Rutgers director of football recruiting persuades players to join his Haiti rebuilding team

By Tom Luicci/The Star-Ledger

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on February 26, 2014 at 7:00 AM, updated February 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM
Tariq Ahmad makes his pitch and immediately breaks his first rule of business: Make no promises.
The director of recruiting operations for the Rutgers football program starts talking to players about an opportunity to visit an exotic locale where they can make a difference. They’ll live in primitive conditions and spend all day doing physically demanding work.
And — here’s the promise — it will be a “life-changing experience.”
“You come back a different person,” says Chris Muller, a starting offensive lineman on the Rutgers football team. “I know I did. You hear a lot of the guys say the same thing.”
Every time Tariq (pronounced Tark) Ahmad hears that, he smiles.
So this month, for the third straight year, Ahmad will head to Haiti with about a dozen Rutgers players to help with the continuing effort to rebuild the country following the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked the island on Jan. 12, 2010.
“One of the goals is to assist in the recovery efforts, to help people who desperately need help,” he says. “The other goal is to provide an opportunity for our players to see what another part of the world is like, a part of the world where they can have an impact.”
So far, 18 Rutgers players have participated in the project, with each player raising the $1,700 cost for the trip through donations.
"One of the goals is to assist in the recovery efforts . . . The other goal is to provide an opportunity for our players to see . . . where they can have an impact."
TARIQ AHMAD, director of recruiting operations for the Rutgers football program, on bringing players to Haiti to help with the rebuilding effort following the 2010 earthquake
Shortly after the Haiti disaster, which resulted in an estimated 272,000 deaths and $7.8 billion in damage, according to International Red Cross accounts, Ahmad knew he had to get involved in the recovery efforts.
His mother, Kathleen Ahmad, provided the impetus, having gone to Haiti on a humanitarian mission in 2008 after Hurricane Gustav caused widespread destruction to one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest countries. At the time, she tried to persuade her son to go with her, but Ahmad’s Rutgers schedule didn’t offer extended breaks.
Soon after the 2010 earthquake, however, he says, he had to somehow find time. So Ahmad came up with the idea of making the trip during spring break, accompanied by as many Rutgers football players as he could round up.
It was probably the best recruiting pitch he’s ever made, because there’s usually only two things on players’ minds when break time comes — fun and relaxation. “As a football player, spring break is a big deal. We really don’t get much time off all year, so it’s a big sacrifice,” says Brandon Coleman, a star wide receiver for the Scarlet Knights. “The little time you do get off, you want to take advantage of it and have some fun. “But I saw this as an opportunity I might never get again. And when I was there, I knew I made the right decision because it felt to me that this is what I was supposed to be doing.”
The players spent most of their first two trips knee-deep in masonry work, rebuilding churches and schools in the towns of Mellier and Petit-Goave, while living modestly, as the locals do, with only the bare essentials.
“Growing up in Hunterdon County, I never saw anything like the conditions I saw in Haiti,” says Bryan Leoni, an offensive lineman from Flemington who is making his third trip to Haiti with Ahmad. “Just the lack of basics — clothing, food, bathrooms. They still don’t have a lot of the things we take for granted.”
Muller, from Perkiomenville, Pa., says it was culture shock at first.
“Seeing what is considered normal living for Haitians is very eye-opening. They were just so happy to have people around who cared and were willing to help,” he says. “My first reaction when I saw the devastation was that there was nothing we could possibly do that could help. It was overwhelming. But the people were so grateful just to have us there. I came back and I remember thinking, they helped us much more than we helped them. That’s how much the experience meant to me.”
Ahmad stays in touch with several people he has come to know in Haiti, having made eight other trips there by himself. He says he doesn’t try to prepare the players for what they will see when they arrive. He believes it’s better to let them experience it first-hand.
