How did American Heritage grow into a thriving football factory? It started with the cheerleading co

June 06, 2024

PLANTATION, Fla. — Isaiah McKenzie could have been anywhere else last week. After all, the Buffalo Bills were supposed to be enjoying a bye week.

But the 26-year-old receiver and return specialist, who had what would have been his first NFL kickoff return for a touchdown wiped out by a holding penalty in the previous Monday night’s loss to the Tennessee Titans, wasn’t cruising down Fort Lauderdale Beach in his Mercedes-Benz or hanging out at the new barbecue restaurant he bought in Hialeah-Miami Lakes.

Instead, the 5-foot-8, 173-pound speedster, who was raised by his grandmother in a rough Carol City neighborhood, was back at the place he says helped make him: Plantation American Heritage School.

“This place means a lot to me. It saved my life coming here,” said McKenzie, one of nine current NFL players who graduated from Heritage, a private college prep school located west of downtown Fort Lauderdale with a tuition of $35,000 per year.

Isaiah McKenzie showed up to Heritage practice during his bye week‼️ #HeritageBoyz #D2DPerformance #IAmMyBrothersKeeper pic.twitter.com/K2SXL8nAoy

— ahspatriotfootball (@ahspatfootball) October 23, 2021

McKenzie received financial aid to study and play football at Heritage, at a campus that opened in 1975 and sits on 40 acres. Classrooms are housed in brick buildings that feature large vintage clocks. Inside, you’ll find engineering and robotics labs, a mock courtroom, an arts center, a pool and a $28 million athletics building completed in August 2020.

It didn’t always look this nice. And the football team didn’t have the lineage of pros it does now.

When McKenzie first came to Heritage as a freshman in 2010, the school had produced only one NFL player (former Ravens, Browns and Lions offensive lineman Damion Cook) and played for only one state championship, in 1998 under renowned coach Byron Walker, who had previously won three state titles with Belle Glades (Fla.) Glades Day.

Walker didn’t have players like the ones who walk through Heritage’s halls these days. Since 2013, Heritage has had nine U.S. Army All-Americans and five consensus five-star recruits. In all, the Patriots have produced 43 Football Bowl Subdivision signees, including 33 who went to Power 5 conference programs. In the nine years before this run, the Patriots had only 10 players sign with FBS programs, including seven with Power 5 schools.

When Heritage hosted Bradenton IMG Academy, the school that cranks out more recruits and NFL players (12) than any high school in the country, in an exhibition game in August (IMG won 35-15), the Patriots proudly displayed banners with the names of their nine NFL players, including those taken in the 2021 draft. IMG had a record seven players drafted. Heritage had one fewer, breaking the previous record of four set locally by St. Thomas Aquinas and Miami Northwestern.

The list of NFL players at Heritage: McKenzie (2017), Rams running back Sony Michel (2018 first-round pick), Panthers defensive end Brian Burns (2019 first-round pick), Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II (2021 first-round pick), Jaguars cornerback Tyson Campbell (2021 second-round pick), Browns receiver Anthony Schwartz (2021 third-round pick), Cardinals cornerback Marco Wilson (2021 fourth-round pick), Packers defensive tackle Tedarrell Slaton (2021 fifth-round pick) and Bears running back Khalil Herbert (2021 sixth-round pick).

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Isaiah McKenzie celebrates his kickoff return for a touchdown — before it was called back because of a penalty — on Monday Night Football two weeks ago against the Tennessee Titans. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

There are likely more NFL players on the way, including University of Miami safety James Williams, Heritage’s most recent All-American and five-star recruit, who is already starting for the hometown Miami Hurricanes in his true freshman year. Williams, who endured a rough childhood, came to Heritage as a sophomore. He transferred to nearby Davie Western High his junior year, before returning to Heritage his senior year.

“(Heritage) helped me become a man, helped me with my off-field things,” said Williams, who was raised by his grandmother after his father shot and killed his mother in front of him and his siblings when he was a young boy. “It’s helped me focus on me and what I’ve got to do in life, (taught me) football is not always No. 1. There are other things in life I have to worry about. I feel like American Heritage helped me become a better person.”

