I was fortunate to be able to walk on to two sports in college.
In high school, I never started a varsity game until my senior year. At that point, even if I were one of the best players on the team, which I wasn’t, it was too late to gain the attention of the college coaches to be recruited. If I wanted to play sports in college, I needed to ask permission from the coaches to be a “walk-on.” What that meant was, as a player, I was an afterthought. I was not one of the players that had been sought out to be on the team, I wasn’t in the coaches’ plans, and I wouldn’t get much of their attention on the practice field. In most cases, it would take a miracle for a “walk-on” to rise up to a level where they might see some time in a game, let alone start one.
In the fall of 1982, I arrived in Hanover, New Hampshire, as a freshman at Dartmouth College. I and roughly 100 other freshmen, most of them recruits, not walk-ons, gathered at the field house for the beginning of the football season. After a couple of weeks of practice, my position on the team was set. I was a strong safety, the fourth of four. I was at the bottom. The player who was first-string was a heralded recruit who had also been pursued by Penn State, one of the best college football teams in the country. Another player in front of me on the depth chart had been recognized in high school as one of the best players in the state of Florida. No one at Penn State even knew I existed, let alone was interested in me playing for them, and I wasn’t one of the better players on my high school team, let alone my home state. I then realized that this was going to be an uphill climb.
My freshman football consisted mostly of being a member of the “scout team.”
The job of the scout team was to play the role of the next opponent to prepare the starters for the upcoming game. My only playing time in games that season came at the end of a couple of contests where the outcome had been decided and my presence in the lineup would cause little or no harm. I made lifelong friends but as far as my future in the program was concerned, it was bleak. But I liked football and decided to stick with it as long as the coaches would keep me around.
The next year, as a sophomore, I joined the varsity team. On varsity, there were even more players competing to be first-string. When I arrived that fall, I was not fourth-string as I had been the year before, I was seventh! Each day before practice, the coaches would post a depth chart on the wall of our locker room. It was decided into four teams. The top two, the green and white teams, consisted of the best players. They were real varsity players who were most likely to see playing time in the games. The bottom two teams consisted of the black and white teams and made up the scout teams for the varsity. Only in the rarest of cases did someone ever move from the black and white teams to the white and green.
My sophomore year was another uneventful season where my role was to act and play like the upcoming opponent for the varsity. In that role, I was constantly pitted against bigger, faster, and stronger teammates that often threw me around like a rag doll, repeatedly knocked me down with the force of a freight train, or embarrassed me by running past me for a practice touchdown. I thought of not returning as a Junior because my future was dim, but like the year before I decided that I liked the guys, enjoyed the sport and camaraderie so I came back.
My Junior year when I looked at the first depth chart I noticed that I was I had risen to 6th string. The good news was that I went up a peg, the bad news was that I went up a peg because now there were on 6 strong safeties not 7! Slightly depressed but undaunted I walked down the steps to retrieve my practice clothes from the equipment room. In those days, each player was assigned a pin onto which we attached our practice uniform to be turned in each day after practice where it would be laundered and ready for pick up the next day. As this was day one, I had to descend the steps to collect my pin and gear for the first practice.
When I arrived at the equipment room or cage as we called it, I asked the assistant for my pin by number as I had done dozens of times before the previous two years. Only this time the rest of the request was different. That day instead of handing me my gear the assistant said that she was not able to give it to me. Perplexed I asked why not? Was it misplaced, had one of my team mates already collected it for me? I couldn’t understand. The response to my question was something like, “Kurt said not to give it to you” Now you need to understand who Kurt was to fully appreciate the position I was in at that moment.
Kurt Foshay was the Superman ruler of the equipment room. The cage was his lair similar to the relationship that an alpha lion in Africa has over his domain. What ever Kurt said in the bowels of the field house was taken as gospel. He was a crotchety old New Englander who the players believed had been in his role since the beginning of time. If you were not in Kurt’s good graces you found yourself with the worst gear and often an unclean practice uniform that somehow missed the previous days laundry cycle. Bottom line was you never, ever wanted to mess with Kurt or be on his downside.
“Why did Kurt say not to give me my pin?” I asked the assistant somewhat innocently. “Because you are never going to play” came the response from the husky voice in the back. Like the lion in the savanna, Kurt was letting out his roar to show his authority. Kurt then came out from the back to confront me directly and continued, “Conroy, you are just taking up space and wasting everyone’s time you should just quit. Guys like you just create more work for me and don’t add any value so let me keep your pin and why don’t you just quit and make it easier for everyone.” You talk about low moments in a person’s life, that was certainly one.
So after some back and fourth I finally obtained my pin and headed upstairs to the locker room to prepare for practice. I tried to shake off the exchange with Kurt but I couldn’t. Maybe I should quit. Maybe I was just taking up space. But then as is the case now, my default position was to grind through the challenges and keep moving forward. I know that my chances of ever playing on the varsity were slim but I believed that my role as a scout team player was a valuable one that help the best players and the team prepare for each game and that I should stick to my guns and keep playing.
Each day my junior year it was like an episode of Ground Hog day. I would head down to the gage to collect me pin and each day I was told no. Each day Kurt and I would have our usual banter which resulted in my obtaining my gear and heading off to practice. Slowly I began to notice a change through in those conversations. At the start of the season I was dealing with a genuinely hostile and frustrating man who sincerely believed that everyone would be better off if I quit. As the season wore on I began to notice a change. Kurt’s approach soften and I began to notice a smile or two. It actually started to appear as though he might be secretly rooting for me.
As we neared the end of the season, the team had experienced a rash of injuries. As that happened, simply through attrition, I began to move up the depth chart. With two games remaining in the season, I arrived for practice on Monday afternoon and looked at the depth chart. I couldn’t believe my eyes. CONROY, B appeared on the line of the white team, I had made it to second string. So I headed down to the cage where I again asked the assistant for my pin. In less than a second, Kurt appeared with my gear in his hand and asked “Did you see the depth chart upstairs?” To which I answered “yes”. He then offered the classic words of wisdom and declared “OK Big-shot you’ve come this far so now don’t screw it up!”
To the world the last two games of the season were uneventful, we lost both games and ended up the season in the middle of our league. To me though they were magical. As a second stringer I played some special teams for the varsity and was able to travel with the team as one of the top 56 players when we played Brown University in Providence RI. The next year, my senior year, the injured players returned and some new, very good players joined the team as sophomores so I slip back down the depth chart and back to the scout team. Despite this fact when I arrived for practice that first day I went to my locker to check out what kind of equipment I was issued. To my surprise, despite my again lowly status on the depth chart, I had the best of everything. A brand new helmet, the best kind of shoulder pads and new cleats. When I went down to collect my pin I asked Kurt, why he had given me the best stuff. He replied “Because you have earned it. Last year you took my shit everyday and kept going. You got the crap beat out of you in practice and you didn’t quit. By the end of the year by the grace of god and a few injuries you even got to play in a varsity game. I wish some of the other primadonnas on the team had your guts. Now get out of here or you’ll be late to practice.”
Thanks Kurt, we all learn lessons from different people in different ways. You taught me a few along the way, Thanks.
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