Steele is a 'Stang: Cleveland safety heads to WNMU

RIO RANCHO — If you tell a 4-year-old in Florida that he will be playing college football in New Mexico one day, he will probably give you a weird look. 

If you tell a 9-year-old in Oklahoma, he will also probably not believe you.

If you tell Cleveland senior Connor Steele, he will tell you that it makes all the sense in the world.

Announced last week via Instagram, the Storm safety revealed his next move for his football career: joining the Western New Mexico University Mustangs next season.

“I made the decision because I really wanted to be around the coaching staff that liked me,” Steele said. “They care for their players, and it is somewhere I definitely want to be.”

Silver City joins a long list of stops on Steele’s journey, starting his football career in Palm Beach County, Florida, before moving to Oklahoma and then eventually to Rio Rancho. While the locations changed, the passion for the sport did not, with Steele’s older brothers also playing college football.

“Watching my brothers play high school sports, and then seeing them play football at Glenville State,” Steele said. “Watching them, that's where my love kind of began.”

Soon enough, it was time for Steele to watch his own story unfold, and an illustrious one at that. Steele won a championship in third grade in Oklahoma, a title with Mountain View Middle School in eighth grade as their quarterback, and two state titles with the Cleveland Storm during his junior and senior years.

Is this college decision an accumulation of all those accolades? Either way, Steele is making sure not to view it in a one-dimensional light.

“I take it as an award, but I also take it as another step (in the journey),” Steele said. “I feel like all the time leading up to this has been me putting in hard work. I feel like I earned it.”

A part of that hard work has been handling the college process, which is easier said than done for the everyday high school athlete. But through the numerous phone calls and coaches' emails, a feeling of “home” is quite the sales pitch.

“It's definitely hard navigating. A lot of schools are contacting you; they're all trying to get you to go there, right?” Steele said. “But I would say what got me with Western was my official visit down there, the coaches, they all knew me; it was super easy to talk to them. When I got down there, it felt like home. I was messing around with the coaches, telling them I was gonna put 300 up on them in bowling, even though I'm bad at bowling.”

Whether he is competing on the lanes or not, Steele now joins a long list of Storm football alumni who have made it to the collegiate level, as his time with the Storm program isn’t taken for granted.

“I would say, (to the younger players) to enjoy it; time really does fly,” Steele said. “You don't really listen to people when they say it's gonna fly by, but it definitely flies. Enjoy every single moment. Enjoy the college process. Enjoy high school as well. It's a blessing to be able to go to Cleveland or whatever high school you're going to, so just enjoy it.”