St. Thomas Aquinas High School Athletics’ Success Is Unmatched
Benchmarking is a term loosely defined as a process by which you measure your success against a competitor’s success. Quite simply, it’s finding out what the best companies do, why and how they do it better than everyone else, and trying to have your business do those same things.
While the term is most often used in the business world, its meaning and application can carry over into other areas, like the world of sports. A couple of examples: In professional baseball, everyone wants to be like the Yankees. In the NFL, teams want to be like the New England Patriots. Why? Those organizations have built winning traditions by doing a lot of things the right way.
When it comes to high school athletics, there is one program that everyone else looks to as the golden standard: St. Thomas Aquinas High School.
There’s good reason for that. The Ft. Lauderdale Catholic school boasts 12 national championships, including two in football (2008 and 2020), two in boys soccer (1997 and 1998), seven in girls soccer (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2004, 2011, and 2012), and one boys track (2011).
Seventeen different teams have captured a total of 114 state championships. The number of national titles and state titles is certainly impressive, but what jumps out is the diversification. St. Thomas Aquinas’s state championships cover the entire spectrum of sports, from the standard sports of football and baseball, to wrestling, water polo, and ice hockey.
St. Thomas Aquinas High School’s tradition of excellence has to be seen to be believed:
- St. Thomas Aquinas has claimed the Broward County All-Sports trophy for 41 straight years. The Raiders won their first All-Sports trophy in 1981 and have won the honor every year since.
- St. Thomas Aquinas has won the Florida Athletic Coaches All-Sports trophy 35 times spanning 1984-1986, then 1987-2019
- St. Thomas Aquinas won the Florida High School Activities Association All-Sports trophy for 26 straight seasons from 1994-2019.
- MaxPreps recognized St. Thomas Aquinas as its National High School Athletic Program of the Year for the 2010-11 Season.
- Sports Illustrated named St. Thomas Aquinas as the third-best high school athletic program in the country.
- St. Thomas Aquinas won the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel All-Sports Award.
To understand what has made St. Thomas Aquinas such a great athletic program with consistently winning teams throughout its history, you have to take a look at its people.
Great teams are nothing without great people, and one look at the history of Aquinas athletics with its coaches, administration, and players sums up why St. Thomas Aquinas has enjoyed so much success. The Raider programs have produced professional athletes, hall-of-fame coaches, and Olympians.
St. Thomas Aquinas’s success began when George Smith arrived at Aquinas in 1972 after answering an ad placed by the school seeking a coach to start a wrestling program. At the time, Smith was an educator and coach living in Indiana.
“I flew down for an interview, and they hired me,” said Smith.
That would be the start of a wonderful marriage of the right guy arriving on the scene at just the right time. After getting the wrestling program off on the right foot, Smith was hired to take over the school’s fledgling football program in 1975. As hard as it is to believe now, he took over a program that had no where to go but up.
“The school had a team, but our numbers were low,” said Smith. “We had no stadium, no weight room, and we had no lights. When I say we had nothing, I’m not kidding you. We had zero.”
That’s when he went to work, slowly building up the program.
“We had 32 guys on the roster to begin with,” Smith said. “We were able to convince the boys in PE class to come try out for the team, and before we knew it, we had 54 players.”
When he took over, the team had finished 4-4 the previous season. With the roster now at 54 players, Smith had not only more players, but a lot more talent.
“We improved to 6-4 the next season, then 8-3 the next,” said Smith. “All of a sudden, these guys were starting to buy into what we were doing.”
Now that Smith had things heading in the right direction, he knew he had to get the word out about his players, his school, and his program.
“The next step was to get kids excited about wanting to come to Aquinas, to see what the opportunities could be while you were here, and then after you left,” Smith said.
That meant getting the word out to college recruiters, so they could at least start paying attention to what this small catholic school in Fort Lauderdale was building with its football program.
“We put together our first press guide and published it in 1985,” Smith said. “We sent it out to 600 schools, and I got over 400 responses.”
That was but one piece of the grassroots effort by Smith to build excitement about St. Thomas Aquinas football.
“Our goals here were very simple: win games and get more kids excited about coming to St. Thomas Aquinas to play football and other sports as well,” said Smith. “If they went out there and performed, we could give them a real chance to get recruited.”
The hard work paid off with the school’s first state championship in 1992. Bobby Brown, who was an All-American wide receiver on that ’92 title team, also ran track and played basketball at Aquinas. He was one of those who benefited from the added exposure the program was suddenly enjoying.
With colleges paying more attention to the Ft. Lauderdale school, Brown’s accomplishments caught the attention of college recruiters nationwide, and he went on to become a three-year starter at Notre Dame as a member of the Irish football team. He tied the Notre Dame football record with 12 receptions in one game. He also became a two-time record holder in the indoor 400-meters as a member of the Irish track team.
Brown then went on to the NFL, where he played for the Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns. He remembers those early days while attending St. Thomas Aquinas.
“We were an up-and-coming school back then,” said Brown. “I see Aquinas playing on ESPN now, and I realize how far the program has come. I think about how fortunate I was to be a part of the foundation years of helping to build the program and especially a part of the first ever state championship team there.”
With the football program on solid footing under Smith, he points to the year 2008 as the true turning point for St. Thomas Aquinas football.
“We were invited to play in the Kirk Herbstreit classic on national TV,” said Smith.
The game would pit his Raiders against Elder High from Cincinnati, Ohio, another well known high school program. The game was aired on ESPN on Labor Day and, according to Smith, kicked off an era of national attention that still exists.