Heritage’s 2022 signing class has six FBS recruits, led by a pair of four-star talents in defensive back Earl Little Jr. and Marvin Jones Jr., the sons of former Miami and Florida State stars who went on to play in the NFL. The 2023 class is led by five-star receiver Brandon Inniss, who is already committed to Oklahoma, plus four other four-star talents according to Rivals.com.

“The program has changed a lot,” McKenzie said. “Back when I was here, some of us were going to college, but we weren’t producing guys in the NFL like this.”

What set Heritage off on its upward trajectory? It all began with the school’s four-time national championship-winning cheerleading coach, who started pushing all the right buttons after she was put in charge.

The right leaders

When Karen Stearns replaced former Miami Dolphins center Jeff Dellenbach, a 15-year NFL veteran who won a Super Bowl with the Packers, as athletic director at Heritage in December 2012, she had been working in the school’s compliance department and had three sons who had attended Heritage, including a couple who played football under Walker.

The first thing Stearns did was hire Mike Rumph, a former Hurricanes national championship-winning cornerback and 2002 San Francisco 49ers first-round pick to replace Dellenbach, who had also served as Heritage’s football coach and led the Patriots to back-to-back 9-2 seasons before leaving to coach at Boca Raton High.

Rumph, who had been Heritage’s defensive coordinator under Dellenbach, made some immediate changes, including implementing a mandatory study hall before every practice.

“I interviewed several people for that position, but he checked all the boxes for us,” Stearns said of Rumph. “He was a parent here already. He understood the Heritage culture. Academics is absolutely first and foremost here, so he understood that component and he wanted to change how the program was run from the young kids all the way through. And that’s what I was looking for. I wanted somebody who was going to invest their time not just in one team but the entire football program, and he did.

“He also changed our tackling program. He took it from the NFL model, where they don’t hit every single day. He changed the culture of the organization. The coaches that he brought in with him, they all bought into the way he wanted to do it. He brought in so many things that I used to watch coach Walker do with accountability. He looked at every athlete and said it’s your job to win.”

Rumph brought in a brigade of former NFL players to help coach the team, including former Miami Dolphins All-Pro cornerback Patrick Surtain, receiver Oronde Gadsden (Cowboys, Dolphins, Steelers), safety Daryl Porter (Bills, Lions, Patriots Titans, Vikings), linebackers Anthony Harris (Dolphins) and Van Waiters (Browns, Vikings) and defensive back Earl Little (Browns, Patriots, Saints), among others.

They’ve run Heritage like a pro and college program, Surtain said.

Surtain, 45, replaced Rumph, 41, as Heritage’s head coach when Rumph left to become an assistant at his alma mater, Miami, in 2016. The Patriots didn’t skip a beat with Surtain as coach. They’ve gone 61-9 and won three state championships, including in 2020 when Surtain was named the NFL’s High School National Coach of the Year.

“It’s just the teaching, the coaching aspect of it, the way we practice,” Surtain said. “Good teams watch film every day. I’m not sure many teams conduct their practices the way we do it in such an intricate manner. And we don’t do it with 70, 80 kids. We do it with 40 kids. We get the right kids, kids with character, kids who want to do right in school, and that’s why I think our guys have been successful at the next level.”

American Heritage players take the field for their big game against Bradenton IMG Academy in August. (Manny Navarro / The Athletic)

But Surtain gives Stearns, who has been at Heritage since 1998, a lot of credit for the success of the program, which has won five state football titles since 2013 and now has nearly as many active players in the NFL as longtime Broward County power St. Thomas Aquinas (11).

“Karen has been tremendous through my time here,” Surtain said. “Just getting us everything that we need, being kind of the big mom of the program.”

Stearns, in turn, gives all the credit to her coaches.

“I’m just the person that pushes the paper and has the (AD) role,” she said. “The staff makes it happen. My pat on the back is the success of our kids. I can’t tell you how many times college coaches come in and say it’s easy to recruit these kids. Because they don’t have to worry about them and their studies in college. They’re ready.”

Heritage had won state titles in soccer, baseball and other sports before Stearns took over. But the Patriots had never been a football power before she got the AD job.

