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giacomo
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| WSJ article about father funding son's HS program |
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Posted: 6/29/2026 5:10:42 PM |
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From the front page of today's WSJ:
“Central Florida’s #1 Private Christian School” asks applicants to its now $28,370-a-year high school for reference letters from pastors. Prospective parents have been quizzed about Scripture. An honor code requires students to avoid, among other things, cursing, witchcraft and “professing to be a homosexual.”
On the athletic fields of its 160-acre campus, the children of doctors, lawyers and other professionals won state championships in golf and baseball. But in football, Florida’s marquee high-school sport, the TFA Royals were an afterthought with small players and a cupcake schedule.
That changed in 2024 after a wealthy entrepreneur named Eric Obrokta stepped in. The father of a TFA student with ambitions to play high-level football, Obrokta sank millions into the school.
More than 30 players, including some bound for big college programs, suddenly transferred to TFA before the 2024 season. The offensive line, once anchored by a 160-pound center, came to average about 280 pounds. There were new uniforms and helmets, NFL-style sideline monitors, drones for filming practice and a coach with a $230,000 compensation package.
Unsurprisingly, TFA crushed the competition that fall, going 9-1 and barreling toward a state title. Then, just as quickly as it began, it all crashed down.
The flood of endorsement money that has upended college athletics is leading to an equally radical transformation of high-school sports. As billions of dollars slosh through Division 1 programs, parents are pouring money into their children’s athletic careers with an intensity unimaginable a decade ago. Prepubescent athletes have personal trainers, agents and cutthroat recruiting plans.
High-school competitions are now proving grounds where parents bet everything on their kids’ potential. For Obrokta, the cost, financially and personally, was greater than most: “I was naive.”
Obrokta, 54, drives a Rolls-Royce and lives in a 10,500-square-foot lakefront mansion in the Orlando suburb of Windermere, but he spent most of his life on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
At 40, he was earning about $45,000 a year as a supervisor for a company that provided landscaping and janitorial services to big corporations, he said. Many days, he pushed a mop alongside his crews.
An executive at one of the companies noticed his “hustle” in 2012 and offered him additional work building the interior of a warehouse. That led him down a new path.
Over the next decade, a company he co-founded, NPSG Global, set up warehouses around the world, eventually employing a thousand people and bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, he said.
Obrokta was on the road more than 300 days a year for eight years, he said. By 2020, his company was throwing off enormous profits, and he returned to Orlando determined to spend time with his wife and only child. He found the boy, then in middle school, had developed an interest in football.
“I wanted to feed whatever passion he had,” recalled Obrokta, who spoke to The Wall Street Journal on the condition his son not be named.
Obrokta’s son declined to comment.
Eric Obrokta in 2021. James Leventelis
The boy decided to excel at football after being picked last for a recess game in fifth grade, Obrokta said.
The executive had a love of the game. He played football for two years in college and credited it for getting him out of his small West Virginia town. At his business, he liked to hire athletes because they understood teamwork.
His son was fast, but hadn’t played organized sports and weighed just 105 pounds.
“I remember saying, ‘You got to get to 115 pounds before I let you play middle school football,’” Obrokta said. His son impressed him by packing on weight and working out, he said.
As high school approached, Obrokta considered a specialized boarding school. IMG Academy, the $100,000-a-year sports school, was two hours away. But, he said, he felt he’d “already missed his first 12 years” and couldn’t stomach more separation.
Instead, he directed his attention—and his money—to TFA.
Florida football
Florida is a hotbed of football talent with more than 10% of the NFL draft coming out of its high schools. Top prep squads such as Chaminade-Madonna, Miami Northwestern and St. Thomas Aquinas showcase future college and pro stars in high-octane, pass-heavy contests.
Not TFA. Its offensive line was generally too small to protect the quarterback for long, making a sophisticated passing game difficult. The team relied on a running game, which moved the ball down the field in fits and starts but rarely resulted in plays worthy of highlights.
Watching from the sidelines in 2022, Obrokta recognized a problem. His child, then starting high school, was a wide receiver.