“That game was, I think, the true turning point that put us on a different level,” Smith said.
That game also brought on relationships with the likes of ESPN and Nike and began a national following for the South Florida Catholic school.
“We just took off from there,” Smith said.
No other high school football program has sent more players to the NFL than St. Thomas Aquinas.
Some of the 43 alumni that went on to see time in the NFL include household names such as Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Michael Irvin; eight-time Pro Bowler Geno Atkins; Daryl Porter; Asante Samuel; Elijah Moore; three-time Super Bowl champion James White; Leonord Hankerson; Super Bowl champion Stefan Humphries; Pro Bowlers and brothers Nick and Joey Bosa; and current Aquinas Athletic Director Twan Russell, who played for and was Director of Youth and Community Programs for the Miami Dolphins.
Brian Piccolo was the very first Aquinas alumnus to play in the NFL. He went on to play for the Chicago Bears, but who was perhaps more known for the movie “Brian’s Song,” which depicts his life and friendship with fellow Bears player Gayle Sears and focuses on his diagnosis of terminal cancer, which he died from at the age of 26.
Current St. Thomas Aquinas head football coach Roger Harriott continues to carry on the winning tradition created by Smith. Harriott recalled his early admiration for St. Thomas Aquinas.
“I remember my older brothers taking me to the STA football games as early as the first or second grade,” Harriott said.
Harriott actually grew up and played football at Aquinas under Smith, who inspired Harriott to become a coach.
“I always admired Coach Smith for his devotion and love he expressed to us as a team,” said Harriott. “His pioneering spirit to cultivate meaningful relationships through the process inspired me to be a coach.”
Harriott said the opportunity to coach at his alma mater was “a dream come true.”
“Coach Smith contacted me in 2015 about taking over for him, but I had just taken a corporate job, so I declined the offer,” said Harriott.
Smith would not give up and eventually persuaded his former player to take over as the head football coach. Under Harriott, the Raiders have won five state championships in six years, won one national championship, and in 2020 won the Florida 7A Academic State Championship (their first in school history).
Football may capture the most headlines, but there is a long list of other Aquinas sports teams and student-athletes that excelled as Raiders and after leaving the school.
That includes Chris Everett, arguably the greatest female professional tennis player of all time.
Seilala Sua-Zumbado, one of 10 Olympians from St. Thomas Aquinas, was a discus thrower for Aquinas’s track and field team and went on to attend UCLA on a scholarship, where she was a 14-time All-American and is still the winningest athlete in NCAA track and field history. She became a member of two US Olympic teams (2000 and 2004), was a four-time national champion in the discus, and won the USATF National Championship in the shot put.
Her younger sister, Claire Sua-Amundson, also attended UCLA on a scholarship, but her sport was softball. She led the Bruins to two national championships. Both sisters credit their total experience at St. Thomas Aquinas as a major reason for their success after leaving high school.
“The support system surrounding you at Aquinas is second to none,” Sua-Amundson said. “The teachers, the coaches, everyone was so supportive, and together they fostered an environment that really gave you the confidence you needed, especially someone like me who going off to a big place like UCLA.”
Sua-Zumbado agreed with her sister.
“The biggest thing the coaches taught me and everyone else was to be accountable for your actions,” said Sua-Zumbado. “Their approach to discipline was a big tool that worked for me and, obviously, for a lot of others too.”
Tricia Couch is the school’s Sports Information Director, and she attended school at Aquinas, graduating in 1995. She played volleyball and basketball for the Raiders, and in her new role, she gets to tell the world all about what makes her school such a great institution. She said there are four pillars that the school is built upon.
“First is our faith,” Couch said. “Then, there’s family, tradition, and excellence. We are a Catholic school, and, of course, faith comes before everything else.”
She added that the feeling that you belong to something is an attractive characteristic of St. Thomas Aquinas.
“We are your extended family when you are here, and then when you leave,” Couch said.
St. Thomas Aquinas’s campus surrounds you with greatness.
One visit to the George F. Smith building tells the story of both excellence and tradition. The 28,000 square-foot building named after one of those giants referenced by Couch illustrates the excellence of Aquinas athletics. It houses the offices of the athletics personnel and is where the many pieces of championship hardware are on display for all to see. It serves as a daily reminder to those who have offices there and maybe played a part in one or more of those championships.
Couch mentioned the building’s namesake and said none of this would have been possible without him.
“George Smith was a father mentor to the many kids that came through here,” said Couch. “He came in and built it from the ground up, literally. He truly is a great man and a great coach, and St. Thomas Aquinas wouldn’t be where we are without him.”
It started with bringing on a great coach like George Smith, and the St. Thomas Aquinas administration’s dedication to continuing to bring in great coaches made sure Raiders athletics stayed out in front.
While Smith certainly is in a class by himself and is the architect for the greatness that is Aquinas athletics today, a few other coaches made their marks too.
In addition to Smith, St. Thomas Aquinas coaches who have been elected to the Florida High School Athletic Association’s Hall of Fame are Ed Waters, baseball; Bryan Baucom, softball; Alex Armentos, track and field; and Carlos Giron, girls soccer. Lisa Zielinski, the school’s volleyball coach, is a member of the Broward County Hall of Fame.
“We have built such a great history here, unlike anyone else,” Smith said.
Couch summed up the Aquinas success with a well-rounded assessment of her school.
“Here, you are standing on the shoulders of giants,” said Couch. “We open doors like no one else. Our facilities are second to no one, and so are our coaches and teachers.”
Kind of hard to argue her point, don’t you think?