Her connection to sports began as a softball player and cheerleader at nearby South Plantation High, one of the first schools in Broward to have a woman, Sandra Darr, as its athletic director. Stearns studied at Broward College and became a registered respiratory therapist before she was hired by Bill Laurie, who founded American Heritage in 1965 and built the campus in Plantation in 1975.

She began working in the school’s admissions office and then moved over to the compliance office when she finally gave up coaching Heritage’s cheerleaders in 2010. She now serves as a judge at national and international cheerleading competitions. She does that in her free time, when she’s not putting in 12- to 16-hour days at Heritage.

While critics suggest Heritage recruits most of its elite players, Stearns is quick to point out how the school rarely accepts upperclass transfers and how most of the top players the program has produced were students at Heritage long before they were stars on the football field.

Scholarships to get into Heritage are earned mostly in the ninth grade after the completion of an academic scholarship test. Some parents — like Michel’s — have taken jobs at Heritage to help cover tuition. Michel’s mother and sister still work at the school, Stearns said.

Michel, who ran for 3,613 yards and 33 touchdowns in his career at Georgia and scored the only touchdown in a Super Bowl win with the New England Patriots as a rookie in 2018, graduated from Heritage with a 4.0 GPA. She said McKenzie might be the only player in the NFL from Heritage she had in her office because his grades slipped.

“Anybody at the (Florida High Athletic Association) will tell you I’m strong about the rules. For us, it’s all about the academics,” Stearns said. “Our school is 100 percent accepted into college. That’s a requirement here for graduation. We know the kids that we raise here.”

Brandon Inniss, a five-star receiver who is already committed to the University of Oklahoma, leads American Heritage’s 2023 signing class. (Manny Navarro / The Athletic)

The kids come from all over South Florida. There are no dorms at Heritage. Buses head out as far away as an hour-and-a-half drive from campus to pick students up, assistant athletic director Bruce Aven said.

Stearns said the cumulative GPA of her athletes each year is usually 3.5 or higher. This year, two seniors have already committed to play at elite academic schools, with linebacker Jaeden Kinclock committed to Harvard and offensive tackle Miguel Cedeno committed to Rice. The school website says Heritage had 141 nationally recognized scholars in the 2021 class, the most in the country among private schools.

Important hires

Aside from Rumph and Surtain, Stearns’ most important hire, she says, was strength coach Mike Smith, who had only been working with the school on a part-time basis under Walker, including when Stearns’ youngest son played football at Heritage. McKenzie credits Smith with building the bond among all of Heritage’s football players.

“I just used to watch him and say that guy knows his stuff,” Stearns said. “He’s amazing. The kids have the utmost respect for him. He puts a program together for every one of our varsity teams. He’s pretty special.”

Said Aven: “He’s made a huge difference. We’d go in and do damage with a handful of guys. IMG and Aquinas have loaded rosters. We’ve got 50, 55 guys. We aren’t as deep. Quarterback goes down, the receiver becomes the quarterback. Mike Smith, at the end of our football games, we weren’t cramping up. We were stronger. Our mentality was different.”

Aven, a former major-league outfielder with the Indians, Marlins, Pirates and Dodgers, has been Stearn’s “right-hand man” in the athletic department since 2014. Aside from leading Heritage to a state baseball title in 2012, he has also served as the director of the football program. He had some experience, playing running back at West-Orange Stark, a three-time state championship-winning program in Texas.

“There were a lot of sit-downs with coach Rumph in the beginning,” Aven said. “There’s not much directing now as much as it is making sure it stays in motion.”

Aven will be Stearns’ successor at the end of this school year when she joins her husband, Laney, in Sebring (Fla.) in Highlands County. Laney Stearns, who was the athletic director at Heritage’s sister campus in Delray, was hired as the public safety director and fire chief of Highlands County.

Aven is not planning on making many changes, if any, to the structure Stearns has brought to Heritage’s athletic program.

Said Aven: “We created a system and it’s still working.”

