Senior Ahmad Abuomar excels for Tornadoes

MOUNT CARMEL - Some things jump out right away about Ahmad Abuomar.

The first is his arresting size. Listed at 6-foot, 3-inches and 234 pounds, Abuomar is legitimately that big, no numbers inflation there.

Abuomar is also a bright kid - well spoken, polite and humorous.

And yes, with dark, curly hair, brown eyes and brown skin, and his extended family originally from the Middle East, near Jerusalem, Abuomar is a coal region kid at heart.

With his size and an outstanding work ethic, he's also every bit a football player. Abuomar has been a consistent force on the offensive and defensive lines this season for the Red Tornadoes and has several colleges taking notice. He hasn't, however, always been a football star in the making.

"I never watched football on TV," Abuomar said. "The only positions I knew were quarterback and receiver. I did not know the line was called the line. I think mostly, because my parents don't watch sports, there was no one to influence me to get into it."

In just three short seasons, Abuomar, now a senior, has picked up football nicely. He leads the Red Tornadoes in sacks with 7.5 and has 60 tackles. His success is partly because of the way then-Mount Carmel coach Mike Brennan handled Abuomar's introduction to the sport, recognizing the physical talent and unique way in which the young man learned.

Abuomar, one of the top seven students in his class, learns, not by the memorization of going through the steps over and over again in accordance with what he sees on film, but by visualizing what he sees and translating that into self-made diagrams.

So Brennan gave a promising sophomore a study sheet of sorts.

"Every single day after school, during practice even, I'd pull out the paper from my pocket and read over it," Abuomar said. "They would be running the plays, I would look at my spot, look at the paper and focus. I studied so much, it was like I was studying for a test."

Abuomar asked the older players, who he admits he didn't want to talk to because they were older, about what was happening in front of him and what his role was in everything.

"I'd say, 'Hey guys, do you mind helping me here?' I would stay after practice. It was a big transition, a big change, but by my junior year, I just kind of got used to it."

Abuomar was also very honest about one concept in football that just doesn't help him - watching film.

"I think of everything like a study sheet in my head," he said. "I always go home and draw the plays. I draw the Xs and Os, and draw the plays. I think of it like a test. I study it. I watch the film, but it doesn't really help me. I don't know really what's going on. I look at it and I see people moving, but I can write on paper what I'm going to do and how I'm doing it, just how I do everything else."

But last year, with the wealth of senior talent ahead of him, Abuomar's statistics weren't the type to put him on anyone's radar, but he was gaining confidence, and applying what he'd learned as a wrestler growing up - the only sport in which he'd ever competed before football - to techniques used on the gridiron.

"It helps a lot with quickness, leg strength," Abuomar said. "The transition at first, I confused a lot of things. My first reaction when I saw someone was to grab them, and now I have to get away from them. My first couple years I never actively thought about going on to someone else or getting to the linebackers. My first year of wrestling after football, it all coincided so well for me both physically and mentally."

With a combination of a little bit of experience and the gained intuition of what's happening around him, Abuomar has impressed head coach Bob Chesney to the point where Chesney has said Abuomar has been the most consistent lineman from week one to right now.

"It was really like molding a piece of clay into whatever you wanted," Chesney said. "He was very intelligent, but until he figured out the dynamics and could process what we were saying, because of the terminology he had his troubles. He had no idea about blocks. He was never into professional sports or football. But we knew there was a lot of talent because of intelligence and work ethic. And then with the wrestling, you could see him gain self confidence."

There is also the transition of praciticing the Muslim faith in an area where the majority are Christian, and trying to fit in.

To help ease that change, Chesney switched his team prayer from a conventional Catholic prayer, to a generic blessing.

"It's kind of moving," Abuomar said about Chesney taking his beliefs into account. "I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person on the team that doesn't do that, so it's nice."

Chesney sounded like it was an easy change to make to bring all his players into a comfortable fold.

"It's a homemade prayer I made up asking God, and God can take on many shapes, forms and names, and we say that instead of a more traditional Hail Mary or Our Father," Chesney said.

Strength, endurance and dedication to one another are traits needed to be competitive and part of what they, whatever being each one is considering at the time the team, asks for.

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