Jemalle Cornelius set Fort Meade receiving records with 53 catches for 1,004 yards and 13 touchdowns as a junior in 2000. Then he switched to quarterback for his senior season and passed for more than 2,100 yards and accounted for 36 total TDs to win the Florida Dairy Farmers Class 1A Player of the Year honor as the catalyst for a state runner-up team.
But Cornelius, now the Fort Meade coach, said his proudest moments wearing Miners black are still to come.
One of the youngest head coaches in Florida high school football history hopes the work he does molding and mentoring today’s Fort Meade players will surpass all his achievements on the field.
Fort Meade is 9-0 and again in contention for a Class 1A state title in its first season under the direction of Cornelius, who took the job at age 24 and turned 25 during two-a-days in August. But Cornelius sees his role as a lot more than just keeping one of Florida’s premier small-school programs on a roll.
“I love football. I absolutely love the game and winning is always going to be important,” Cornelius said this week. “But it’s very important to me to use football as a vehicle to reach young men and to help them reach their full potential. Realistically, 10-15 years from now, it’s not going to matter too much what kind of player you were in high school. What kind of parent are you? What kind of husband are you? What kind of employee are you?”
Fort Meade coach Jemalle Cornelius
So while Cornelius and his staff are teaching the fundamentals to lockdown defenders like linemen Jimmy Office and Brandon Fulse and sophomore linebackers Maurice Russell and Jalen Brown, the former Florida Gator also uses time spent with his players to preach life lessons.
The Miners have maintained Fort Meade’s lofty football standards, winning the school’s 11th consecutive district title and 44th consecutive district game.
And as good as Fort Meade football has been, Cornelius believed from the start that he could make it even better in some areas.
“One of the things I really felt we could do better is reduce the number of penalties, particularly the personal fouls, and get rid of the perception of kids with no self discipline. And we’ve got to have a better rate of guys that go off to college, and not just go but go off but finish what they started. We want to send guys to college and have them stay for four years and graduate.”
To that end, Cornelius is excited to have two former Fort Meade stars excelling as college freshman to point toward.
Onterio McCalleb, who ran for 27 TDs for the Miners in 2007, did not meet NCAA academic requirements out of high school. But McCalleb, who has said he grew up in poverty, persevered and is now a blazing fast freshman running back and return man at Auburn after one year of prep school in Virginia. He has been SEC Freshman of the Week twice, including when he had 204 all-purpose yards in a victory over Tennessee.
Freddie Cortez, who made a 52-yard field goal as a sophomore and totaled 145 career points as a Fort Meade placekicker, is starting for Kent State as a true freshman.
Cornelius, who is married and a father of two, said he had some struggles as a University of Florida football signee and knows that small-town kids can be overwhelmed by college. But he ended up in an appointed team leadership position for the Gators’ 2006 national title team and was the recipient of high praise from Coach Urban Meyer as an unselfish player of impeccable character.
“College can be difficult. I know that. I was fortunate enough to have good parents and a good support system and a great man in Urban Meyer to mentor me. Not everybody is as fortunate to have a family that backed them as much as my parents did. I’m looking forward to staying in touch with the guys that go off to college and spending as much time talking with them as I do with the players I have here. A lot of guys need that person in their lives who can help them get through college or whatever it is they choose to pursue.”
Buddy Collings is a senior sports writer for the Orlando Sentinel who has covered high school sports and compiled Florida record lists for three decades.
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