ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100022
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
GRAIG FANTUZZI is a star in the classroom and on the baseball field for Washington and Lee.
Student-athletes aren't always so. Then, there is Graig Fantuzzi.
Here's the book on Washington and Lee's senior left fielder. If his grade-point average were placed on baseball's scale, he'd be batting more than 1.000.
``When I was really young, I was taught to have a balance between academics and athletics,'' Fantuzzi said. ``I've always been blessed with success. I really don't know why.''
It started at home. Fantuzzi mother is a librarian and special education teacher. His late father was a minor-league baseball player in the Brooklyn Dodgers' system who became a community college baseball coach.
It's a blend of books and baseball that make Fantuzzi special.
At Toms River (N.J.) South High, Fantuzzi was class valedictorian and played basketball, football and baseball. He was on state championship teams in the latter two and was the Shore Conference Athlete of the Year. When his class graduates next month at W&L, he will not only be the valedictorian but probably a three-time GTE Academic All-American.
With a 4.184 grade-point average - that's on a 4.0 scale - Fantuzzi is on track to finish with the second-highest GPA in W&L history. W&L went to a +/- grade scale in 1983. His lowest grade at W&L is an A. His freshman year, he had a perfect 4.33 - all A+'s - started all nine games for the Generals' football team, had three wins and a save as a pitcher and was named the school's outstanding freshman male athlete.
One of his elective courses that year was Japanese. He thought ``it fit with what I wanted to take. I have an interest in that part of the world, and if you're interested in business, that's an important part of the world.''
It's no surprise that Fantuzzi has a double major - physics/engineering and business administration, two curricula without many overlapping course requirements. He already has a job with an investment banking firm in Charlotte, N.C., but he may end up in Singapore, on a one-year postgraduate Fulbright Scholarship. He's an Honor Scholar at W&L, where he chose to go to school over Princeton, Dartmouth and Penn.
``Giving up football was a difficult decision,'' said Fantuzzi, who likely could have been the Generals' starting quarterback as a sophomore. ``It came down to deciding that doing the academics and still playing sports and trying to have a social life was too much. Something had to go.
``I was waking up, going to class, going to practice, studying and going to bed, then doing it again the next day and the next day. In college, you're supposed to grow as a person and part of that is growing socially. It was a tough decision. It was the first time I've ever had to put something aside, but it enabled me to concentrate on baseball, too. That's where I got my start in sports, with my father.''
Fantuzzi is in four honor societies, and he's a co-captain of the W&L baseball team, with classmate Matt Ermigiotti. It happens to be one of the best Generals' teams in recent times. W&L, off until April 14 for exams is 8-9. The program has had only one winning season (11-9 in 1989) since 1972, and the co-captains rank 1-2 in RBI this season.
``It's their team,'' W&L 10th-year head coach Jeff Stickley said of the co-captains. ``We have a lot of seniors on this team, and Graig and Ermo are guys who like to play, and this team reflects that. I don't know if it relates to his academics, but Graig is one of the best leaders we've ever had, one of our best captains. The kids respect him.
``He's smart, but he's not one of those guys who makes a big deal of that. He likes to have a good time, too. Some people with Graig's smarts, you can tell their eggheads. Not him. He's just a great guy to have on a team.''
Fantuzzi came to W&L with 24 advanced placement credits from high school, and while he knows he's gotten all A's in classes like linear algebra, fluid dynamics, Buddhism and Japanese literature, it isn't that he set classroom perfection as a goal.
``I don't need to get all A's,'' Fantuzzi said. ``I don't sit there and say, `I have to get an A' on this. What I do set out to do is do something to the best of my ability, to work as hard at is as possible. Rewards, they're a nice achievement.
``My dad talked a lot about this, how in a lot of things, performance is more rewarding than accomplishment. He'd have baseball camps where kids age 8-9-10 always had to get those little trophies, and when they all didn't, they weren't happy. What was more important, he said, isn't what they attained, but what they learned during the week.''
If his effort in the classroom hasn't been impressive enough, Fantuzzi has displayed a resiliency on the diamond, too. After he blew out his arm pitching early in his sophomore season, he moved to the outfield, relocated his stroke and batted a school-record .482. What appeals to him as an eventual career goal, Fantuzzi said, is ``to come back to college and teach and maybe be an assistant baseball coach,'' he said. ``I like people, and I'd like to think I'm good dealing with people.''
He really doesn't spend all of his time with his head in a book, or in the kitchen.
``The last B I received was in the eighth grade,'' Fantuzzi said. ``Home economics.''
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ARNE KUHLMAN. 1. Graig Fantuzzi, a senior baseballby CNBplayer at Washington and Lee, is on track to post the second-highest
GPA in school history. His lowest grade at the school in Lexington
has been an A, and he had all A+'s his freshman year. He's performed
well on the field, too, where the Generals are flirting with only
their second winning season since 1972. color. 2. Graig Fantuzzi has
helped lead the Washington and Lee baseball team to an 8-9 record
this season.