The Letters Never Stop
During the summer before my sophomore year, Mom and I were having dinner at home when she became awfully quiet.
“Eric, you know that I’ve always been very open with you.”
Mom was always one to speak her mind when the occasion warranted it, but I had a feeling that this time she didn’t want to talk about football.
I was right. She wanted to talk about sex.
“You’re fourteen, soon to be fifteen, so you’re coming into a time of your life when you’ll have certain feelings. I was wondering if you knew about sex.”
Man, this was embarrassing. “I know all about it, Mom. We learned about this in health.”
“Good, but maybe they didn’t tell you everything. Or maybe they didn’t tell you that you aren’t ready yet. Did they talk to you about AIDS?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, they talked to us about AIDS.”
“Well, AIDS is a really scary disease, and if you have sex, you could get AIDS, and if you get AIDS, you’ll die.”
Yes, Mom was trying to scare me. She knew that you don’t automatically get AIDS if you have sex and that you don’t automatically die because you get AIDS, but she was trying to make a big impression on me—to wait.
“There are different types of girls out there, so I don’t want you to be influenced by fast girls,” she said. “They are the ones who will get you into trouble. So you have to be smart, and you have to be respectful. You don’t do something just to do it. This is not the time to rush into anything because no kid is ready to have sex at age fourteen.”
I squirmed in my seat. This was the most embarrassing conversation ever, but that was typical Mom looking out for me. She had always been open, even blunt. She always said we could talk about anything, but being a teen boy, I didn’t exactly want to talk to Mom about girls and all that. So she didn’t wait for me to bring up the subject, because she knew I wouldn’t. What she wanted to do that evening was to get the point across that feelings for girls were normal, that I wasn’t ready yet, and neither were the girls. So wait.
What I wasn’t willing to wait for was my first full season of varsity football to start. Once again, on the first day of August practice, Coach LaSala gathered us around for an important announcement. “Gentlemen, take off your helmets and look at what the warning sticker says inside.” Then Coach asked us to read the warning label all together out loud, which we did.
WARNING: Keep your head up. Do not butt, ram, spear, or strike an opponent with any part of this helmet or . . .
“Very good, guys,” Coach LaSala said when we were done. “The reason why I have you guys read the warning label every year is because it’s super important. You have to keep your head up when you tackle. Bad things happen when you lead with the head, so don’t use your helmet as a battering ram. You’ll get hurt, perhaps severely injured. Instead, remember to ‘bite the ball’ and play solid, hard-nosed football the Patriot way.”
He was right about the hard-nosed football part. I was on the receiving end of one of those hits during a game against Carteret High when I gathered in a screen pass. I thought I had a couple of linemen out in the flat with me, but I guess I didn’t because their strong-side defensive end Jason Adjepong Worilds leveled me with a thundering shot that nailed me to the ground like a stake. I was shook up pretty bad and had no idea what was going on after that collision. (Jason was an All-Stater who went on to Virginia Tech and wound up being a second-round draft pick with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2010, where he’s now part of the Steel Curtain defense. Good luck, NFL.)
Most of the time, though, I was making good yardage with the ball in my hands and delivering my own Worilds-like shots from the linebacker position. I was more than holding my own out there on the field. My coaches were pleased with how I was playing and decided to move me from fullback (the guy who usually blocks) to halfback (the guy who’s getting the handoff from the quarterback and expected to churn out big yards to keep the offense moving).
I had some big games, like against South Plainfield when I ran for 216 yards on thirty-six carries—a six-yards-per-carry average—to help us win our first game of the season. I also recorded eleven tackles, including a “signature hit”—which is how the local newspaper described my body slam on running back Jamar Beverly. It was sure better pile-driving a runner to the ground than being on the receiving end.
Coach LaSala sang my praises to any reporter who would listen. “Eric is unbelievable,” he told one local newspaper. “He’s the best fifteen-year-old I’ve ever seen. He won’t outrun you, but he’ll barrel over you. We recently moved Eric to halfback. We’re not going to be fancy anymore. We’re just going to give him the ball. Eric is a big-time player. If there’s someone out there better than him at his age, I’d like to see him.”
