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It's not often a Hall of Fame NFL running back travels thousands of miles to speak to high school students, so there was a predictable sense of excitement in the air Friday when Dallas Cowboys legend Tony Dorsett offered words of encouragement to the Northwest football team.

It was hard to tell who was more awestruck: the players or the dozens of administrators who packed the school's auditorium to catch a glimpse of a man they grew up admiring.

"Oh man; Tony was one of my heroes, him and Danny White," said Jaguars head coach Andrew Fields. "I'm a huge Cowboy fan, and that was right when I was in middle school. Some people are just larger than life. It's just awesome to see him here."

But he wasn't there for nothing. Dorsett spoke to players on behalf of Pro Power Foundation, a non-profit organization established by Mark Smith in 2006 to — according to www.propowerfoundation.org — "make a difference in the lives of student athletes."

Smith and Pro Power Executive Director Irene Brodsky both taught at the now-defunct Mark Twain School in Rockville, a school specifically designed to help students who had exhibited behavioral issues. They ran into Dorsett at a football camp Smith hosted at Wootton in the summer of '06 and told him of their vision: To help stifle incarceration rates and gang activity among at-risk teenagers while improving literacy rates, graduation and college admissions, specifically in conjunction with athletics.

They hardly had to twist his arm. The NFL's seventh all-time leading rusher has hosted the Tony Dorsett/McGuire Memorial Celebrity Golf Classic for the past 16 years, doing charity work in his hometown of Irving, Tex. benefitting children with mental and physical disabilities.

He made his rounds all weekend while in the area, hosting a Casino Night fundraiser in Falls Church, Va., Saturday and flipping the opening coin-toss Friday at the Damascus-Seneca Valley 3A West Region playoff game.

He spoke individually to Screaming Eagles safety Joe Rankin, a former Mark Twain student mentored by Smith and Brodsky who's gone on to star both on the gridiron and in the classroom (well over a 3.0 grade-point average since his junior year).

But conspicuously absent from Dorsett's agenda was any talk about his own playing days. He spoke with the Jaguars for almost two hours, shaking the hands of 32 Northwest players who'd achieved a 3.0 GPA or higher, without mentioning an iota of his own football achievements.

"The old saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child;' that's the way it is," said Dorsett. "Now, there's so many distractions, so many dangerous things to get into. Personally, I'm glad I grew up when I did. What they have to deal with today is way, way too much. I have three daughters, and let me tell you, it's crazy. …

"But sports teaches you life lessons, the ups-and-downs, peaks-and-valleys, how to deal with people and overcome your obstacles. There's a right way to do that, and a way kids can want to stay involved. So if there's an opportunity to get kids off the streets, make for better communities, make for a better state, make for a better country, I'm just trying to do my part."

While a public figure like Dorsett helps Pro Power garner more recognition in the eyes of the athletes it's trying to help, much of the success the Jaguar football team accumulated in the classroom was due to their fellow students. Brodsky, who now teaches 11th-grade English at Northwest, says much of her duty was to find out what individual subjects each player was struggling in — with the highest frequency being chemistry, foreign language and mathematics — then assigning them tutors with specific strengths in those areas.

As such, several members of the school's National Honor Society were also honored by Dorsett and Pro Power on Friday.

The academic achievements of the Jags' football program weren't the only Pro Power triumphs this past year; they also worked with the Gaithersburg Firebirds Youth track and field team, comprised of over 200 students, who helped write a grant for a community-education program with its help. In the future, Smith and Brodsky hope to expand their organization to more schools and more sports.

To do so, they hope to create two oversight groups. According to their Web site: "The first will be a Program Services Group comprising of community stakeholder members. The second group will be a Finance Group that provides consultation in regards to the program's fiscal operation and fundraising activities."

"We want to take it national," said Brodsky. "Something like football is very disciplined, and if you can teach them discipline, you can help them get to college, combat gang involvement, incarceration, everything. The key to not repeating those cycles is education. That's why it's great to have Tony as an NFL liaison. … He believes in the value of what we're doing with the kids."

Dorsett also plans to return to the area this summer for a football camp and fundraiser sponsored by Pro Power this summer at Bowie State University. Though logistics keep him away from the area year-round, he knows how important his involvement is, and will be in the future.

"A lot of these kids just need a mentor, guidance," said Dorsett. "You talk to a kid and one of the first things out of their mouths if they're in trouble is: "Nobody cares what I do anyway." Some of those things can be prevented. If you can make a difference, no matter how big or small it is, you need to do it."