“If you are going to get good players in here and you want to up the roster, you need to run a different offense,” Obrokta said he told administrators after the season’s end.
By then, the school president, Steve Whitaker, knew Obrokta’s deep pockets well. Obrokta had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for a new baseball locker room and field turf, even though his son didn’t play the sport.
A TFA spokeswoman declined to answer questions and declined requests to interview Whitaker and other TFA employees. The individuals didn’t respond to direct requests for comment.
Obrokta said he told Whitaker he envisioned making TFA the center of the family’s philanthropy for decades to come, with significant annual donations. “I was willing to put my money where my mouth was,” he said.
School leaders embraced his push to raise its football team to an elite level. The school showed the door to its longtime football coach and embarked on a national search for a replacement.
Jeff Conaway was a state title-winning coach at Shiloh Christian School in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. He had never heard of TFA, but met Whitaker, Obrokta and others and came away impressed. As he told an Arkansas sports podcast shortly after he accepted the job in June 2023, “They’re saying things like, ‘We want to be a state championship program, and here’s what we’re willing to do.’”
Conaway didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has said he believed God called him to Orlando. He also aspired to coach college, and Florida, with its top-flight teams, seemed a better steppingstone than the Ozarks.
School president Steve Whitaker and coach Jeff Conaway.
There was the money, too. With Obrokta’s largess, annual spending on football ballooned from about $25,000 to more than a half-million dollars, people familiar with the team said.
Conaway was paid a salary of $150,000 with an additional allowance that worked out to about $80,000 a year, Obrokta said.
By contrast, TFA’s then baseball coach, Scott Grove, a former Major League pitcher, collected $67,000 a year for teaching gym and coaching. His team was a top national squad that had won a state title and was a perennial playoff contender.
Obrokta helped the new football coach and his family house hunt. After they selected a $962,500 four-bedroom home with a pool, Obrokta paid cash for it and held it for two months while they relocated, property records show. The family then purchased the property from Obrokta for the same amount.
Hopes for the 2023 season were high—but were quickly dashed. Conaway ran the passing game that Obrokta wanted, but the offensive line was still weak. The Royals went 6-4. MaxPreps ranked them 346th in the state.
Obrokta’s son missed most of the games with a hip injury.
The next season, 2024, would be his most important, since junior year is key for college recruiting. Obrokta asked Conaway, “Do you want to organically grow this program, which is going to take four or five years…Or do you want to flip the switch?”
The coach didn’t hesitate, he recalled.
“Flip the switch.”
One-man solution
Obrokta roamed the halls of the athletic department in shorts and a baseball cap while his son was in class. With no day-to-day responsibilities at work, he spent his time focused on beefing up TFA’s roster.
He told Conaway he had a one-man solution. Steven Moffett, then 39, was a roofing contractor who had coached at two schools, but he was better known for quarterbacking at the University of Central Florida in the 2000s.
He also co-founded an Orlando 7-on-7 organization, a low-contact version of football that spotlights top position players, such as quarterbacks and receivers, and has become integral to college recruiting.
Obrokta pitched Moffett on TFA as a “super team” that could rival the nation’s elite programs. Moffett accepted a position as associate head coach at a salary of $70,000, according to a person familiar with his finances.
Groups of boys, many Black and large in stature, started touring TFA’s campus.
“I was just like, ‘What the heck is going on?’” said Grove, the baseball coach, who had worked at what he described as the “extremely white” school for a decade.
“We don’t get these type of athletes…I just didn’t understand it,” he said.
Conaway, who was also the school’s athletic director, was keeping a running tally of players transferring into TFA on a whiteboard in the athletic department, Grove said. He said he counted 25 names and Conaway told him that more were on their way. Grove said he replied, “You don’t know the FHSAA rules real well.”
The Florida High School Athletic Association is the main regulatory body for private and public school sports. Under its rules, schools or their representatives may not “pressure, urge or entice” students to transfer for athletic reasons. The prohibited conduct can range from a coach texting a prospective athlete to schools offering athletic scholarships or housing.
Grove said it seemed clear to him TFA was engaging in impermissible recruiting. He said Conaway shrugged off his warnings and that Obrokta mocked him, saying: “We are not buying them hookers,” a remark two others present also recalled hearing.
