For Albert, Transformation Is Complete
Show of Discipline Helped Cavs Captain Shed His Soft Side

By Adam Kilgore
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 12, 2007

Branden Albert often thinks back to what he was, and marvels at what he is. He was a basketball player, "a soft kid" whose academic laziness buried him in the ninth grade. Now, he is a Virginia football captain, only a junior, the anchor of the offensive line and a three-year starter.

But Albert never would have tried football, never would have made the grades for college, if not for a decision that changed his life. In 2002, he moved from Rochester, N.Y., to Glen Burnie to live with his older half-brother, Ashley Sims, a former Maryland defensive end. Under Sims's guidance, Albert took up football for the first time and completed four years of high school in two, attending summer and night school.

"I didn't think I would be a captain on the football team," Albert said.

In Rochester, Albert grew up in a single-mother home, surrounded by trouble. Susan Albert understood the dangers outside. She protected Albert from perilous neighborhoods, barricading him inside. If he left the house, she followed along. She trusted him. But she worried.

"She always put that fear in us," Sims said. "I don't how she did it, but it was there. My mother just didn't play. She was worse than the police."

Susan, a single mother, worked 40-hour weeks and oversaw the house alone. With no male influence and little time for Susan to oversee his academics, Albert suffered in school.

"He thought school was a social event," Susan Albert said.

Once Albert arrived in Maryland, that changed. Sims limited Albert's social life and studied with him every night, Sims circling Albert's mistakes with a red pen. His first semester in Maryland, Albert made the honor roll.

Albert yearned for a break as Thanksgiving approached. He found Sims's phone book and thumbed through it, searching for ways home. Sims noticed what he was doing, then ripped the phone book from Albert's hands.

"There ain't no more going home," Sims said. "This is your home."

Albert began showing his homesickness in phone conversations with his mother, and that made it worse. So Sims barred him from using his phone.

"Don't you use my phone anymore," Sims told Albert's mother, directing her not to call. "We're you're family. We'll tell you how he's doing."

There was another rule: Albert would play football, which he never had before 11th grade. He didn't like the contact, and he was passive. But if he was going to live with Sims, he was going to try.

Sims had escaped Rochester through football. The lessons from his coaches at Maryland, he said, helped him become a parole officer. Football would impart those lessons and discipline on Albert, too.

On the basketball court, Albert was comfortable. Despite weighing 340 pounds, he could dribble like a point guard, his feet impossibly nimble. He was intent on earning a basketball scholarship and received attention from several schools, and Niagara eventually offered him a scholarship.

But Sims saw Albert's future in football. His size made him an immediate starter at Glen Burnie High. Some games, he would dominate. Others, he would coast. He rarely hustled in practice and eschewed lifting weights. When he tried do a single push-up, he would flop on the ground as Sims and his wife, Adrienne, laughed.

"He used to be looking like a beached whale on my floor," Sims said.

Sims wanted to prove size would carry Albert only so far. He signed up Albert for a football camp at Maryland. At Glen Burnie, Albert played against light competition. At the camp, he faced the best players from around the region. Coaches raved about his agility and his size, but Albert still came home humbled.

"I see what you're saying," he told Sims. "I'm going to start working."

He exercised every day. By the time he finished a year of prep school at Hargrave Military Academy, Albert had transformed himself. He weighs 310 pounds, 30 pounds lighter than he was as a high school junior.

Albert is one of the best offensive linemen in the conference now, talented and versatile: With left tackle Eugene Monroe injured, Albert moved over and Virginia didn't miss a beat. Albert has drawn overtures from pro scouts, and he may have to decide after the season if wants to stay at Virginia or go to the NFL.

"We don't talk about that," Sims said. "We let God take his course. If it's time for you to go, God will let you know. You get calls from scouts, your mind does start to wonder what it would be like to be financially set. It ain't about that. It's about the degree. If it's meant to be, let it be."

Said Albert: "I always look back and think, 'Where would I be at?' I think I made the right decision. I can't say, 'I think.' I did make the right decision."