“Essentially, it was like seeing a war-torn country,” Ahmad says of the first two player-accompanied trips. “The magnitude of the destruction and the need is just overwhelming. You can’t believe anything can be fixed. But after going back several times now, after four or five months between trips, I can see there is progress being made.”
Ahmad, 32, says he can’t remember his life without being involved in some sort of volunteer project. From an early age, his parents instilled in him the need to lend a hand to others.
“My mother is a farmer from upstate New York. She’s Christian. My father is a Muslim from Pakistan,” says Ahmad, who grew up in Holmdel and was a three-sport standout (football, basketball and track) at Ithaca College. “They’re very different people from very different backgrounds, but they share the value of helping others and trying to help people in need.
“As a child, I remember my family working for Habit for Humanity in Trenton. We did a trip every year where we would help build a home somewhere in the United States. We did a lot of local volunteer work. So the need to help others has always been part of my life. It’s something that was ingrained in me. That’s my parents’ influence.”
Both of Ahmad’s parents have doctoral degrees — his mother’s is in mathematics, his father (Zafar) has one in sociology. Ahmad already has a master's degree in sports psychology; he is working toward a second one, in education administration.
At some point, perhaps in the next few years, Ahmad says, his goal is to be an administrator at an inner city school. But it’s likely Rutgers will do all it can to persuade him to stay. He also happens to be very good at his job.
“Since he became the director of recruiting, Rutgers has had a couple of the best recruiting classes in school history,” says Brian Dohn, the national recruiting analyst for Scout.com. “People — recruits, their families, high school coaches — always say he’s an easy guy to talk to, and that’s because he can relate to them regardless of their background or upbringing.”
Ahmad is as surprised as anyone that he has adapted so well to a college football recruiting job.
“I did not think I would fit in this role from the standpoint that I do not see myself as a salesman,” he says. “I really enjoy the relationships that we develop during the recruiting process. That’s my favorite part of the job. I love the process of meeting different people, learning about people and sharing what I love about Rutgers and why I am in graduate school here.”
His ability to relate apparently has no boundaries. Ahmad also speaks Haitian Creole, one of the two official languages (French is the other) of a country he has spent so much time in that it has almost become a second home.
But it wasn’t easy, initially, for Ahmad to convince the people he deals with every day — Rutgers football players — to join him in the relief effort. Then, as word spread throughout the team, with players relating their experiences following the first trip, there suddenly was no shortage of volunteers. He now has more volunteers than spaces for them.
“I was nervous about going at first,” says Coleman. “Now I think about the people I met there and what that experience was like all of the time. It’s been over a year since I was there. Our project was to build the foundation of a church. There wasn’t much there, even after we left.
“But Tariq showed me a picture of the finished product not long ago and I remember thinking `Wow, I helped build that.’ It’s a great feeling to know you helped.”
Because they are unskilled laborers, the players usually take on jobs such as digging foundations and similar work.
The volunteers slept in temporary huts covered by mosquito nets, rising early to work on their rebuilding projects.
The bathroom and water situation? That was another story.
“Water came from a well we had to pump from,” Coleman says. “The bathroom was an outhouse. But we only had to live that way for a week. The people there live that way all of the time. It really makes you appreciate what you have.”
Muller says he still has a vivid image of the children, giddy and squealing, laughing and enjoying themselves around the oversized strangers from America. “We played with the kids for hours after we were done working,” he says. “We had so much fun with them. They didn’t want anything except for people to give them a little attention. I can’t begin to tell you how much that impacted me. To help someone so much in need was the ultimate gratification for me.”
Ahmad says he doesn’t try to sell the players on the value of volunteer work. He just wants them to experience it — and then decide.
“I’ve found that it’s an amazing experience to have that kind of impact on people’s lives. I think the players feel the same way when they go to Haiti and then come back. It’s as rewarding as anything you can do in life.”
And that’s a promise.
http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/2014/02/rutgers_director_of_football_recruiting_persuades_players_to_join_his_haiti_rebuilding_team.html