Letters Filling the Mailbox
Because of my strong play, recruiting letters started flowing into our Avenel mailbox from dozens of college football programs. Big name programs like Notre Dame, the Big 10 schools like Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State; the Southeastern Conference schools like Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee; and every Big East school that played in Rutgers’s conference were flooding my mailbox with letters and slick promotional material.
There were days when I received fifteen letters or brochures. It was ridiculous. Some programs sent me a letter every day for a week or two at a time. (I guess that’s nothing: Alvin Kamara, a tailback from Georgia scheduled to graduate from high school in 2013, received 105 letters from the University of Alabama in one day!)
Many of these letters were variations of the same theme:
Dear Eric:
I want to take this opportunity to tell you how much we are interested in having you come play for State U to further your education after you graduate from high school. We think you’d be a fine addition to the fine group of young men enrolling with your class, and we know you’d be a proud member of the class of ’12 at State U. The football staff believes that with young men of your caliber, we all will be able to look forward to a great future. We are confident that you will do well at State U, both in the classroom and on the playing field.
We want to wish you the best of luck during the rest of your high school athletic career. We know that you will do well. The whole staff joins me in urging you to put forth a concentrated effort on your scholastic work as well over the next three years. The academic background you have when you arrive at State U will go a long way in determining your success during your college football career.
Again, my staff and I will continue to follow your progress and would love to have you visit our beautiful campus during one of our home games. If that sounds like something you’d like to explore, please contact my personal assistant so that we can arrange a visit.
Until then, I send you my highest regards.
(Signed)
Coach Big Name
I didn’t open every letter, especially those from schools that sent me two, three, four, or sometimes five pieces of mail each week. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful, but I didn’t have time with school, practice, homework, and playing games.
We had a so-so year my sophomore season, finishing 5–5, which qualified us for the state playoffs and a matchup against Middletown South, the No. 1 seed in the state playoffs for our division. They were huge. They were gigantic. They had three players who went on to Division I programs at Stanford, Georgia, and Lehigh. We got destroyed, 52–26, and it could have been worse.
In terms of stats, though, I had a great year: 1,064 yards rushing (or a little more than 100 yards per game) and 109 tackles (or a little more than ten per game). I also ran my fastest 40-yard dash ever—a 4.71. That’s about where you want to be to chase down quick running backs. For the rest of my football career, I’d be in the 4.7s, which is excellent for a linebacker but a little slow for what coaches want to see out of their running backs.
Even though I could be a dominant halfback at the high school level, I knew my future was on the defensive side of the ball in college football. Something about chasing down a runner and stopping him cold gave me a bigger adrenaline rush than playing running back. Even during my first season of varsity football, I put a lot more passion into defense than the “glory role” of running back.
When the season was over, I still headed over to the Colonia High gym every day to continue my weight training. I was really starting to increase the weight I lifted, so much so that Coach Collins used to bark at me for bending the bars in the weight room and having to buy new ones. I was up to 335 pounds on the squat—fifty pounds more since the summer. I was motivated to work hard during the off-season. Getting stronger and faster was the only way to prepare for playing time on a Division 1 team.
When the sophomore year ended, I participated in my second Rutgers summer football camp and brought several teammates with me. Three dozen other colleges wanted me to come to their summer camp. Summer camps are an important part of the recruitment process between the sophomore and junior years. The upcoming junior year is when the college football coaches put a full-court press on you to come to their school.
But I passed on all the other college football camps for two reasons:
1. They were all out of town, and Mom didn’t have the money to pay for the airfare.
2. I was happy with Rutgers. They treated me like family. Besides, Coach Joe Susan told me at the Rutgers summer camp that he couldn’t wait to put his scholarship offer in writing on September 1, 2006, the start of my junior year of high school.
True to what Coach Susan said to Coach LaSala’s at the end of my freshman year, Rutgers did offer me a full-ride football scholarship at the start of my junior year, just as promised.
Sure, it was a piece of paper, but Rutgers’s scholarship offer in writing represented a lot more to me—a momentous opportunity to have my college education paid for and to play football on a big stage.
