Standout seniors: Spirit’s DiBuonaventura was anything but an average Joe

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher Joe DiBuonaventura knew what the members of the Holy Spirit High School drama club were thinking when he showed up for tryouts for the play “The Sound of Music” this past school year. “Look at this guy. Big football star wants to be in the play. He probably thinks it will impress some cheerleader.” But what they didn’t know is that “Debo” doesn’t do anything halfway. It didn’t take long for the other students involved in the school play to gain a lot of respect for DiBuonaventura, not only because of the way he immersed himself in their interests, but because he took it seriously, memorizing all his lines on time and even putting in the effort to learn the dance steps. Debo knew he was going to get a bunch of ribbing from his football teammates about being in the school play, but he didn’t care. He made it a point to spend his high school career taking advantage of any opportunity that presented itself. He didn’t want to be labeled as a “dumb jock,” and was anything but. Not only did he play three sports during his career at Holy Spirit and earn 10 varsity letters, he also joined the school play, took photos for the yearbook staff, and generally tried to open his mind to new experiences and new people. Resaissance men do still exist, it seems. “Certainly there is no lacking confidence with Joe. He didn’t care what anybody thought about him. For a big-time athlete to go do the school play during the first sports season he’s had off in four years, that’s something you don’t expect. But he pulled it off, and he’s a better person for it,” said Holy Spirit baseball coach Steve Normane. “He’s a student-athlete, well rounded, not just sports. If you were going to take a guy and make a perfect high school career you would go with Joe.” “I’ve always kind of been into that, the more artistic things. I was talking to a teacher, Ms. Collins, and she kind of suckered me into it. She said, ‘Oh, just try out, you’ll be fine.’ Once I was there it was weird because I liked it. I made friends with all those kids and felt like I was accepted into a different type of community,” DiBuonaventura said. “It’s funny because the way that we prepare when we are getting ready for a (football) game, for something big when it matters, they have their own way of preparing. It’s similar in a lot of ways, but also different and it was cool to be exposed to that. You get to see competition in a different light. I enjoyed it, and it definitely broadened my horizons, for sure.” Recent Holy Spirit graduate Joe DiBuonaventura, a Brigantine resident, was not only an accomplished athlete at the school but also acted in the school play during his senior year. (Glory Days Magazine photo/Dave O’Sullivan) Said football teammate T.J. Clayton, “We were kind of surprised, but it’s Debo. If anyone was going to do it, it would be him. He kind of just made it seem like a thing to try. He’ll try anything.” Debo, the player As an athlete, DiBuonaventura was never the dominant star of any of the teams he played for, but had all-conference ability in three sports and his versatility made him one of the most valuable athletes in the Cape-Atlantic League. In football, he was a key member of one of the best secondaries in the league, and in baseball he had the ability to play all three outfield positions as well as pitch. His value was on display early in the season when starting center fielder Brandon Ott went down for a month with an injury. “What nobody really gets is he was hurt most of his junior year. He was our closer and hurt his arm and was hurt for a good portion (of the season). Coming into his senior year we had an injury to our center fielder, Brandon Ott, who missed a month, and Joe stepped right in there and if it wasn’t for a really outstanding crop of first-team All-CAL outfielders, he was the fourth guy,” Normane said. “He wound up getting second team but really deserved to be on that first team, but you had guys like Kyle Cox from Millville, Matt Ardente (Absegami) and Monny Strickland (EHT), it’s tough to crack that top three. But he played at an all-conference level. He solidified that outfield for us when it was a real shaky position once Brandon got hurt. “He told me at the beginning of the year, ‘I’ll hit wherever you want. I’ll bat ninth, leadoff.’ And he had the game to adjust it to wherever we needed him. You wish you had nine of those guys.” DiBuonaventura also brought to the table the ability to keep his teammates on track with a mix of passion for the sports he played and his sometimes goofy, fun-loving attitude. As Clayton put it, there weren’t many people who were not instantly drawn to Debo’s gregarious personality. “He was a character. Debo was the Energizer Bunny. He was sort of the brains of the operation. He might not have been the most physical player out there, but he would throw his whole body around if you needed him to. He seemed to always be in the right spot when he needed to be,” Clayton said. “You couldn’t not like Debo. There was just something about him. He was like all of us, but he was the smart one. You could never beat him in an argument. He would use such big words that you would just quit. Even if you knew you were right, somehow he was able to make you think you were wrong.” “As far as football goes, you get that stereotype of the dumb jock. Oh, they are big kids who just ram their heads into each other. But when you add up my competitive nature and then you think, OK, he’s articulate and has a decent vocabulary, he’s not a dope,” DiBuonaventura said. “So