American Heritage coach Patrick Surtain holds up the 2017 Class 5A state championship trophy. (Courtesy of Plantation American Heritage School)

Surtain is the man

Aven won’t have to look for a new football coach anytime soon. Even with his son playing in the NFL (Pat Surtain II was the ninth overall pick in last April’s draft), Patrick Surtain is in no rush to leave Heritage. He has two daughters going to school there — a senior and a seventh-grader — and one of the most recognizable brands in high school football.

“I love what I’m doing,” Surtain said. “Over the last couple of years, I was actually calling the plays — so it gave me a little more purpose. It’s been fun, man. I’m going to do it until they kick me out.

“We’re a national brand now. People in Cali know who we are — in Jersey, in Georgia. We get good kids and we develop the kids. Some schools get seniors and boom. They’ve already been developed. Most of our kids have been here a minimum of three years and been here through the process.”

Surtain said it was Heritage’s first state championship team, led by Michel and McKenzie, that deserves the credit for laying the foundation for the program’s success. It attracted other star players in the area to want to come to Heritage.

“Kids just fell in love with the culture here,” Surtain said. “Coach Mike was a big part of that with the offseason program, and then it was just the way we were having fun, the ESPN games. People saw that and just fell in love. The kids today like to call it a vibe. That’s what it was. The coaching staff, the players, the family atmosphere, we all just got along.

“People say it doesn’t matter, but people saw the four-stars, the five-stars in the recruiting rankings. They saw that, and that matters, especially to the younger kids. They drive by the school and see all the banners on the wall — it recruits itself now. These kids are reaping the rewards of those guys who came before them.”

Pat Surtain II was a seventh-grader, who had been going to Heritage since he was 4 years old, when the Patriots won their first state title. Heritage’s 2016 team, when Surtain was a junior, was fully loaded, featuring 18 FBS recruits — 15 who would go on to sign with Power 5 schools, including five NFL draft picks. It was the first of two back-to-back 14-0 teams that finished No. 10 and No. 6 in the MaxPreps final national rankings, respectively.

“That 2017 team, we’d have Nick Saban in the office, Urban Meyer in the waiting room, Ed Orgeron in his car and Dabo Swinney calling and telling us he was on his way,” Surtain said.

Said Porter: “You couldn’t count the number of assistants at our practices. LSU brought their whole staff out for Pat.”

Those great Patriots teams didn’t have the facilities Heritage has now. The tiny weight room where they used to work out has been replaced by a state-of-the-art weight room and tip-top locker rooms. Laurie, the school founder who lives right behind campus, is always willing to put money into improving what he has spent decades building.

“We have the Taj Mahal right now, but it wasn’t the Taj Mahal back then,” Aven said. “We were all sitting in tiny offices and working in small weight rooms. But it didn’t stop us.”

There’s also a strong collection of alumni, college and NFL players who love coming back to campus, hanging out with their old strength coach and passing on the lessons they’ve learned. That’s what Stearns, Rumph, Surtain, Aven and others envisioned Heritage’s football program becoming one day.

And that’s what it has become.

“Like Isaiah, I want the alumni to always come back here and feel like this is their home away from home,” said Stearns, whose three sons have grown up to become a firefighter, a college professor and a law school graduate.

This season, Heritage is 4-3 heading into Friday’s game vs. Stranahan. The Patriots are ranked 88th nationally by MaxPreps and are still considered one of the favorites to win the Class 5A championship this season.

McKenzie, meanwhile, has become more than a professional athlete. He’s a savvy businessman who spends every dollar wisely. He rents out the house he owns in Hialeah and saves money living in a hotel in Buffalo. It’s one of the lessons he learned from his Heritage coaches, who taught him to be smart with his money.

McKenzie wants to go back to Georgia soon and complete the courses he needs to earn a psychology degree.

“I mean, I’ve learned something from everybody here,” McKenzie said. “I look at the owner (Laurie). I’ve seen him wear the same suit every day since I’ve been here. He lives a humble life and owns two schools.

“I’m grateful I got to come here. This is home.”

(Photo of American Heritage athletic director Karen Stearns with Isaiah McKenzie, left, and Sony Michel: Emma Gellman / courtesy of Plantation American Heritage School)

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