Wake Forest Athletics
Demon Deacons' Jack of All Trades
9/16/2013 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 16, 2013
This article was originally published in the Sept. 14 edition of Kickoff, the official gameday magazine of Wake Forest football.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - In a recent campus spirit promotion, an old car painted in the colors of four Wake Forest rivals was deposited in the middle of Manchester Plaza. Students were then invited to pick up sledgehammers and smash the jalopy back to the days of Elvis. Or, to put it another way, so thoroughly that not even James Ward could have stitched it back together.
While cathartic for some, the sight was presumably hard on the eyes of Ward, a sophomore cornerback who aspires to own his own repair business one day in furtherance of a hobby. And he's got a lot of hobbies.
"Built a treehouse," said of his youth in central Florida. "Played with Legos a lot. I was always working on something."
And he's not about to break a habit. One day this semester, he said he'll declare two majors, electing to go with the seldom attempted combo of Theatre and Business and Enterprise Management. If you put something in from of Ward, he's likely to try it for a variety of reasons.
He says this nature stems in part from his upbringing between Daytona, the mecca of fast cars, and Orlando, home of vivid imaginations. Drawing from those two places and the rural land in and around his home, he saw tall grass and small trees as opportunity carousing in the wind. He once chopped a tree, sliced its trunk into thin pieces, slammed them into the ground and covered the newly created perimeter with palm leaves. He had himself a hut.
"You give me a machete and a switchblade, and there's no telling what I can do in the woods," Ward said. "I think I spent most of my childhood in those woods."
Cars came next. Ward and some buddies started taking dilapidated vehicles, acquiring abandoned parts and doing their best to bring them back to life. A Dodge Dart never looked so good.
"We would go to junkyards to get our parts," Ward said. "You could find a lot of them in the lot."
There was just one mitigating factor between their entrepreneurial spirit and a real source of income.
"I don't want to say money, but, yes, money," he said.
When it came to sports, Ward went to everything at DeLand High School. He ranked 33rd in the Orlando Sentinel's Super 60 Central Florida prospects list in football, and that was good enough to get plenty of recruiting consideration. But when that season ended, he didn't simply bask in the attention. He took up another challenge.
Friends of his on the soccer team essentially dared him to try their game, which is played in the winter in Florida. Ward figured it couldn't hurt. He had not committed to anybody in football and figured he could make more positive impressions by displaying his willingness to learn and a general athletic proficiency.
"I thought I could put my mind to anything I wanted to," he said. "The coach gave me a chance to play. Then, after the second day of practice, he told me I was on the team."
Ward's first soccer game had a special visitor, Demon Deacons assistant Tom Elrod, the program's chief emissary in the Sunshine State. Soon thereafter, Ward and Wake Forest were an official match.
"I really liked him," Elrod said. "We evaluated his athleticism in soccer. I learned that he was a great kid. He had never done soccer; he had just been asked to try out. But he was the fastest player on the field."
Soccer therefore became the fourth winter sport Ward had played while in high school. Weightlifting and track are common football crossover ventures, but tennis? Why not? Once he mastered the toss on the serve, he was viable on the court, too.
"While I always knew I could hit it as hard as I wanted to, I had to focus on accuracy," Ward said. "In doubles, I loved playing at the net. Because then I could be aggressive. And then they told me you can hit your opponent with the ball. It all clicked from there."
The secret's out. Football's always in the blood - even with change of venue. And it is his principal extracurricular function these days.
Last fall, Ward was one of only two true freshmen to play for the Deacs, and he saw time in the secondary and on special teams. These days, there are plenty of rookies in the rotation, and everybody will have to grow up to help the Deacons advance through a difficult schedule.
"I know for sure that this team can trust me," he said.
