Brent Craft is bawling, and he is alone. The sweat-soaked towel that he has buried his face in does little to muffle the sobs that emanate from deep within the 20-year-old man. He sits in an empty room, surrounded by crushed Gatorade cups, shredded medical tape and broken spirits.
This is the side of Georgetown football you don’t often see; it’s not the glimpse you get from the homecoming tailgate or the glance you catch as you peek at practice on your way to the cafeteria on Tuesday evenings.
There’s more than meets the eye to this football team, and Craft wants you to know about it. He wants to tell you, through his uncontrollable weeping, that despite the team’s 2-8 record, regardless of the fact that there is only one game left, and although most fans probably don’t even know his name, he cares, perhaps more than anything.
Perhaps if you came along with Craft and the rest of his teammates as they poured their heart and soul into the week-long preparation that has brought them to this moment, you might feel the sting of having it all go for naught, of feeling like it has all been one big waste. That’s what Craft is feeling right now, the indescribable emotion that is pouring out in those cries that defy description.
Back up a little over 24 hours, and you’ll see how he got there. It is 1 p.m. on Friday, and three buses are pulling away from the McDonough parking lot, bound for a destination not high on the list of college weekend getaways: Easton, Pa. The members of the Hoya football team are quiet as they pull away from campus on the sunny afternoon. Their admiral, Head Coach Kevin Kelly, mans the helm from the first seat. He wastes little time in getting to work; he pulls his laptop and jots down notes on defensive coverages on a yellow notepad on his lap.
“We got a TV on this bus?” Kelly asks, seeming uneasy at the lack of chatter onboard. “Let’s put some ESPN on or something.” With that, offensive Assistant Coach Kijuan Ware rises from his seat and pops a disc into the DVD player.
A serious debate between co-captains Alex Buzbee and Liam Grubb hours earlier reminds me that the bus-ride movie is a matter of upmost importance:
“I say we go with `The Last Boy Scout,'” Grubb suggests. “It’s got Bruce Willis. Awesome movie.”
“Nah, we’re starting with `Rocky IV,'” Buzbee counters. “It’s the one they filmed in Russia. It doesn’t get any better.”
But the image on the screen after Ware presses play is not that of Willis or Sylvester Stallone, but of timid Akeelah, the little girl who rises from the slums of south central L.A. to win the Scripps spelling bee in the 2006 film “Akeelah and the Bee.”
“What are we doing?” junior running back Erik Carter asks as the bus enters Maryland. “A bus full of football players and we’re watching a movie about spelling bees.”
Few pay notice to the inspirational cinema, as Carter plays chess on his laptop, senior quarterback and Rhodes Scholar finalist David Fajenbaum reads The New York Times, and junior receiver Jasper Ihezie sleeps soundly. Once in Delaware, traffic slows to a grinding halt, and more and more of the Hoyas follow Ihezie’s lead. Even Kelly dozes in his front seat, his glasses still perched on the end of his nose, the notebook still in his lap.
It is dark when the squad rolls into the Lehigh Valley Holiday Inn some three hours later. Despite the traffic delays, Kelly is intent on remaining true to the meticulous itinerary he has prepared.
The first item on the agenda after check-in is a team walkthrough in the hotel’s reception room. The team divides down the middle, half of them shedding their blue sweat tops to distinguish them as the opposition. The team runs through its various formations and plays, the players moving in an over-dramatized waltz in a room meant for high school proms and wedding receptions. Although the dance seems ludicrous, the team is all business.
“Quit dicking around, guys,” Grubb says to a teammate who falters. “Get your hands up and get serious.”
Game time is still 18 hours away, but the thought of the Lafayette Leopards is never too far from anyone’s mind.
“There is a going to be a guy lined up across from you tomorrow, and you know your job,” Assistant Coach Luke Thompson reminds his players as they exit the ball room for dinner. “Beat his ass.”
The players eye the feast before them as they file into the brightly-lit dining room, but no one moves a muscle in the direction of the food. There is a method to everything the team does, a controlled routine that somehow harnesses the energy of this mammoth mass of testosterone. That steadying influence stands at the center table, waiting patiently for everyone to be seated.
When all is quiet, Kelly speaks: “Bed-check is at 10, wake-up call at 8:30. Remember why we are here, men. We are here to win a football game.”
With that, Kelly turns it over to freshman defensive back Willie Bodrick, who leads the team in prayer. The team plunders the buffet table in descending class order, the seniors getting first pick at the prime cuts of roast beef and fried chicken.
“You came on the wrong trip, man,” senior quarterback Nick Cangelosi says between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes. “The roast beef on the Charleston Southern trip was phenomenal.”
