NOVA grad on road to success

Four years ago, Edrise Babee was the poster child for misbehaving.

A smart aleck, know-it-all with an aggressive streak, the Gainesville resident went to two public high schools in Fairfax County his first two years and was eventually arrested for getting into one too many fights.

“He was very defiant, just going against the grain the whole time,” said Mitchell Ryan, associate director of the Boys Probation House in Fairfax County. “You’d say white, he’d say black. No matter what you said, you were wrong and he was right.”

Fast forward to 2009 and the 21-year-old has become a model student and person. He even has a two-mile stretch of U.S. 29 with his name on it for his participation in the federal Adopt-A-Highway program.

“I have been rarely as impressed with a student as I have been with Edrise,” said Mountain View Alternative School counselor James Lockwood. “As his counselor, I had a first-hand opportunity to observe him untangle the complex web that his past decisions had spun.”

Once unable to play soccer at Annandale High School because of his poor grades, Babee graduated last fall with a 3.9 grade point average from Northern Virginia Community College, Manassas Campus, boasts a slew of academic awards and has been accepted to the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia this fall.

Business Week recently ranked McIntire tops among the nation’s undergraduate business programs.

How did he turn his life around? Babee credits the atmosphere at Mountain View and NOVA and those who worked with him at both the probation house and Mountain View to extract that talent that had lain dormant since elementary school.

“Mountain View is very similar to NOVA in that if don’t want to learn, no one is going to force you or hold your hand,” Babee said. “I realized I had a choice whether to learn and become something in life or to mess around and overall just be immature.”

A good student as a youngster, Babee said he started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Consequently, both his attitude and his grades began to suffer. After Babee received an ultimatum in which he was nearly kicked out of the probation house, things finally started to click.

As a student at Mountain View, which is located in Centreville, Babee could be seen reading school textbooks at a picnic table long before classes started for the day. When he got to NOVA, he received two Bs but finished off the rest of his two year’s worth of classes with straight As.

He also became a member of the Biology Club and the Book Club, was the school’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter president and was named Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges.

And he’s kept in touch with those who helped him turn his life around. Ryan said he often exchanges phone calls with Babee, who likes to check up with the staff and discuss the successes and failures of their favorite sports teams.

He also visits Mountain View occasionally, a time he relishes.

“When I speak with some of the students, I see in their eyes the inspiration,” Babee said.

Babee is eyeing a career as a business owner, saying he’d like to start his own gym specializing in karate or kickboxing. An active youth and talented soccer player, Babee said the fact that he couldn’t participate in organized sports in high school was one of his biggest regrets.

But this week, it’s all about walking out of NOVA with a degree and an expectation that the future will be better than the past.

“I am going to be very very proud [when I get my degree],” Babee said Monday before Tuesday night’s commencement at the Patriot Center in Fairfax. “When I look back at all of the things I have been through, it’s just like ‘wow.’ I don’t try to think about it too much.”

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-878-8062.