AMHERST — Everyone else was in a helmet, practice shirt, and shorts. Jean Sifrin was in full pads.
It was odd, but it was mandatory.
Sifrin was on the last day of the NCAA’s mandatory acclimation period for new players. He was on just his fifth day practicing with the University of Massachusetts.
Game day — against Colorado — was only 24 hours away. Coach Mark Whipple knew he had been stashing the 6-foot-7-inch tight end in his back pocket, but there was only so much time for him to get on the same page as everyone else.
“He’d been doing those things on his own,” Whipple said. “We couldn’t coach him. He’d been studying the things that way, but it’s one thing to apply it to the field. So we gave him a limited role.”
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From the time he transferred from El Camino Community College, Sifrin had tried to pay as much attention as he could. But he couldn’t study the playbook. All he could do was watch practice and try to absorb.
“How I learn the plays is by getting on the field, doing it,” Sifrin said. “They couldn’t give me a playbook because of NCAA rules. So I just basically watched them and saw the routes that they ran the most. So that’s one thing, just by visualizing, but it wasn’t until I actually got on the field. And even after I got on the field, I only had a week of training. So after I got on the field, it was still some routes I was running that wasn’t correct.”
Quarterback Blake Frohnapfel was happy to have another weapon at his disposal, but even he didn’t completely know what he had.
“I’ve seen him running around and stuff,” Frohnapfel said. “But we kind of had to get the timing down quick because he was kind of able to see practice and kind of learn the plays, but he wasn’t able to run them himself. It’s always different doing it yourself for the first time.”
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The plan was to keep things simple.
Sifrin stopped in the middle of the end zone, essentially posted up his defender, and turned Frohnapfel’s pass into a jump ball.
“The play was pretty much like, ‘OK, Jean, you go ahead and do this and I’ll throw it to you,’ ” Frohnapfel said.
Not only did he snag the ball, he did it one handed. The 14-yard grab put UMass up, 21-20, going into the half last Saturday, and even though it lost, 41-38, persistent replays of the catch officially introduced the weapon the Minutemen had been keeping hush-hush.
“Just having someone like him, where he’s 6-7, 250 and obviously he has hands and can jump — having that as a quarterback, it’s very nice to have,” Frohnapfel said. “It makes you really comfortable in the pocket just having a guy like that out there. Plus, the defense has to adjust with him. They can’t just let him run around anymore.”
As much as his first five days were a blur of X’s and O’s, picking things up quickly is something Sifrin is used to.
“I adjust quickly,” he said. “Because I’ve been a lot of places, I can adjust real quick.”
Always on the move
Sifrin’s first move came when he was 3 years old, when his mother moved his family to Miami from the Bahamas. He hasn’t been static since.
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His family constantly moved from home to home in Miami, from Little Haiti to North Miami to North Miami Beach. He bounced between seven elementary schools.
The youngest of three children, Sifrin often found himself home alone while his mother worked.
“So I got into some trouble in high school,” he said.
Though he was supposed to graduate from Miami Norland High School in 2005, he dropped out and got his GED. At the time, he was more focused on earning a living than playing a sport. He met his then-girlfriend while working on his GED, and they had a son. Even though he had an offer to play basketball at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, he had to provide for his family.
He got a job at a Publix warehouse. The money was good, but the tradeoff was the type of strenuous work that led to two herniated disks that required epidural steroid injections. Sifrin and his girlfriend eventually broke up, and he made a decision.
“I said, ‘The next opportunity I get, I’m taking it,’ ” Sifrin said. “No matter what sport it was.”
He didn’t expect that opportunity to come at a flag football game. He was only playing because a friend asked him. But while he was there, he caught the eye of a junior college recruiter named Pete Monzon, an assistant coach at ASA College in Brooklyn who was there to watch Sifrin’s friend.
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“He was based out of Miami trying to help kids to get out, and he came for him and saw me, asked me my story, asked me what happened, why didn’t I ever go to college to play ball,” said Sifrin.
Monzon talked Sifrin into coming to ASA on a partial scholarship. He played basketball and football there, but ended up running into more trouble — “for something I didn’t even do,” he said — and getting kicked out.
Sifrin found himself back in Miami weighing two options. One was to go to Monroe College and play for its upstart program.
“They were just starting a football program,” Sifrin said. “I would be basically in a hole, where I won’t get seen because they’re more of a basketball school.”
The other was to go across the country to El Camino Community College in California, but he knew that would be a struggle.
“It’s far, plus they don’t have a scholarship for junior colleges, so I would have to pay out of pocket,” he said.
He chose to go to El Camino, even if it meant staying in a one-room apartment with eight teammates.
“We could have made a TV show,” he said.
Things didn’t go smoothly. His credits didn’t transfer. He had to redshirt in 2012. He barely had enough money to buy food and wash clothes, let alone buy books.
But once he got on the field, he shined, catching 18 passes for 328 yards and five touchdown in 2013. Schools such as Oklahoma and Southern Cal took notice, but plans to join their programs never panned out.
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Then Monzon called again.
“He had a little connection with the University of Miami,” Sifrin said. “And he always asked me if I wanted to go to any Florida school. I was like no, I wanted to stay out of Florida. Because based off my life, I know if I was to stay in Miami it would be bad for me. So, let me get away so I can focus.”
Monzon happened to know UMass passing game coordinator Mike Cassano and set up a phone call. Soon, Sifrin made a visit to Amherst.
When Whipple got a chance to hear Sifrin’s story, it struck him.
“I think he’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed coming back to UMass, making an impact on somebody’s life,” Whipple said. “I said, ‘We’re going to be here. We’re not just going to sign you and let you go. You’ve got a chance to make an impact.’ ”
One that got away
For as much attention as his one-handed touchdown grabbed, Sifrin can’t stop thinking about one play early in the third quarter against Colorado.
It was second down. UMass had driven from their 39-yard line to the Colorado 17, and Frohnapfel was looking to hook up with Sifrin.
Sifrin, 26, was running a seam route, but once he got by the linebacker, he let off the gas.
“I kind of slowed down and I’m looking at the quarterback and he threw it how he was supposed to, but by me slowing down, it was overthrown,” Sifrin said.
Two plays later, the Minutemen settled for a field goal. All week, Sifrin has been doing the painful math.
“We lost by three points,” he said. “If we would have made the touchdown, we would have had the other four points. So it’s killing me right now, thinking like that, like I could have done something about it.”
Sifrin finished with four catches for 40 yards and two touchdowns. But for Frohnapfel, who transferred from Marshall earlier this year, the impression Sifrin made was bigger.
“He’s kind of all over the country trying to take a chance on himself, believing that he can come here and play,” Frohnapfel said.
Whipple’s plan is to open the playbook bit by bit for Sifrin and watch him flourish. What he doesn’t doubt is that Sifrin will adjust.
“There were a lot of trials and tribulations that he had to go through,” Whipple said. “But those guys that can manage to do that end up being pretty successful. So, it’s nice to see all that work kind of come through, and Jean’s the one that did it. He’s not a quitter. He’s a grinder and a good kid and you can tell by talking to him.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @julianbenbow.