Sports

Fledgling Brooklyn JUCO football program turns into a national power

Zedrick Gardner figured he made a big mistake.

When he arrived at two-year ASA College, all he saw in downtown Brooklyn were large buildings and traffic. There were no goal posts, no yard lines, no tackling dummies. Was this the same school he heard so much about?

“I see the campus, I see the dorms, but where is the field?” the safety from Miami wondered.

ASA’s emerging football program is hardly traditional. There is no field, film room or facility the Avengers can call their own. They bus their players to Old Boys High Field in Bedford Stuyvesant for practices and games, and view film in classrooms.

They do have one similarity to the biggest junior college programs in the country — ASA wins and produces Division I talent. And it’s doing so just five years after the program was launched.

“We set the bar high,” offensive lineman Jonathan Jenkins, a Coastal Carolina signee, said. “You’re coming to this junior college, not only are you [going to be] a winner, but you’re getting signed.”

This week, 16 ASA players signed National Letters of Intent to play at the Division I level — combining the Football Bowl Subdivision, the Bowl Championship Series and the Football Championship Subdivision. They’re headed to schools such as North Carolina State, Florida State, Cincinnati and national champion Alabama, after a ground-breaking season in which the Avengers enjoyed a perfect regular season and finished the year ranked fifth in the final National Junior College Athletic Association poll.

ASA, which opened its doors in 1985, recruits nationally, drawing talent from 12 different states, including Florida and California.

“It’s a little surprising because they came out of nowhere, but it also tells you they have very good relationships with a lot of people, and that’s pivotal,” Scout.com recruiting analyst Brian Dohn said.

Athletic director Ken Wilcox is the mastermind behind this sudden dynamo and head coach Dennis Orlando his architect. As the athletic director at Globe Institute in Manhattan, Wilcox saw the benefits of building a top program, but it never received enough support. When he was hired at ASA, school president Alex Shchegol shared his vision. Wilcox’s first move was to hire Orlando, the defensive coordinator at Globe who previously was the junior college and prep coach at highly regarded Valley Forge Military Academy & College (Va.).

“Dennis is a problem solver. He’s not a complainer,” Wilcox said of Orlando, who coached NFL stars Larry Fitzgerald and Jeff Otah while at Valley Forge. “When I hired him, I said, ‘We don’t have dormitories, we don’t have a weight room, we don’t have a facility.’ He said, ‘Let’s figure out how we’re going to build [those things].’ We got our dorms for athletes, our own weight room, we’re working on the field.”

Mark Duda, the coach at JUCO power Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pa., said he isn’t surprised by how quickly Orlando has developed his program at ASA. With so much turnover year to year, “you can do it fast, things are multiplied by two at junior college,” he said.

He has been impressed by the physical brand of football ASA plays, and the high level of athletes on its roster.

“They are a formidable program. They are well-funded,” he said, referring to the resources the school dedicates to football, “And they are well-coached.”

Fifteen of its 82 players come from football hotbed Florida. Many of them hail from the Miami area and are part of the Fellows of Christian Athletes (FCA). The program, which helps football players in the area with academic struggles find alternatives to Division I, used to send players to California, but ASA changed that because it took care of the kids on the field and in the classroom, said David Silvera, a member of the organization.

FCA sent defensive end Desmond Hollin, Gardner and offensive lineman Leon Brown — who signed with Florida State, Stony Brook and Alabama, respectively — to ASA, among others.

Players credit ASA for getting them ready for the next level. Classes are smaller, with 15 students or less, and professors make themselves available. The program organizes around-the-clock tutoring sessions for the players in need, and the coaches keep tabs on them, making sure they are taking the right classes to qualify.

“The only thing I didn’t like was the weather,” first-team All-American running back Hosey Williams, a Cincinnati signee, said jokingly.

On the field, the coaching staff is relentless. The only break is a two-week hiatus after the season. In the summer, when other junior college teams are off, ASA is on the field preparing for the coming season.

“They push you until you scream,” Jenkins said.

ASA has improved on the field each year, reaching nine wins this fall. More than victories, Orlando said, the big signing class is proof of the program’s success.

“It says we’re a national program. Our program is as good as any JUCO in the country,” Orlando said. “Kids come in and all the possibilities are here in Brooklyn, same as they are in Kansas or California.”

Gardner gives Orlando and his staff credit for his Division I scholarship. He didn’t play high school football because of academic issues and didn’t have any options upon earning his GED. He found ASA, and enjoyed a solid freshman year. He had Division II options, but Orlando convinced him to stay another season.

“He’d seen something in me that I didn’t see,” Gardner said.

Like Gardner, many players coming into the program and those outside of it can’t fathom how ASA has emerged as a JUCO powerhouse, either. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to take long before they are believers.

zbraziller@nypost.com