OLSM standout Bolden has paid the price of success

By KEITH DUNLAP
Of The Oakland Press

Orchard Lake St. Mary's High School football player Robert Bolden scrambles for yardage against Birmingham Brother Rice during second quarter action. Photo taken on Saturday, October 25, 2008, at Ford Field in Detroit, Mich. (The Oakland Press/Jose Juarez)

ORCHARD LAKE — One casualty was a car windshield. Another was any hopes of being warm.

Yet another was having soft landings.

There's an old saying that there's a price for success in any aspect of life, and these were the main prices to Robert Bolden paid while growing up, training his golden right arm to play quarterback.

Just about every day outside at his house in Detroit, Bolden and his father would have throwing sessions on the unusual football playground known as a street.

Time and time again, Bolden would loft passes to hone his touch or fire them to build arm strength, all the while trying to enhance his footwork and mechanics.

If he threw a bad pass, his father would tackle him lightly as punishment.

Didn't matter if it was on the street, denying him those soft landings, or if it was in the dead of winter, which also explains why he often would have to sacrifice warmth as part of his training.

“We'd be out running around the roads,” Bolden said. “It was cold outside.”

Bolden eventually started throwing the ball so far that it led to him having to pony up some money for a repair job.

To test his arm strength, Bolden flung the ball as far as he could down the street, and “Bam!”

The ball hit a car windshield, leaving a huge crack that couldn't be ignored.

“It was windy,” Bolden said. “It just crashed through this lady's front window. I paid it off.”

Of course, like any success story, Bolden can simply laugh at those prices paid now and proudly boast about how it was all worth it.

For those who don't know much about Bolden, you'll likely be hearing his name a lot this fall during the prep football season.

A senior at Orchard Lake St. Mary's, Bolden is not only one of the premier high school quarterbacks in the state, but the nation as well.

He's a consensus top-10 quarterback nationally, and has committed to play for Joe Paterno at Penn State.

At 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, Bolden has good size to the play position. Being able to fling a ball 60 to 65 yards in the air and hit a specific target, he has the arm strength and accuracy to play the position.

With long, gliding strides, speed and an elusiveness that has defensive players grabbing at air trying to chase him, he has the running ability to be a perfect dual-threat quarterback.

More importantly, St. Mary's head coach George Porritt said through extensive film study and game action ever since he established himself as the team's starter as a sophomore two years ago, he's got an awareness of the position any coach would like to see.

“I think the difference between this year and last year is that he has a knowledge of the game,” Porritt said.

When he first started playing youth football at age 12, Bolden said he actually was a tight end.

A year later, largely thanks to those practice sessions on his neighborhood street, his youth coach saw enough in his arm to put him at quarterback, and the rest is history.

Once he got to high-school age, Bolden decided to follow in the footsteps of another stellar dual-threat quarterback, Justin Siller, and attend St. Mary's.

It didn't take long to make those at St. Mary's realize he'd be the man at quarterback, leading the Eaglets to the Division 3 state final in 2007 as a sophomore.

At Ford Field that night, Bolden got to play in arguably the greatest high school football game in state history, a five-overtime classic that eventually was won by East Grand Rapids, 46-39.

Bolden didn't disappoint as a junior, passing for 1,000 yards and seven touchdowns and running for 300 yards and seven touchdowns, but the season felt like a failure, due to what St. Mary's did as a team.

The Eaglets went 4-5 and missed qualifying for the state playoffs, just about unheard of at tradition-rich St. Mary's.

“Usually on the campus, all the kids are real jumpy, happy and are running around playing with each other,” Bolden said. “After that, it went down a little bit. Everybody was kind of tense. It's a football school, and when football don't do good, the school doesn't feel right.”

To rectify that and make sure the school feels right after this season, Bolden has emerged as a visible team leader in just about every aspect, from offseason conditioning to practice drills.

That fact was evident after a recent practice, when Porritt sprung a surprise on the team and had them do crabwalks across the field for 40 yards.

Bolden said the team had never done those before, but there he was, leading the pack of crabwalkers to the designated finish line.

“He leads by example,” Porritt said. “He's got to be first in everything he's doing.”

Traditionally a run-oriented team, St. Mary's will by no means abandon its philosophy of pounding teams on the ground.

Still, even Porritt admits it'll be foolish if he doesn't give Bolden opportunities to make plays.

“We're going to have to put it in his hands,” Porritt said.

Following his senior year at St. Mary's, Bolden will then gear up for a college career at Penn State.

The Nittany Lions first started to pursue Bolden seriously at the end of last season, when members of the coaching staff flew to Detroit to see the St. Mary's-Birmingham Brother Rice game in the Catholic League's Prep Bowl.

Bolden then went to a Penn State camp in late June, and liked everything about the campus and program, enough to pledge a verbal commitment in July.

Getting a chance to play major college football will just be another example why all the prices he paid during those throwing sessions on the street with his father was well worth it for Bolden.

Prep Football

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