More Than a Mentor

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Leslie Ricciardelli sits atop the flow chart for Collier County Public Schools. She’s a very busy woman. But there are three people who can get an immediate audience with her, no matter how busy she is. One is her daughter. Another is her husband. The third is her son…Fritz Jacques. 

While Jacques isn’t her biological son, he is her son nonetheless. Ricciardelli was there for him when he lost his biological mother during his sophomore year at Lely High School. And she plans to be there till the end.

"We just keep growing together,” Ricciardelli said of her relationship with Jacques. “He'll be there one day at my retirement party, and he'll be there to speak at my funeral one day, I imagine. But we'll be together forever."

“And she'll be there when I'm running for superintendent,” Jacques said, only half kidding.

Jacques surprised the woman he calls Mama Ricc last week when he received his college degree - some 20 years after his outstanding college football career at Kent State ended.

Ricciardelli was in the middle of a meeting with Collier County principals when Jacques showed up at the district office with his newly minted degree. The principals attending the meeting wondered who Jacques was.

"It was kind of so surreal for me,” Ricciardelli said. "But they said, ‘We've got to know. Who is this?” I said, ‘Oh, it's my son. Don’t we look alike?’”

Ricciardelli and Jacques first crossed paths when he was at Manatee Middle School. Ricciardelli was a new teacher there.

"I was an inclusion teacher at Manatee Middle School when Fritz transferred there from Golden Gate Middle School,” she said. "I was a second teacher in the classroom, and I supported students. I was young. He was in the eighth grade.”

Jacques was not happy to be at Manatee Middle School. His mother had just secured a Habitat for Humanity home in Naples Manor.

"That first meeting was a tough one because he didn't want to transfer,” Ricciardelli recalls. "He left all his friends from Golden Gate Middle School and didn't want to come to Manatee Middle School."

“Yeah,” Jacques recalls, “our new home was in the Manor, right across from the baseball field."

“It's hard for you to leave your friends and go to a new middle school,” Ricciardelli said. “He made new friends at Manatee Middle, and then I got to know him. Then I met with his mother, just like I would meet with lots of parents. I met with his mother a couple times, and I got to know her, and I got to know him.”

Ricciardelli said Jacques already had quite a reputation as an outstanding athlete.

"I can vividly remember because he was a super strong athlete even then,” she said. “He was on the Naples Gators.”

Ricciardelli wanted to make sure Jacques was looked after when he matriculated to Lely High School. She just had no idea that she would be the one to do it.

“When all of my eighth graders were getting ready to go up to the ninth grade, I had meetings with the high school and said, ‘This one is Fritz, he's an athlete and this is where he needs extra support. But as it turned out, Roy Terry hired me during the summer to come to Lely High School as the ESE specialist."

Jacques couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Ricciardelli at Lely High School when he arrived there as a freshman.

"Fritz came running into my office with a couple of my other eighth graders from Manatee Middle,” Ricciardelli said. "He said, ‘Oh my gosh, you're here!” Ricciardelli laughed. 

“What happened,” Jacques said, "I saw you in the hallway. You were greeting people. And I was like, ‘What the heck are you doing here?' It was crazy. I was super happy, extremely happy."

Ricciardelli said students know when an adult has their back.

"I believe my students from Manatee Middle knew that I would walk through fire for them,” she said. "But I expected them to walk through fire for me. I expected them to do their work and I held them accountable. I'll tell you, I was strict.”

Jacques’ Lely High School basketball players might tell you that he is pretty strict, too.

"He is very strict,” Ricciardelli said.

"I get it from my mama,” Jacques smiled.

Jacques had some struggles at Lely High School - especially after his mother passed. He never knew his father.

“My sophomore year, my mom passed away,” Jacques said. “She was sick for a long time. And then she ended up passing. So, I went through a little rough patch.” 

A strong adult role model for Jacques at Lely was principal Roy Terry.

“I was angry,” Jacques said, “but I had people that really cared for me that really pushed me. And they played their roles. Ricciardelli played a big role in my school and my mental health. I just had a lot of people that were trying to help me and they're the ultimate reason why I got a scholarship to go play college football. Because if I didn't have these people in my life, I probably would have been in prison or dead or something like that. I'm gonna be real, I'm blessed to have them still in my life.”

Jacques could have easily gone down the wrong road after his mother passed.

"I was definitely heading down the wrong road,” he said. “But when Ricciardelli and Roy Terry got me into summer school and got me back playing football, I think that really got me going again. Got me going back to being the person I knew I could be." 

Jacques could have easily given up.

"He was in a position where he was kind of giving up,” Ricciardelli said. "I remember Roy Terry calling me and he said, 'Fritz isn't in school again today. You need to do something.' And so I brought him into my office and I kind of did a fork in the road. I said, ‘Fritz, here's your fork. You can go down this way. You've got to do it. You've got to make a decision right now. Are you going this way? Or are you going this way? Which way are you going? And he just said, ‘Okay, okay.’ It was really powerful. Within that conversation I had with him, I was like, ‘Listen, I can't let you fall. You know, you’ve got to make a decision, and I need you to make the right decision.' And he did. It was a struggle to get him back on track.”

Roy Terry had a distinguished career at CCPS, first as head football coach at Naples High School, where he eventually became principal. He was also principal at Palmetto Ridge and Lely.

“That's where I got to know Fritz,” Roy Terry said, "at Lely High School. Leslie was a tremendous influence on him in terms of helping him navigate the waters and helping him get to school and at least be in a position to get his degree.”

