McGrone Makes Mom Proud: Part II
Growing up, Cameron McGrone’s reports from his teachers were overwhelmingly positive and even the negatives weren’t enough for his mother, Lynn Redd, to get upset about.
“The only negative things I would hear from his teachers weren’t actually negative,” Redd says. “They were like, ‘Cameron needs to advocate for himself more. He’s such a great kid, he should let it be known. He can speak up more. He doesn’t have to sit in the back of the classroom and be quiet. He can participate more.’
“He’d still be in the back of the room getting straight A’s. They just wanted him to participate more because they wanted him to have more of an influence on his peers.”
Through his years on the football field, McGrone, a 2018 Indianapolis linebacker prospect, has proven he can influence his peers in his own way.
“He was always a silent leader,” his mother says. “Every football team he’s been on, he’s been a captain.”
McGrone was even elected captain of the Lawrence Central High School football program as a sophomore.
“There were juniors and seniors who could have easily been the captain, but they named Cameron to be captain of the defense,” his mother explains.
Redd has always watched football, but didn’t consider herself well-versed enough in the X’s and O’s to completely understand what her son’s future in the game could be.
“My husband always joked, ‘I don’t know if I’m biased, but…’” she says of her husband, David Redd. “He always had awesome things to say about Cameron since his first season in little league football. He’d say, ‘Cameron has the football IQ to make it to a D-I school. He has the football IQ to make it to The League.”
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“I would say, ‘What are you talking about? That’s Cameron.’ I wasn’t putting him down, but I just think about my son who I joke with and laugh with as a fun-time, goofy kid. My husband has always said, ‘No, Lynn, Cameron is really, really awesome. He really, really knows the game.’”
When McGrone landed his first scholarship offer from Syracuse in March of 2016, his mother still didn’t quite grasp what was happening. “I didn’t know anything about football recruiting,” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Awesome. You get to play for Syracuse and go to college for free.’ I really didn’t know anything about the process.”
But just a couple weeks after earning defensive MVP honors at the Best of Midwest Combine, McGrone would have the opportunity to go to several schools for free.
“The next thing I know, he started getting offers upon offers,” his mother says. “I think he had five or six offers by the end of school.
“I was totally shocked. It was the spring of his sophomore year and I was totally shocked.”
But it wasn’t long before the shock wore off and Redd realized her son had a big decision on deck and one that would require a lot of thought. Last month, he narrowed his list of offers down to six, Notre Dame, Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Wisconsin. He has since narrowed his list down even further.
“I think he understands that coaches have to do a level of wheeling-and-dealing to sell their program and their school,” his mother says. “Cameron is currently trying to figure out which school seems like the best fit and is building relationships with the coaches that have been recruiting him.”
Redd also understands the wheeling-and-dealing nature of the process, but expects her son to be patient in order to make the best decision.
“I understand a lot of coaches would like for their recruits to commit early,” she says. “I told Cameron that I want him to take his time.”
Integrity is one of the key values Redd and her family have imparted on McGrone.
“Honesty, integrity, dependability,” she says. “Integrity encompasses everything. We want him to be a good person.”
“I’ve heard there is a recruit who has decommitted two or three times,” she says. “To me, that shows there may be an issue with dependability, or a lack of parental guidance and communication with the recruiting coaches. Parents and coaches should be involved in mentoring these young men so they can make educated decisions for themselves and not knee-jerk reactions from the minds of 16 or 17-year-old kids. Of course, there could be several reasonable factors for an athlete to decommit, but multiple times seems strange to me.”
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Education will be one of the primary factors when McGrone does make his decision, which is expected to come sometime within the next several weeks.
“We push academics in our family,” she says. “Also, his decision is going to dictate where he’s going to live the next four years of his life. He’s going to build relationships with his teammates and he’s going to look at these coaches as mentors during his time at college.”
“It’s a big decision for a young person to make. We just want to make sure he’s taking his time and not being mesmerized by all the glitz and glamour that accompanies it, but the actual nuts and bolts. I told him to think ‘This is where I’m going to grow into a man. This is where I’m going to earn my degree. If football ends at Year Four, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?’ Those are the things we want to make sure he’s factoring in his decision and not just swaying back and forth from school to school.”
In the end, the decision will be McGrone’s.
“David and I can do our research and lay things out there in front of him, but ultimately, he has to be the one to go through it and live it,” Redd says. “This decision is going to be his when it’s time to make it.
“I just want him to pick a place that has just as much integrity as I demand from him. I want the same integrity, trustworthiness, and dependability from the program he chooses to play for.”
She has confidence in her son to make the right decision because she – along with the other strong role models in McGrone’s life – have put in the time to raise him properly and began seeing those values reflected in him long ago.
“Motherhood is my top priority over everything. Job aside, my own personal well-being aside, my number one priority is to raise my children and to fulfill my father’s legacy by making sure my children can be proud of our family name. Whether it be the McGrone name or the Redd name, I want our family to be represented well. I’ve tried to do that within my own life and I’ve tried to raise Cameron do that as well.”