you’re not going to win an argument with me. It’s not that I’m flaunting my brain around, but (the football players) aren’t going to beat me in an argument.” Normane said that in a sport such as baseball, which has a slower pace than football and can be so mentally taxing during a long season, it’s good to have a guy like Debo who can lighten the mood, but also carries enough respect from his teammates that he isn’t viewed as just the team jokester. “We expected him to be our leader, being the guy who played football for four years and wrestled for three years. You expect that tough-as-nails, fire-you-up type of leader and he certainly brought that. But he was also more well-rounded than the get-in-your-face guy,” Normane said. “He did our music. He was the heartbeat of our team, and as Debo went we all went. He was friends with everybody but at the same time he would get in your face if you weren’t doing the right thing. “In baseball you need that day-in and day-out levity where guys aren’t going to get uptight if they went 0-for-4. And Debo certainly provided that for us.” DiBuonaventura said it all came down to just finding that balance. He’s a hard-working ballplayer, but definitely not the type of player who is going to sacrifice fun at the expense to too much hard work. “Coaches say there’s a time for fun and there’s a time for work. I know how to have fun while I’m working, so it’s not difficult for me,” DiBuonaventura said. “If guys are messing around too much I try to get them in line. I like to win, that’s what I’m about. I want to bring that winning mentality, that state championship mentality from football into everything I do. I like a solid balance between (work and fun).” He also had the type of outgoing personality not often found in teenage boys, one that draws admiration from teammates’ parents, as well as coach Normane’s young children. Debo became fast buddies with A.J. and Bella, and even would play song requests of Miley Cyrus for young Bella at the ballgames despite protests from his teammates. “Every game she would ask him to play (the song “Wrecking Ball”) for her, and he would do it every game and she just fell in love with him
,” Normane said. Debo, the actor When DiBuonaventura decided to go out for the school play his senior year, he knew he was going to get a ton of ribbing from his friends. But, true to his character, he didn’t mind facing up to the chiding. And his teammates poured it on once they found out he was doing a dance number in “Phantom of the Opera” at Casey’s Dance Studio in his hometown of Brigantine. His younger sister, Jenna, is involved with the studio and Joe was asked to be in their version of the famous production. “They always busted my chops about it. The guys would be like, “what are you doing? want to come to wing night? And I would say, ‘no, I have dance practice.’ And they would be like, ‘dance practice? What are you talking about?'” DiBuonaventura said. “They gave me some grief about it, for sure, but it didn’t bother me. I would just tell them, ‘look, dude, I’m doing more than you’re doing and I’m enjoying it.'” DiBuonaventura said that initially the drama club members were very skeptical of his motivations behind wanting to be in the play. They figured he was just trying to be voted “funniest guy” in the yearbook or something, or maybe trying to impress some girls. And even though initially his decision to sign up for the play came as a whim, once he made the decision he was all business. “At first they were laughing. They were like, ‘What’s Joe Debo doing here?’ But then they were like, ‘oh, he actually can dance. He’s taking it seriously and actually memorized his lines on time.’ I took it serious. I knew that when the show went on it meant so much to them that I didn’t wanted to ruin it for them and be known as the football player who ruined the play,” DiBuonaventura said. “I know how much it would mean to me if one of them had to come fill in at safety, and all of a sudden we’re playing in the state championship game and they are starting at safety and didn’t read their assignments or know any of the coverages. I would be beyond upset. I wouldn’t be having that, so I took it in that perspective and it made me think, OK, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. That’s just how I am with everything.” DiBuonaventura plans to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an architectural school in Troy, N.Y., this fall and said he will play football and possibly even baseball if he can handle both sports with the workload he’ll have as a mechanical drawing major. And he’ll be bringing with him 10 varsity letters, but, more importantly, the type of well-rounded high school experience that he can build upon during his college years. “I wasn’t really biased toward one group,” DiBuonaventura said about his attitude toward accepting people for who they are, whether they were athletes or members of the drama club or yearbook staff. “In that play atmosphere, it’s definitely a different type of person. It’s definitely nice to have that well-rounded nature where you’re experiencing different groups of friends. You appreciate having so many connections in different areas. It’s nice to be friendly with so many different types of people.” And when you have the type of high school career that DiBuonaventura had, both on and off the field, you can move on to the next phase of your life with no regrets. “There’s nothing that I can say I wish I had done,” Debo said. “I left Holy Spirit knowing that I did everything I wanted to do, and everything I could do.” Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays [adsense]