{"id":33,"date":"2013-01-15T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T16:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=33"},"modified":"2013-01-16T19:28:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T19:28:07","slug":"odu-football-star-stops-by-holland-elementary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/odu-football-star-stops-by-holland-elementary\/","title":{"rendered":"ODU football star stops by Holland Elementary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Josh<\/a>Hot off winning the school\u2019s CAA conference championship in football, Old Dominion University\u2019s Center Josh Mann took some time from his winter break to speak with fifth grades students at Holland Elementary School.<\/p>\n

But, it wasn\u2019t just sports talk.<\/p>\n

Mann attended Plaza Middle School, a school that pulls students from Holland Elementary.\u00a0 As the fifth grade class is getting ready to transition to their middle school years, Mann talked to the students about making the right decisions on the field, in the classroom and at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played with a lot of guys over the years,\u201d Mann told the students. \u201cI\u2019ve played with a lot of great football players \u2013 much better than me. I\u2019ve never been the best player on the team. But, some of them got bad grades, they acted like knuckleheads out of school and they can\u2019t play football anymore\u2026If you do make the right decisions, you can do whatever you want in life. \u201c<\/p>\n

Mann also encouraged the students to pursue the academic opportunities VB Schools provides students. In middle school, Mann graduated from Plaza\u2019s International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program. From there, he attended Ocean Lakes\u2019 Math and Science Academy. Today, as a sophomore, Mann is an engineering major at ODU and maintains a 3.75 grade point average.<\/p>\n

\u201cJosh was a very good student and he made really good choices,\u201d Crystal Colohan, Holland Elementary\u2019s Gifted Resource Teacher who taught Mann when he was a student at Plaza Middle School, told the students as she introduced Mann. \u201c(When I taught him), he was not far from where you are today and he still made those type of right choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, Mann credited his success to having positive influences in his life for keeping him on the straight and narrow – a message he drove home to the students in order to encourage them to pick the right influences to hang out with as they move forward in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am lucky to have a lot of great friends who have kept me on the right track,\u201d Mann said. \u201cThey definitely have helped me get where I am today. \u201c<\/p>\n

Following his talk, Mann took questions from the classes and then served as the guest of honor for a VIP lunch with students who were specially selected to eat with him.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Josh Mann, and Holland Elementary, for this special event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot off winning the school\u2019s CAA conference championship in football, Old Dominion University\u2019s Center Josh Mann took some time from his winter break to speak with fifth grades students at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}