Can a high school student captain his football team in the fall and his baseball team in the spring while maintaining a 94.7 GPA as an AP Scholar and National Honor Society member in good standing?

By Mitch Silver

Can a high school student captain his football team in the fall and his baseball team in the spring while maintaining a 94.7 GPA as an AP Scholar and National Honor Society member in good standing?
He can, if he’s Tim DeGraw.

Maybe you’ve seen the All-State First Team and National Football Foundation Golden Dozen Award winner catch a long pass from Garnet QB Andrew Livingston as the leaves began to turn. No surprise there…he’ll graduate in June as Section One’s career receiving leader. The surprise comes when you meet him in person: at maybe 5’ 10” tall and 150 lbs. (if he happens to be wearing two winter coats), Tim is the least prepossessing football player in America. That is, until you see him run. And then he’s simply a blur.

That blur is currently patrolling centerfield for Rye’s once-beaten baseball team. A four-year starter and three-year captain, DeGraw was chosen to the All-State baseball team and was named Conference Player of the Year in 2014, setting Rye records for hits, runs, and stolen bases. A year later, he’s still hitting and stealing bases like no Garnet in, well, ever. And, last month, he added pitching to his job description.

Is he any good on the mound? His first start was merely a 7-0 no-hitter that he threw against Harrison. No wonder the Rye Lions Club and the Rye High athletic department jointly named Tim Rye’s Athlete of the Month for April, and a candidate for scholar-athlete of the year at the year-end dinner at The Osborn in June.

It’s anything but all play and no work for Tim DeGraw. A High Honor Roll mainstay, he scored a 2090 SAT score (Math 710, Reading 660, Writing 720) and earned admission to the Ivy League with an acceptance from Yale University.

Why Yale? “The academics, the coaches. I don’t know, it just clicked,” he told me. Was he tempted to choose Stanford? After all, Tim’s brother and both parents went there? He smiled. “I guess I wanted to take my own path.”

Football Coach Dino Garr certainly approves of the path he’s taken. “Tim is an outstanding Scholar Athlete with tremendous leadership qualities,” he told me. “He’ll forever be remembered and emulated by future athletes at Rye. It was an honor and privilege to have been his coach for four years.”

With all his athletic skills and personal attributes, the trait that stands out may be Tim DeGraw’s competitiveness. I asked the Lions Club honoree to choose between playing centerfield and pitching for the Garnets. Which did he prefer?
“Whichever gets us the win.”