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Niyo: Determined sales pitch lands Traverse City's Sheehy-Guiseppi a football career

(Photo: David Richard, Associated Press)

If he’d heard the sales pitch once, he’d heard it a thousand times. But the night before he left home to chase his dream once more — and maybe for the last time — Damon Sheehy-Guiseppi knew he’d hear it again.

And it’s a good thing he listened, because had the former Traverse City St. Francis graduate not heeded his mother’s advice, he might not be where he is now — running through drills in the Cleveland Browns training camp as the feel-good story of the NFL preseason.

Shawnah Sheehy built a career in sales, and as the CEO of a marketing company in Arizona, the Michigan native always had a rather direct response for the three sons she raised as a single mother.