Stepson Picks the Trades

TLDR:
Stepson who played an extra year of HS football to get a full ride somewhere just misses, and chooses to work/play for the Apprentice School in Newport New Va.

Background:
Stepson lived/breathed football for the last 10 years. Good student, A’/B’s without seemingly any effort. And good SAT. But school was a means to an end. His goal was always to be good enough to play college football. He’s a tweener, however. He’s 6’1 and plays at 240, defensive end. He wasn’t happy w the local HS, so he and his mother pestered me for months to let him reclass and do his senior year again at a private school. He had great success, they won another state title, he was All Conf / All State for the private school league they are in.

His Life Goal
My stepson, after going to private school and hanging out with wealthy kids for a while, had decided his path is to open his own business. I’d been telling him for years that owning your own business is the real opportunity to wealth here in the US if you are willing to bust your arse.

He also refused to consider a STEM degree. He doesn’t want to sit at a desk like I did.

Football offers:
Got offers for a bunch of Div 3 and a couple of Div 2 teams. The most compelling was one close to us, Hampden Sydney in Farmville Va. Male only, liberal arts / business, created in 1775, every building on the Natl Historic sites registry. Bunch of rich families, lots of alumni, tradition. I did the parents tour. They have beaucoup money. The football facilities for a div3 team were amazing.

But, in his final offer, they would not pay everything. We’d have to come up with 10K / year. Kid knew it would come out of his college fund. So he was undecided. Most of the football offers were looking like this - I think they want you to have a little skin in the game.

Another interesting offer was from the Apprentice School in Newport News. Run by Huntington Ingalls shipyards, they offer 19 different shipbuilder trades, in 4/8 year apprentice programs. They actually have Div 3 sports, including football. And they pay $25/hour to go there to work and learn.

Other college:
His grades / SAT were good enough to get accepted in th Va Tech biz school (and JMU, LSU, etc), but just as a normal student - no football. But at 30K / year, he said hell no.

AI Influence:
I started the corp Robotics practice at a Fortune 100 company about 7-8 years ago. We’d automated 100’s of processes that freed up temps saving lots of money. Next I was getting into Claude and Copilot AI when I retired. I was concerned that if my stepson went for just a Business degree (instead of STEM) that’d he might not have all the job opps he would have 10 years ago because of AI / Robotics.

Decision:
He interviewed at the shipyard and requested to join the Electrical apprenticeship. Apparently most kids ask for this but get assigned something else. Since stepson is gonna play football for them, they quickly agreed and he’s getting what he wants. He starts July 13.

Parents are happy
We’re finally gonna kick off our late life travel plan. Younger nurse wife (no pics) is gonna work and we’re gonna live different places for the next 5 years. First up, given our news above, is Virginia Beach. We’ve already got a condo on the water through fall so we can be on hand to watch the stepson play his games.