs in the years ahead, Barnhart said. Spoelstra urged kids to find something they like -- music, basketball, math -- and learn to do it well. "Find something that interests you, that's your opportunity," Spoelstra said. McLoughlin athletes and football fans like seventh-graders Glenn Pennington and J.D. Albertson asked for autographs at the end of the program. They said they like the OSU Beavers and they appreciated the coaches' encouragement. "It pressed me to go further than I really need to -- to do extra work," Glenn said. And nonplayers like eighth-grader Sean Canet also found the message appealing. "You can still do stuff if you don't play sports," Sean said. Barnhart agreed that sports and promoting athletics was not the point of the visit. "That's why I talk about the space shuttle a little bit, to get these kids to think about all the opportunities out there," Barnhart said. The visit is part of a first-ever, universitywide recruiting campaign. Barnhart said staff from all around the Corvallis campus -- from coaches to the university's president -- are touring the region to stir interest in OSU. Most of the OSU delegation is focusing on high school students who are making or beginning to make college plans. Rules governing college sports restrict athletic departments from making those kinds of contacts, however. So the coaches are talking to middle school students who are years away from making college decisions. They made just one stop in Medford, and are in Bend today. From Oregon, they plan to head north into Washington. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA