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October 24, 2001
Mullen High honors teacher with namesake library
42-year teacher Frank Sferra also earns elite forensic award
By Alwen Bledsoe
Longtime teacher Frank Sferra is an institution at Mullen High School —and when the school's new library is complete there will be one bearing his name. On Oct. 15 the school broke ground on the Frank Sferra Research Center, named after the 42-year faculty member.
Following an assembly honoring the teacher/debate coach, school officials broke ground for the new building that, come June, will be a $3 million, 19,980-square-foot structure housing seven new classrooms, a computer lab and new library. Each room will have computers, all with electronic access to library collections, said school officials.
The groundbreaking and the $1.9 million already raised mark the first phase of what Mullen president Vince Greco hopes will be a fundraising campaign to raise $6 million and to build a new field house. The current field house, said Linda Brady, principal of Mullen, is an old dairy barn, a holdover from Mullen's days as an orphanage. The current library will be gutted and entirely renovated to provide space for a new guidance center, she added, saying that construction is necessary just to accommodate the school's current population. During the Oct. 15 assembly, the National Forensic League presented Sferra with his sixth diamond, an award only 13 other debate coaches have earned since 1925. Stipulations for the award are a minimum of 30 years of coaching/teaching and an accumulated 16,000 points, one-tenth of a point earned for each point awarded to a coach's debaters during tournaments.
Surrounded by congratulatory fellow coaches, teachers and former students, Sferra was rarely without enthusiastic company after the groundbreaking.
"This award is not really mine," he said. "It's the work of the kids. I mean, the kids get the points."
Of his future library-namesake, he said, "It's overwhelming."
Protesting that the attention "is not me," he added, "I just teach. That's all I do."
Executive Secretary of the National Forensic League James Copeland said that Sferra trains 50-100 kids a year either on debate teams or in speech classes. Sferra's sixth diamond, he said, "shows a real commitment to average students as well as star students."
According to Copeland, Sferra "has won every single major award given in High School Speech by the National Forensic League, by the Colorado Activities Association and by the National Federation," and has repeatedly held both local and national positions in high school debate, including president and vice-president of the National Forensic League.
Paul Angelico, assistant commissioner for the High School Activities Association, said "Frank doesn't coach speech, he coaches kids."
Calling Sferra's program the "most balanced program" he's seen, Angelico said, "The absolute beginner kid is just as important to him as the state champ."
Two former students, after momentarily casting-about for words to describe their challenging high school coach, emerged with compliments.
"He's tough, but he's very, very good," said Kate Parks, 1995 Mullen graduate. "He's the best in the country at what he does. I think he's really committed to speech and high school speech in a way that very few are."
Greg Jerou, 1999 Mullen graduate who liked Sferra enough to begin debate and stay in it for four years despite his fear of public speaking said Sferra always made speech interesting.
Though Sferra doesn't like the attention brought by the library bearing his name, said Jerou, "It's still great because he been here for so long and taught so many kids. He definitely deserves something."
Parks vividly remembers Sferra's influential coaching during her senior year, her fourth year on Mullen's debate team.
"I was doing terribly," confessed Parks, who had won only one round out of 14 that semester. Though she had qualified for State the two previous years, she was sure she wouldn't this year.
On the brink of quitting, she took a debate case to Sferra, who "went through every point of it" and "tore it all down and built it back up with me," she said.
After spending her next few nights in the library creating a new case, Parks qualified for State, beating out two of the state's toughest competitors. She tied for fourth at State and went on to qualify for Nationals.
Parks became the first Mullen female to qualify for Nationals in Lincoln-Douglas debate.
"It was a huge confidence boost for me at an influential time," she said, later adding, "The thing about Sferra is he always believed in me when everybody was telling me to quit. Even when I was losing and losing and losing, he never lost faith in me and never let me not believe I could do it."
Brady said the choice to name the library after Sferra was made because of his many years at Mullen, in honor of the "tremendous success" his sixth diamond represents, and as a "tribute" to all of Mullen's faculty.
"I think it's great," Parks said when she learned of the library's new name. "I don't think there's anybody who's been there and done more for Mullen and given more to the school than he has. ... Sferra is really cool. He's as good as it comes, everything a teacher should be."
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