Humans of Venice is an ongoing series that focuses on highlighting the exceptional personalities, wisdom, and stories of the Venice community. In this edition, Editor-in-Chief Zoe Woodrick interviews Brycen Tremayne, a receiver for the Washington Commanders and a Venice High and Stanford alumnus. Tremayne graduated Venice in 2018.

Woodrick: What made you interested in football?

Tremayne: I started playing flag football, I think when I was seven, but I’ve always just loved sports in general. I played football, baseball, and a little bit of basketball my first few years of high school, and football kind of stuck. I think I was probably the best at football. So that’s probably why it stuck.

Woodrick: What helped you at Venice that got you to where you are now?

Tremayne: Coach Gasca for one. He had a big influence on me coming to Venice in the first place. But the guys there really brought me in, I wasn’t sure how it was going to be, coming from a pretty small private school [Windward], and then transferring to a huge public school. So, I was nervous. Coming in as a senior, everyone has their friend groups already. The football team just kind of took me in and I made some really good friends through them, and they showed me the way.

Woodrick: How did you get from Venice to Stanford?

Tremayne: I didn’t have any scholarship opportunities besides a few Ivy Leagues my senior year at Venice. And then I kind of had to choose between going to an Ivy League school with not as great football, but still good academics, or going to Stanford and being in the Pac-12, playing against the best teams—Oregon, Notre Dame, and USC. I chose to kind of bet on myself and earn that scholarship at some point. During my Stanford career, I believe that I could earn that. And the rest is kind of history. I just worked hard at Stanford. I eventually got it.

Woodrick: How do you feel Venice prepared you for both college and professional-level football?

Tremayne: So at my first school, Windward, which is a super small school, football was okay. I mean, it was lower-level football and we weren’t going against the best teams. But I enjoyed my experience there. I met some really great people and some coaches that I still talk to. 

But coming to Venice, a bigger school, you have more people going to school, you’re gonna group together a better football team. So I think just the competition in the LA City section was a lot better than what I was used to. It made me have to step up my game and that’s kind of what got me 

If I stayed at Windward, I feel like I would have chosen to go to one of the Ivy League schools, but being at Venice and then seeing how I performed and thinking to myself, ‘Okay, I can do this, I can go against people who are going to these schools and I can beat them.’

Woodrick: How do you feel about making your debut in the NFL?

Tremayne: I am excited. And I think the most exciting part about being a player is the people you meet and the connections you make. There’s hundreds and hundreds of schools where you get the football experience, but it’s really the people you meet, the coaches you meet, and the impact that they have on you, and not just becoming a better football player, but becoming a better person overall. 

Woodrick: How was the transition to the NFL?

Tremayne: From college to the NFL, it’s been good. No schoolwork is probably the best thing about it. You have to grow, you have to grow up pretty fast. In college, they’re giving you a little stipend, where you’re going live, you don’t have to deal with a whole bunch of other things. You go to school, you go to football practice, and then you go back to your dorm or your apartment. That’s pretty much it. 

Now, there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more free time, now that we’re not in training camp. When we were in training camp, it was a pretty packed schedule. So you get up, go to the facilities, and then get back around eight and go to sleep. Now sometimes we’re done at 1, 2, 3 o’clock, and you have the whole rest of your day. You don’t have schoolwork, so you have to find other ways to be productive, and kind of just being a grown-up. 

Also, just realizing that it’s much more of a business than college, if you weren’t performing well or you weren’t living up to the standard that the coaches set, they can’t cut you off the team and take away your scholarship. In the NFL, it’s cutthroat, it’s a business. You have to respect that and you have to come ready to work every day and perform.

Woodrick: Are there any words of wisdom you have for athletes who might want to follow in your footsteps?

Tremayne: The first thing is, especially if I’m giving advice to people in high school, would be to take care of school, because if you don’t take care of school, it’s pretty hard to get to that next level. So, one, take care of school. And then two, you just have to be doing more, you have to be doing more than everybody else is doing. Because there’s a lot of people in the country, when you graduate high school, and you’re trying to get that college scholarship, there’s thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of other kids trying to do the same exact thing. 

You have to find out how to separate yourself from the pack, get the attention of coaches. That kind of goes for college, from high school to college and college to NFL, you should find out how to separate yourself from the pack.