Bison role models

IT’S A FEW MINUTES before 10 a.m. on Tuesday in Cindy Howard Gurchiek’s (’86) third-grade class at Harding Academy. Students are working quietly, but there is a feeling of anticipation in the air because they know that in a few minutes they will be here — people older, bigger and much stronger than they are.

When the Bison Buddies arrive, those differences don’t produce fear or nervousness. Instead, the classroom lights up with smiles, giggles and hugs all around.

The Bison Buddies for Gurchiek’s class are three Harding football players. De’Onte Garrett is a 6-foot-1, 300-pound defensive tackle who during o season put on a show by bench pressing 225 pounds 41 times in less than one minute. He is joined by Ray Davis, a 6-foot, 290-pound offensive lineman, and Frank Herbert, a 5-foot-10, 180-pound defensive back who is the speedster in the group.

The trio is part of more than 20 Harding football players who make up Bison Buddies and weekly visit students at Harding Academy and other local elementary schools. Garrett, Davis and Herbert stop by on Tuesday and Thursday for about an hour.

It is a program that began almost 10 years ago and carries on a tradition that head coach Ronnie Huckeba says started back in the 1970s with a program called Harding Athletes as Role Models. Garrett is the leader of this year’s Buddies and says that Bison Buddies is a highlight of his week.

“I just like being a kid,” 23-year-old Garrett says. “Going into those classes brings me life. I feed off the energy they’ve got. I like having fun and being funny. It relieves me of all the stress of school and lets me be a kid again.”

On this Tuesday, the students are divided into three groups. Garrett, a Bible and family ministry major from El Dorado, Arkansas, sits at a desk at the front of the class with a deck of cards. As two students rotate to his station, Garrett, in his deep bass voice, tells them to take two cards from the top of the deck. The smallest number goes on top to form a fraction, and the students compare the fractions. Whichever student has the largest fraction gets all four cards.

DAVIS, WHO HAS THE NICKNAME “Hulk” for obvious reasons, is helping a group of six students with a math lesson on iPads. Herbert and a group of six or seven other students work on Mountain Math at the front of the room, a series of questions reviewing concepts learned earlier in the year.

Harding Academy elementary principal Bode Teague sees the interaction Harding’s football players have with his students as a key benefit for Bison Buddies.

“The students love having role models to look up to,” Teague says. “They have these huge guys come in and sit down with them and learn their names. They read to them or work with them individually, and our kids love it.

“On the flip side, it gives the Bison Buddies a chance to be of service to someone other?than themselves.”

Gurchiek, who is in her 15th year as a teacher at Harding Academy, has had the same group of Bison Buddies for three years.

“The Bison Buddies show my class college students serving and doing something they don’t have to do, using their time to come over here when they could be doing something else,” Gurchiek says. “It also gives my students a connection. They see these football players out on the field, but Bison Buddies have shared with them that God comes first. At a young age, when they are so impressionable, for them to hear the Buddies say that really makes a difference.

“My students see them as superheroes, and I see them as really good examples of what well- rounded student-athletes should be.”

For almost all Bison Buddies, the program comes down to one thing.

“I do it for the kids,” says Davis, a health care management major from Fayetteville, Arkansas. “I love seeing their reaction when we walk through the door. They look up to us. It’s like having an older sibling. It’s good to set an example for them.”

In the classroom, it’s hard to tell who enjoys Bison Buddies the most.

“They are just like family,” says 9-year-old Xander Province. “They act like they’ve known us since we were born. They just come and hang out.”

“I think they are very helpful,” says 8-year- old Ruby Lewis. “They are also very funny, and that can be a part of education and help you learn more because kids like funniness.”

But it’s not all fun and games.

“They help us with Mountain Math,” Lewis says. “And they don’t give you the answer completely. They just help you.”

And who’s afraid of a little Mountain Math when you know that twice a week, you have Bison Buddies headed your way to tackle it with you.