Obrokta denied making the comment and said he never gave any illicit benefits to any player.
Quarterback Salomon Georges Jr. said he transferred to TFA in early 2024 for his senior season from Leesburg High, a public school with many financially disadvantaged students northwest of Orlando. He said he moved because he respected Moffett.
Associate head coach Steven Moffett. Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/TNS
“I knew I didn’t want to play for anyone else but him,” Georges said. Undersize for his position at 5-foot-10, he felt he needed to prove himself to recruiters. He said that few seemed willing to make an hour-long drive to Leesburg to scout him and that TFA was “closer to the airport.”
Transfers, many coming from the public schools around Orlando, would account for 18 of 22 starters that fall.
As dozens of bigger, stronger boys
appeared on campus, TFA’s existing team members realized they were unlikely to see the field. One varsity player took his frustrations to interscholastic authorities.
“I have reasonable suspicion to believe that they are heavily recruiting,” the boy wrote in a FHSAA complaint form in February 2024, reviewed by the Journal. “Behind close[d] doors Conaway has made jokes about…how he is making a power house.”
The organization had no investigators on staff and asked school administrators to look into complaints themselves and self-report any misconduct. Whitaker’s deputy, assistant head of school Will Cohen, told the FHSAA in April that an internal investigation he conducted found “no wrongdoing on the part of the First Academy.” FHSAA closed the case.
Grove, the baseball coach, said that when he complained about what he saw as violations to Whitaker and Cohen, they told him the school was leading less fortunate boys to Jesus. Grove announced he was resigning that April, telling the Orlando Sentinel at the time that the school was breaking rules.
“Those kids didn’t go to TFA for the Gospel,” he told the Journal.
Lower tuition
For the fall 2024 season opener, Obrokta paid $75,000 for the team to travel to Nashville to take on Lipscomb Academy, a nationally known program that had sent dozens of players to Division 1 schools. The Royals prevailed 28-23, and the following week knocked off Orlando’s Edgewater High, a public stronghold with NFL alumni.
The Royals now had six linemen who stood 6-foot-3 or taller and a dozen assistant coaches. There was a $50,000 technology system used for practices and a $60,000 summer road trip for players to meet college coaches. Obrokta watched his son at preseason practices alongside dozens of talented transfers with a sense of satisfaction, he recalled.
“We were in a position to compete at a high level and help a lot of kids,” Obrokta said.
School officials used to dealing with wealthy, academically focused families had initially balked at admitting some transfers, Obrokta said.
Many boys had single mothers with limited incomes, and some had learning disabilities, according to FHSAA records and proceedings. One player had scored just 200 out of 760 on the verbal portion of the PSAT, a mark suggesting pronounced academic delays, according to an application in FHSAA records.
In the end, TFA admitted boys who were far behind, FHSAA records show.
Paying full tuition, which was $24,700 for the 2024 school year, was out of the question for many of them. One transfer’s household income was less than $40,000, according to FHSAA records.
Obrokta said he suggested a less costly solution.
TFA already had a two-day-a-week homeschool-hybrid program. It was housed in a church complex and separated from the regular school by a lake, and had different teachers, chapel services and dining facilities. It was also about half the cost.
After Florida state education vouchers, which covered about $8,000 for each student, tuition came down to about $3,000—or less than $100,000 in total for 30 transfers.
Complaints filed to the FHSAA alleged Obrokta was footing the bill for the players’ tuition—which would be prohibited by interscholastic rules.
Obrokta said he didn’t pay individual tuition bills or ask school officials to use his contributions to do so. But he doesn’t dispute his donations helped cover the cost of educating players, saying “I’m sure some of that money” would go toward that.
TFA denied any wrongdoing to FHSAA, saying, “In no way is tuition assistance given for the purpose of participating in interscholastic athletics.”
Failing classes
Football players in the hybrid program were expected on campus even on the days class wasn’t in session to attend practice and study hall. It was “a difficult transition,” according to former English teacher Isaac Philips. “They were coming there for football,” he said. “Anything academic was very secondary.”