Terry said Jacques was an outstanding athlete at Lely.

 "Oh, yeah,” Terry said. “He ended up going to Kent State and playing football there. I think that was a good thing for him. He was one of the better athletes in the school."

It wasn’t always smooth sledding for Jacques at Kent State. Ricciardelli remembers when a knee injury ended what a possible NFL career for Jacques.

"College was a struggle for him academically,” Ricciardelli said. "And he persevered like nobody you've ever seen. And the day that he tore his ACL he was slated to go fifth in the draft for strong safeties. He got real low and he was like 'I'm done, I'm going to quit.'”

Ricciardelli had a conversation with her husband about how she was going to help Jacques.

"I talked to my husband and I said, ‘Look, I can't let this kid fall. He's in his senior year of college. He can't do this.' And my husband said, ‘Go up there.' So, I went up there. His football coach said, ‘You've got to help us because he's really in a funk.' So, I showed up in the training room at Kent State University. He was doing rehab and I walked in and all these boys turn and look at me. So, I scream across the room, ‘Hey, aren't you Fritz? Hey, can I get your autograph?' And then he just smiled that infectious smile he has. I mean, his head was hanging, but when he looked up and realized it was me and I'm screaming at him from across the room, he smiled right then and there. I said, ‘You can do this.' And then he did. He flipped it back around, just like he did in high school."

Ricciardelli couldn’t be prouder of Jacques.

“He just makes me so proud,” she gushes. "I'm so proud of him because I know how hard it was for him to get that degree. Even when I went to visit him at school, I sat in class with him because I know how he learns. To think that we've been through so much and so many years together. I'm like 25 years with him. He was in eighth grade and he graduated from high school 20 years ago in 2004.”

Terry joins Ricciardelli in praising Jacques for earning his degree after 20 years in the workforce. He has fond memories of Fritz as a high schooler then watching him blossom as a football and basketball coach in Collier County.

"Fritz in school was a good student,” Terry recalls. “His stick-to-itiveness to hang in there and work through the problems and do a tremendous job playing sports was the thing that impressed me about him. He was very open to taking suggestions and help from people. He didn't think he knew everything in the world. I think of Leslie Ricciardelli working with him, keeping him moving in the right direction. And then, after high school, he went into coaching. I’m impressed with his personality and his ability to work with students and players and to get the most out of them. He's a very active coach. He's involved in every minute of the game. That's one thing that always really impressed me about him. He's always willing to take up a challenge, become the head coach in basketball and working in football. He works well with students because he's got some of the same experiences that they have or that they're having. I think that works in his favor.”

Beth Colman, a counselor at Lely who is close with Jacques and Ricciardelli, knew Jacques was going to surprise Riccardelli with the news of his college degree. Colman fills many of the same roles with Jacques that Ricciardelli once did.

"She's done a lot for him,” said Colman, "and I know he feels like he owes her a lot, but in her eyes, he doesn't owe her anything. That was a natural way about her of helping out a kid that she cared about. When Leslie left Lely, she knew that my relationship with Fritz was growing closer. She said, 'Beth, please help me make sure that he finishes his college degree.' At the time, I thought there's nothing I can really do to help him, and I don't know that I helped at all. I encouraged him when he told me he was going back. When he told me he was finishing in April he's like, ‘All right, I'm going to go tell her. I'm going to surprise her.' And I'm like, 'that's awesome.'”

Colman, who is like the team mother of Lely basketball, sees Jacques’ influence on his basketball team. She says Jacques sees himself in his players.

“100%,” Colman said. "No doubt. I think it's hard for him to not be involved with kids and give back to kids because he has lived their life. And he knows what it's like to walk in their shoes every day. He wants those kids to have a chance at a better life because he knows he was given that same chance. He's had that opportunity and he's living it right now. And he wants those kids to do even better than he's done.”

Terry understands how difficult it was for Jacques to earn his degree.

"Fritz, just the fact that he went back and got his degree,” Terry said, "I think is really a tremendous credit to him personally. He’s now able to move on with his life. I think the kids see that. They can use Fritz as an example. Most of his players really look up to Fritz. He has a very strong bond with the players on his team. He's setting an example that's going to help a lot of those players along the way. I think I know Leslie's proud of him, and I'm very proud of him, too, because I'm happy to see that he finally did it.

"When you're coaching all these sports, and you're devoting all your time and your energy to that, it's not an easy thing to go back and get that degree. You're just tied up all year long with things within your sport. Where do you find time to go back and complete your degree? He obviously figured it out and did it. It's a lot easier if you go right out of high school, go to college, and get your degree. It's a lot harder to go back later on and get it.”

Colman points to tangible proof of Jacques' influence on his players.

“The success that he's had with our kids,” Colman said, "the graduation rate out of his basketball program speaks for itself. I don't think one kid that's gone through his program hasn't graduated. I don't think there's been one yet.”

As for Ricciardellli, she could not be more proud of Jacques earning his degree. She considers him one of her success stories.

“I said, ‘But you didn't even tell me!’ Ricciardelli said. "He said, "I just wanted to do it and surprise you.' And so he did it for himself. He did it for his own kids. He went back to school to show himself and his kids and the athletes he coaches. Look at what he just provided to his athletes, the value of education. Because guess what? No matter what happens in a person's life, nobody can ever take away that degree from you. He is one of my success stories. But he's the one who is like part of my family. He's the only one who's like that."