It is here at dinner, after second and third helpings of vanilla ice cream, that team camaraderie shines. Cangelosi tells of how his life hasn’t been the same since he lost his text-messaging, while junior wide out Kyle Van Fleet complains about a roommate’s lack of musical ability.
“Everyone in Henle 80 wakes up every Sunday morning to [junior linebacker] Mike Greene playing his guitar and screaming Kenny Chesney,” Van Fleet explains. “Let’s just say his football talent doesn’t transcend into music.”
But nothing could have prepared Van Fleet, or anyone, for what was about to take place. As part of a house-warming treat for its guests, the hotel staff has prepared marshmallows for roasting and another full buffet line of graham crackers, chocolate and whatever else a human being could ever possibly fathom to put on a s’more. Pretty soon, the players are huddled around campfires in the hotel courtyard, skewers in hand, laughing like giddy boy scouts as sophomore quarterback Ben Hostetler leads the team in “Kumbaya.”
“All we have to do is beat Lafayette tomorrow, and this will go down as the best football road trip ever,” Grubb says, like a 10-year-old kid trapped in a 6-foot-7, 290-pound body. The teammates laugh and tell stories of past away games for a good half-hour before Grubb’s senior leadership breaks up the party.
“It’s about that time, fellas. We got a game to win tomorrow.”
The mood at breakfast on Saturday morning resembles that of a funeral wake. Kelly’s methodic routine of the previous night is repeated, except this time in complete silence, the carefree nature of s’mores and stories replaced by an alert, attentive focus and determination. The happy-go-lucky Grubb of the night before is now a nervous wreck.
“I didn’t sleep very well last night,” Grubb says as he waits for his bagel to toast. “I always get tense before games.”
Despite his experience as a three-year starter, Grubb is notorious for vomiting in the locker room before games because of nerves. Even offensive Assistant Coach Kijuan Ware, who pitched for Springfield in the College World Series and has coached football for years, admits that he didn’t sleep a wink the night before. Other players claim to be unfazed by the challenge ahead.
“I don’t really get that nervous anymore,” junior rover Darren Alberti says, a blank stare hiding any possible emotions that might be swirling inside him. “It’s more excitement than nervousness.”
I follow Alberti into a small room down the hotel corridor where the defensive team meeting is set to start at 10 a.m. Upon entering, a highlight film of Lafayette’s offensive feats plays.
The grainy images projected on the wall display the bruising running style of senior running back Jonathan Hurt and the quicksilver swiftness of sophomore receiver Shaun Adair. The room is silent, save for the racket radiating from the headphones of the players, who chose to set the highlight reel to their own personal soundtrack. The tumultuous din of heavy metal from Buzbee’s iPod blends with the methodic bass line of Franks’ hip-hop, forming a grating cacophony that assaults the inner ear with unmerciful constancy.
The clamor is cut off when Kelly enters the room. He goes over the defensive calls for the day while Thompson acts out the corresponding hand signals. Flailing his arms and rubbing his stomach, Thompson resembles a person translating a political speech into sign language, or Koko the signing monkey.
Kelly and Thompson exit, allowing the players to watch the rest of the film in solitude. Franks begins to nod his head to the music, while Buzbee’s gaze remains stoically straightforward. The tape finally runs its course, the flickering images of fall afternoons replaced by a blank blue screen. Buzbee rises and snaps his teammates from their hypnotic state with four curt words.
“Let’s do it, guys.”
Kelly’s voice rises like the hiss of a boiling tea kettle as he psyches out his troops. It is the final team meeting before they depart for Fisher Field.
“I am looking for some senior leadership to step up. You guys have seven days of football left after today, and then you’re done,” Kelly barks, the energy in the room rising with each word he utters. “We’re playing for a hell of a lot more than they are, in my opinion. Let’s put our hard hats on, grab our lunch pail, and get some respect for you guys – you work your ass off week in and week out.” His last proclamation draws the players to their feet, clapping and whooping like banshees as they head for the humming buses waiting in the parking lot.
The bus ride to Fisher Field is a stark contrast to the journey the day before. Gone are the newspapers, the laptops and the inspirational movies. Not a word is spoken during the 15-minute ride as the players gaze out the window at the countryside of industrial Pennsylvania.
This depressed land has long been a fertile farmland for football talent, and as freshman running back Charlie Hougton watches the hills roll by, you can’t help but wonder if he is picturing himself as Tony Dorsett, junior quarterback Matt Bassuener as Joe Namath, and senior tight end Charlie Curtis as ike Ditka. The bus winds through the tiny campus of Lafayette, and finally arrives at a disproportionately large football stadium.
