UNLV’s Scoggins reignites spark in the classroom

Ron Scoggins was a good student at Bishop Gorman High School, so the question wasn’t his ability but his motivation.

At Gorman, he also played for coach Tony Sanchez, who helped instill Scoggins with the importance of making academics as much of a priority as football. Scoggins studied hard and regularly met with teachers, finishing with a 3.0 GPA.

Those same habits didn’t follow him to UNLV, meaning Scoggins was not much different from many freshmen on their own for the first time. His grades slipped, and Scoggins was forced to miss the latter part of last year’s spring practices.

It was enough of a wake-up call for Scoggins to do what was needed to be eligible for last season, but he still lacked the edge he had at Gorman. But then his former coach was hired at UNLV in December, and that was the spark Scoggins needed to finally return to his high school study habits.

The result was a 3.6 GPA in the spring semester, putting Scoggins on the dean’s list for achieving at least a 3.5 GPA over a minimum of 12 credit hours.

“I turned it up another notch just because of our personal relationship (with Sanchez),” Scoggins said. “I don’t want to be that guy that’s just getting by. I know he’s going to hold me to a higher standard. He knows how smart I am. He knows how hard I worked in the classroom at Gorman. He knows the kind of grades I got at Gorman.”

Sanchez’s on-field expectations for Scoggins (6 feet 3 inches, 335 pounds) are high as well.

With three starting offensive linemen gone, the senior is needed at right guard to help stabilize a front in transition.

“He’s had as many starts as anybody that will be on that field,” Sanchez said. “So we expect him to come out and be a leader.”

But leadership comes in many forms, and Scoggins prefers to be one who leads by example, borrowing a little from Brett Boyko, a four-year starter now trying to make the Philadelphia Eagles’ roster. Boyko was a little more vocal than Scoggins, but he considered actions more valuable than words.

“I really watched him closely,” Scoggins said. “Everything he did was attention to detail. He didn’t really take plays off. He didn’t take periods in practice off. He always went flying around. He always was fanatical about everything he did.”

Scoggins said the spring gave the line a chance to come together and learn each other’s tendencies and skills as well as the terminology of a new offensive system.

“The first few days were definitely a little confusing,” Scoggins said. “Throughout the course of the spring, we definitely started feeling each other out. We started knowing if this happens here, I know he’s going to be here. Or if something goes wrong this way, I know he’s going to be there.”

Being eligible to make an impact on the field when the season begins Sept. 5 at Northern Illinois no longer should be a problem.

That couldn’t have been assumed last spring when Scoggins’ cumulative GPA was hovering around 1.7, prompting him to take off the last portion of spring drills to concentrate on academics.

His future at UNLV was so uncertain that Scoggins wasn’t included in last season’s media guide.

“Then I was like, ‘Man, I really have to step it up,’ because I wasn’t just getting by,” Scoggins said. “I was actually under and wasn’t even eligible.”

He earned B’s in both his classes last summer to get to a 2.0 cumulative GPA so he could play football, then earned about a 2.5 semester GPA in the fall term.

But Scoggins was still trying to do the minimum. That changed when UNLV hired Sanchez.

“He’s the one who really established in me at (Gorman) that you have to get your work done in the classroom if you want to play,” Scoggins said. “Playing will only go so far. You can blow out a knee ... and your sports career could be over at any minute. That’s nothing that’s ever guaranteed, but your mind is something that’s always guaranteed.

“Hearing that he’s coming back reinforced that and pushed me and motivated me to go out there and work just as hard in the classroom as I do on the field.”

Sanchez said he always knew Scoggins — who is on track to graduate in the summer of 2016 with a degree in public administration — had it in him to excel academically.

“One of the things we wanted to do, not just with him but the whole team, is let those guys know how important and how big of an opportunity this is, and they can’t waste it,” Sanchez said. “We’re not going to allow them to waste it. So we had a conversation about it. It was more of a mentoring deal. It was one of those deals where he needed to be loved up a little bit, needed to be encouraged and pointed in the right direction. And he needed to be held accountable in a good way.

“By God, he sure did a great job.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65.