Some plagiarized work and spent class on their phones, FHSAA records show. Players used to supervision, with worksheet handouts and a full week of instruction, had to complete assignments online and independently. “It was like being thrown into a totally different way of approaching school,” Philips said.
Some boys rose at 4 a.m. to make an hour commute for morning practice from areas outside Orlando. Linebacker Aden Hall, who graduated last year and now plays for UT San Antonio, said he did well, but “a lot of dudes were always sleeping in class.”
By October 2024, more than a dozen were failing academic courses, according to school records reviewed by the Journal. Obrokta said he offered administrators “an open checkbook” for tutors or other intervention.
TFA gave a defensive backs coach, Corey Broomfield, the title of “academic dean of students.”
Despite his title, Broomfield’s duties appeared to have little to do with learning, according to several people who witnessed his interactions with students. They said he arranged lunch and passed on messages from the administration.
TFA has a policy of mandatory drug testing to aid teens “in resisting temptation,” according to its website.
But the hybrid students weren’t tested before or during the season, even after suspicions arose that football players were smoking marijuana, according to people familiar with the program.
After the season wrapped, Broomfield texted players a “heads up” that there would be drug testing in March—four months away, according to a text reviewed by the Journal. He added, “I would hope all of you young men are living right outside of football but if not you got time to get it right!”
Broomfield, who no longer works at TFA, didn’t respond to interview requests. TFA declined to comment about Broomfield’s role or drug testing.
A visit from FHSAA
Anonymous complaints about TFA kept arriving at FHSAA headquarters, public records show. Some referenced Obrokta, such as a June 2024 complaint that said he was paying for coaches and tuition “to build a powerhouse football program so his son has a chance to compete at a higher level.” Another the previous month alleged that “administrators are aware of all wrong doing.”
TFA denied the allegations. When an Orlando Sentinel reporter had earlier in the year asked Conaway about rumors a booster was paying players’ tuition and other expenses, he said, “That’s not factual at all. From my understanding that’s illegal.”
The school had acknowledged to the interscholastic organization in May what it presented as minor missteps in a rapidly growing program—free lunches and Uber rides for players. Both could constitute “impermissible benefits” under FHSAA rules, and interscholastic officials pressed for more information.
What they got were “vague answers,” according to FHSAA executive director Craig Damon. The school took a defensive posture—retaining a lawyer and telling Damon that players, coaches or parents wouldn’t sit for interviews unless the attorney was present.
Administrators allowed Damon to review files during a scheduled school visit in September, but on an unannounced trip in October, he got a series of excuses—a hospitalized employee, a recent hurricane, homecoming festivities—that meant he couldn’t get the information he sought, according to an FHSAA log of school visits. One staffer told him to “call and schedule an appointment,” the log said.
“I was not a happy camper that day,” Damon said in an interview.
The TFA spokeswoman said in a statement that the school had fully cooperated with FHSAA.
Damon found information elsewhere. A linebacker at Tavares High, a public school northwest of Orlando, reported that when he tried out for Moffett’s 7-on-7 team, a woman he didn’t know gave him a reading and math test and others present talked up the advantages of attending TFA. In a handwritten statement to FHSAA, the player recalled, “I was told they could give me a ride to school and lunch everyday.”
As Damon continued his investigation, TFA was winning games. The Royals ranked 16th in the state at one point in the season.
‘Death penalty’
“Iron sharpens iron” was a favorite saying of Obrokta. He told the Journal one reason he had poured money into the football team was so his son would compete against top players and emerge stronger.
He didn’t object when two star wide receivers—the position his son played—transferred into TFA. As the 2024 season progressed though, he became frustrated. The other receivers were putting up remarkable numbers. One, who would go on to play at the University of Iowa, eventually tallied 46 receptions and 962 yards. The other, now at the University of Pittsburgh, recorded 36 receptions for 894 yards.
Obrokta’s son, a starter, had 18 receptions for 185 yards. In his father’s view, he wasn’t being thrown the ball enough. He raised the issue to Conaway and his staff repeatedly.
