Athletes discover the real world at different times.

Middleton gets real look at his life beyond sports
Athletes discover the real world at different times. Some are hit hard in the face with it when hoop dreams or football dreams end with four years of college eligibility. The lucky ones get a taste of it before that.

Akron guard Cedrick Middleton is one who discovered a true connection to his college major, communication. The 6-foot senior from Chicago spent last summer as an intern for ESPN. It was grunt work in human resources, not glamour work on TV or radio, but it was an introduction to the world of J-O-B that most people live in.

"It opened his eyes," Akron coach Keith Dambrot said.

Middleton came to Akron as a late recruit when another player backed out of his signed letter of intent. At the time, Middleton's older brother, Roderick, was playing at Buffalo, and Dambrot's fear was Bulls coach Reggie Witherspoon was going to get him.

"We're lucky Reggie didn't take him, cause I'm sure he could have had him," Dambrot said. "We got a guy who turned out to be pretty good."

Problem was, Dru Joyce was already locked in at point guard, and heralded 6-4 recruit Bubba Walther was the heir apparent at shooting guard. Then local favorite Nick Dials transferred from Ohio State, and Middleton waited his turn.

When Walther transferred, Dambrot let it known the Zips would not skip a beat with Middleton.

"Athletically, he was just what we needed," the coach said. "And he's such a high-character guy. He's been the best kid I've ever been around in all the years I have coached. He's the salt of the earth."

Milt Cook, a former Akron assistant coach, works for ESPN and alerted Dambrot to the opportunity. The coach then went straight to Middleton.

It was Middleton's personal characteristics - not his on-court production or the fact he was the Mid-American Conference's Sixth Man of the Year - that made Dambrot want to present the ESPN opportunity to Middleton.
They had me doing file work around the office," Middleton said. " . . . I did visit the radio and TV studios, watched how they cut up film and did the highlights.

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Middleton said. "What they had me doing wasn't exactly my field, but it was the fact of being out there, being able to make connections in other departments. Who knows what will happen down the line?"

After a summer in Connecticut, Middleton was a changed man back on the Akron campus. He had replaced his corn rows and the Afro with the corporate close crop of a young professional. And nobody recognized him.

"People I knew would walk right past me," Middleton said.

The loss of hair came with a weight loss as well, 10 to 15 pounds according to Dambrot, but it is a plus, because Middleton has struggled with sore knees and a stiff back throughout his Akron career.

The time away from the court didn't hurt, either. Middleton is averaging 11.8 points a game this season, compared to 11.1 last season. He's shooting 80 percent from the free-throw line, compared to 69 percent last season.

Other than that, the Akron coach said he hasn't noticed any major changes in his senior guard.

"He was so high-character to begin with he couldn't have changed much," Dambrot said. "The biggest thing he got out of it was just understanding what the real world is about a little better."

Michael Coyne, a lifelong Scituate resident and professional mural artist

Michael Coyne of Scituate with his mural depicting legendary New England sports figures from the late 1800s to the present.


Boston sports legends come together on canvas
Take three self-confessed sports nuts devoted to the Boston sports scene and what do you get? A work of art with some 150 individual sporting tributes in portraiture on one massive mural.

more stories like thisMichael Coyne, a lifelong Scituate resident and professional mural artist who runs HawkMoon Studio out of his restored craftsman-style home on Mann Lot Road, has just finished a mural measuring 14 feet long and 4 1/2 feet tall that is testimony to the sports he, his partners, and sports-crazed New Englanders love.

"We're all sports nuts, the three of us," Coyne said of his partners, Michael Cooney of Scituate, a certified public accountant, and Thomas Reilly of Hingham, who owns an investment management company. "We'd never really seen anything like this depicting the Boston sports scene. Some bars have collages of photos, but not art."

The three joined on the mural idea and plan to split any profits, but Coyne isn't sure if he'll try to sell the mural; the plan is to market prints of it, and possibly a calendar.

The painting embraces Boston sports from the late 19th century to the present, depicting long-gone legends, like fighter John L. Sullivan, on the left, and continuing to today's heroes, such as the 2007 World Series champs Boston Red Sox, on the far right.

Winding its way from one end to the other is the Boston Marathon route. Subtle, lighter renditions of buildings are in the backdrop, including Fenway Park, the Boston Braves field, and Harvard Stadium.

The left side of the mural, showing Boston sports from long ago to the mid-20th century, is in sepia and black-and-white tones while the right half comes alive with bursts of color.

Coyne's main sporting love is hockey; an avid player himself, he's depicted the legendary icemen of the Hub, including Bobby Orr - whom he painted last on the mural, a tribute to his long-time idol. When he started the mural, Brockton boxing icon Rocky Marciano went up first.

"We spent a lot of time arguing about who should be on the mural," Coyne said of frequent meetings of the minds among the partners. "It was hard to know what to leave off as well as what to put on."

There are sentimental tributes; Boston Marathon legend Johnny Kelley, two-time winner of the event and record holder with 58 finishes, who died in 2004 at 97, is shown young and old on opposite ends of the piece. In the right-hand corner is the late Red Auerbach, Boston Celtic coach, president and pro basketball pioneer, puffing away on his ever-present cigar.

It's a male-dominated mural, with three female sports legends shown: track and field Olympian Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Olympic silver medal skater Nancy Kerrigan, and Marathon winner Joan Benoit. Francis Ouimet, winner of the 1913 US Open, and his young caddy, Eddie Lowery, are shown, a tribute to the game of golf that is the passion of his partners.

There are the older: Babe Ruth, Carl Yastrzemski, Phil Esposito, Larry Bird. There are the newer, Tom Brady, Keith Foulke, Roger Clemens. There is the uplifting: World-champion cyclist Marshall "Major" Taylor, a.k.a "The Worcester Whirlwind," who battled prejudice against blacks his whole life to excel in the sport he loved. And there is the tragic; under the words "The Impossible Dream," a label applied to the 1967 Red Sox, is Tony Conigliaro, his left eye horribly swollen from a beaning that effectively ended the promising young slugger's career.

Though the project took a year and a half, it isn't Coyne's biggest: Four years ago, he did a three-panel, 50-foot-long, 6-foot-high mural for a private client that was a timeline of American history. That took him more than three years to finish.

The partners hope this work, as yet unsold, leads to a cottage industry of sorts doing similarly themed pieces for universities and pro sports team. He said Harvard University has scommissioned a rendition of the history of its men's and women's hockey teams.

Coyne makes his living both as a muralist, painting scenes in hallways and living rooms of private homes, and as a painter of landscapes and seascapes. He said there was something special about creating a look at the huge world of New England sports, a project that after all the arguing back and forth among the three partners about who to include, "took on a life of its own."