More About Me
My family lived in South Oxnard until 1986, at which time we moved to the north side of the city. After going Julian Hathaway school my entire life, I had to adjust to a whole new school and a whole new group of friends. The name of the school that I attended from grades 4-6 was Elm Street School. Many of the students that I went to Elm with are still my friends to this day. At this time, I also took violin and piano lessons, which I now wish I had stuck with. It was also at this age when I really started to watch sports. I had been watching the Lakers for years, but my friends introduced me to football and baseball as well. After completing the 6th grade, I went on to John C. Fremont Intermediate School for grades 7 and 8. I graduated from Fremont in 1991.
I entered
Oxnard High School in the fall of 1991. I tried to involve myself with as many things as possible. Aside from taking the requisite classes, I joined several clubs as well as the Oxnard High School Fighting Yellowjackets football team. I was used primarily as a middle linebacker, and I was lucky enough to wear jersey #51, which was the number of the greatest middle linebacker of them all, Dick Butkus. I knew that football wasn't going to be my ticket to college, so I made sure to do well in school. I was lucky enough to graduate near the top of my class, so when it was time to choose a college I could go almost anywhere. I turned down universities such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, Brown, and Notre Dame to attend the University of California at Irvine, which had offered me a full scholarship as well as membership in its prestigious Campuswide Honors Program.