“Damn,” Franks says upon exiting the bus, noting the shiny jumbotron and immense statue of a ferocious leopard that surmounts the screen. “They have upgraded big time.”
The players enter the locker room and begin their sacred ritual of readying themselves for battle. Showy sophomore wide out Sidney Baker pays strict attention to every detail of dress, making sure every sweatband is in place, every buckle and strap in perfect symmetrical alignment.
“You look good, you play good,” Baker says as he admires himself in the mirror.
Across the room, at another mirror, Hostetler and Mitchell stand side by side, their jersey numbers presenting the ideal metaphor for the contrasting likenesses that reflect back at them. Hostetler, No. 6, is white, tall, long-haired and aloofly silent. itchell, No. 9, is black, short, with short cropped braids; and is running his mouth faster than his track-star legs. The powerful bonding ability of competition is illustrated as the two high-five and smile broadly before exiting the locker room together.
The team stretches and exits for the field in waves, the skill players followed by linebackers, and finally the linemen. It is before the last wave that we find Grubb, alone in the locker room, pacing back and forth, breathing deeply, crunching down Tums in an attempt to settle the churning emotions within him. After smearing eye black all over his cherubic face, he grabs his helmet and heads for the field. At his first glance of the opposition, the volcano erupts.
“Are you [freaking] kidding me?” Grubb screams to no one in particular. “Let’s [mess] these [freaking] guys up!”
After a team stretch and a brief run-through, Kelly leads his players back to the locker room. He instructs his players to take a knee and join hands. They say the Lord’s Prayer together, one last calming mantra before the collective roar reaches a fever pitch as the team enters the playing field. It has been a long week of early mornings, late nights and exhausting preparation. It is finally time to play football.
The letdown is tremendous. Watching Hurt run up and down the field, you can feel the electric euphoria of anticipation leaving the sideline like a heroin addict entering withdrawal. The faces of the players turn from determined to anxious to hopeless as Adair darts past the entire kickoff team en route to a 90-yard touchdown.
Spirits are momentarily raised by Houghton’s graceful gallop to the opposing end zone off a screen pass, but are once again dampened as senior Brian Tandy wrenches his knee trying to tackle Hurt. Alberti and junior linebacker John Lancaster carry their wounded comrade from the field, a somber image that no doubt marks the end of a fantastic football career.
Tandy is just one of the Hoyas who fall victim to a brutal beating at the hands of the physically superior Leopards. Franks runs off the field, yelping in pain as he yanks off his glove to reveal a grotesquely dislocated ring finger. The training staff shoves the dislodged digit back into place, and Franks calms himself with a few deep breaths to steady himself before re-entering the fray.
In the second half, freshman running back Robert Lane is flattened by a charging defensive back. The sickening thud of Lane’s body on the turf is droned out by the animalistic howls of the Lafayette defenders, who dance around Lane as he slowly rises. The trainers place Lane on the bench and pepper him with questions, checking his mental faculties. When they ask him the score of the previous game, Lane runs out of patience.
“I couldn’t have told you that last week!” Lane exclaims, then opens his mouth to reveal a swelling tongue gushing blood. “Do something about this!”
On the Hoyas’ next drive, Lane runs the same play for a gain of five yards.
The seniors try and rally their younger teammates on the sideline, but by the fourth quarter, the score is 45-14 and the mood has turned to one of dread and misery. Across the field, Lafayette Head Coach Frank Tavani can be seen joking with his players as he empties his bench.
The crystal clear JumboTron runs a promotion for next week’s showdown with Lehigh for the Patriot League championship. Tandy sits on the bench dejected, his knee covered with ice as the sun sinks in the sky. On his 22nd birthday, he is a young man in the twilight of his playing career, with his whole life still ahead of him.
The game ends, and as the players shake hands at midfield, the Lafayette band plays the alma mater, the crowd roars, and the Hoyas jog somberly off the field.
There is a sickening silence in the locker room, save for Craft’s disquieting sobs. His teammates try and comfort him, but he lashes out at their attempts to console him, for this is the one part of football you do alone. This isn’t even where it ends for the Hoyas. There is still a long, silent bus ride home. There is still the experience of reliving today’s horror again tomorrow when they watch the film. There is still another week left to go in the vicious cycle of euphoric highs and despondent lows that is seven days in the life of a Hoya football player.
Assistant Coach Brad Dunlay watches Craft from afar with pity in his eyes, a father watching his boy suffer.
“This is an experience,” Dunlay says. “It isn’t all s’mores and `Kumbaya.'”