“If you tell me he’s No. 3 or 4 [receiver], that should dictate a certain amount of targets a game,” Obrokta said. “It’s mathematics.”
Obrokta’s son had spent many years as a middle-class child with an absent father, but his teammates knew him only as a rich kid whose father was bankrolling the squad. Hall, the TFA linebacker, said, “We used to think he’s automatically going to get playing time because of who his dad is.”
Players made comments about his father’s money in front of him. One transfer sniped that he only played because he was rich.
Such remarks disappointed Obrokta. He said he had confidence in his son’s abilities on the field but was starting to question his choices as a father. He had wanted elite football players to push his son to be stronger. They did, but not in the way he envisioned.
In November, with the playoffs looming, FHSAA announced that its investigation found that 10 TFA players had participated in preseason football without proper enrollment. The punishment was forfeiture of all wins in the 2024 season, which voided the team’s playoff eligibility, and a playoff ban the following year—the “death penalty,” the school lawyer called it.
TFA appealed. Obrokta hadn’t been interviewed by FHSAA and none of the infractions involved him, but he spent $25,000 for a lobbyist to argue the school’s case to the governor.
At a last-ditch hearing before the FHSAA, TFA acknowledged that it had improperly allowed transfers to participate but argued the punishment was too steep.
An FHSAA board member noted an “unseriousness” in the school’s dealings with the regulatory body, according to a transcript of the hearing. Another asked about compensation for Moffett, the associate head coach who was paid $70,000 a year. Cohen told the board Moffett was an unpaid volunteer.
Asked about the administrator’s statement, the TFA spokeswoman said the hearing records “speak for themselves.”
The board upheld the punishment. Obrokta said he was furious at what he saw as Conaway’s incompetence in managing the enrollment paperwork. He typed out an angry text to the head coach that concluded, “You are a complete disappointment.”
No ‘respect’
Obrokta’s dream that his son would shine in the postseason died with the ruling. In December 2024, the boy decided to leave TFA entirely. He told Obrokta that he loved him as a father, but hated being his son when it came to football.
“Me being so close to the program created challenges for my son and we thought it would be best to start fresh,” Obrokta said.
The boy spent his senior year playing football at an out-of-state school where few people knew his family. He graduated in December 2025, and now is a college player for a Football Bowl Subdivision team, the sport’s highest college tier.
Obrokta stopped giving to TFA, and the team went 5-5 in the 2025 season. Conaway, who admitted administrative errors, remains the head coach.
The school told FHSAA it planned an internal review to examine the “desired relationship” between athletes in the hybrid program and the regular school and whether athletics were “supporting the mission or distracting from the mission of the school.” The TFA spokeswoman declined to reveal the conclusions to the Journal.
A new athletic director, Andy Chiles, a former FHSAA board president, said in a statement to the Journal that “our focus is on the future” and that TFA was “not going to debate or second guess” the past.
Some transfers stayed at TFA, some returned to their old schools and some achieved the dream of playing for strong college programs. Nine Royals on the 2025 squad committed to top universities, including Oregon, Nebraska and Clemson.
Georges, the 2024 quarterback, played a year at Livingstone College in North Carolina and will play for SUNY-Erie, a junior college, this fall. He said the cheating and postseason ban hurt his recruiting prospects.
“I needed to be in the playoffs to show coaches what I could do” against top players, he said. But he doesn’t regret his time at TFA, he said, because it led him to a deeper relationship with God. He was baptized at the school, and it inspired his father to get baptized. “It really changed my life and my family life,” Georges said.
Obrokta remains bitter, he said, “that my money and these kids weren’t treated with respect.”
He is also upset with himself. He said that he learned that when it comes to his son, “I need to pump the brakes.”
“Ultimately, I don’t think we hurt children, or hurt kids or hurt opportunities. If anything we probably helped, but we did the bare minimum. And I don’t like doing the bare minimum of anything,” he said.
Obrokta has a new venture combining his knowledge of warehouses and elite youth athletes. He recently opened 407 Sports, a 75,000-square-foot gym for team sports in an industrial park outside Orlando.
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 29, 2026, print edition as 'The Father Who Bankrolled School Football Team for Son'.
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