Pandemonium in Piscataway
At the start of my junior season in 2006, things were really looking up at Rutgers. Coach Schiano had guided the Scarlet Knights to their first winning season in fourteen years in 2005 and only the second bowl game in Rutgers’s 136-year history of playing football. Rutgers fans, long dormant, were jumping on the bandwagon again.
The scholarship offer from Rutgers was certainly greeted with enthusiasm by Mom and me, but we were not ready to give our verbal agreement during my junior season. Too many other teams wanted me to play for them, so we thought we’d let things settle a bit and see what developed.
But then Rutgers kept winning. And winning. And winning. Going into the ninth game of the season, the Scarlet Knights were undefeated at 8–0, and next up was a home game against the Louisville Cardinals, who were the No. 3 team in the country at 7–1 and coming off a big victory over highly regarded West Virginia.
I just had to be there at Rutgers Stadium with my buddies, and I’m sure glad I went. It was a great game played on a Thursday night before a national audience looking in on ESPN. It was anyone’s game up until Jeremy Ito kicked a tie-breaking 28-yard field goal with thirteen seconds left to give Rutgers a 28–25 lead.
When Derain Thompson sacked Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm on the last play of the game, I was among the tens of thousands of crazy fans who stormed the field to celebrate. “It’s pandemonium in Piscataway,” exclaimed Rutgers Radio play-by-play announcer Chris Carlin while I danced on the field with my buddies and slapped the shoulder pads of the victors. (A little geography lesson: Rutgers Stadium in located in Piscataway, while most of the Rutgers campus is situated in New Brunswick.) In the happiness of that cool evening, I imagined that one day I, too, would be part of an awesome scene like this.
The mantra of the Rutgers team was “Keep Chopping!” Coach Schiano, while prowling the sidelines, would frequently slam the edge of his right hand into the palm of his left in a chopping motion. He wanted the players to imagine that they were in a forest all by themselves, but they each had an axe in their hands. “You take your time chopping down one tree,” Coach Schiano said, “and when that tree falls, you take a breath and then you go on to the next one. Football is just like that. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on offense, defense, or special teams, you keep chopping, taking each play one at a time. When you win that battle, you go on to the next. You chop, chop, chop all game long, and eventually you’ll come out of the forest with a victory.”
“Keep chopping!” was a great motivational metaphor that tapped into the ebb and flow of football games: you have to keep plugging away, never giving up. Since victory often doesn’t come until the very end in football, at least not until the last seconds tick off, you have to continue “chopping” until success is assured.
The Rutgers players were getting into this chopping thing, especially after defensive tackle Eric Foster was caught by TV cameras “chopping” after big plays. I started doing my own chopping at Colonia High, and any college football coach closely watching game film from my junior year would have noticed that after a big stop, I’d often get up from the pile and make a quick chopping motion with my right hand into the palm of my left. I had to be careful how demonstrative I could be, though, since I didn’t want to get an “excessive celebration” flag thrown by the refs.
Unfortunately, Colonia High wasn’t experiencing the same level of success as Rutgers. We started the season with high hopes, and I was amazed when Coach LaSala made me a team captain as a junior—the first time that had ever happened in Colonia High history. Coach LaSala, who felt like I was showing the leadership qualities that merited being named a team captain as an underclassman, loved talking me up with the press. “Eric’s the best I’ve ever coached,” he said early in the season. “It’s not so much how dominating he is, but the fact that he didn’t turn sixteen until September 4 is scary. The kid bench-presses three hundred and fifty pounds, which is unheard of.”
I tried not to get a big head after hearing that. “I read the stuff about me, but it doesn’t faze me,” I told John Haley with the Home News Tribune. “My mother raised me to be level-headed, plus my coaches from Pop Warner to high school have had a big influence on me and keep me on the right track. There are some people who think I’m overrated, too, so that motivates me to play well.”
Even though my teammates and I had all the motivation in the world, we finished my junior season with a 3–7 record, which was a huge disappointment. But personally I had my biggest year as a linebacker with 150 tackles, or fifteen per game, so the cards and letters kept arriving in our mailbox each day. Dozens of schools wanted me to visit on official recruiting trips.
Even though I was loyal to Rutgers, Mom and I decided that I should look at some out-of-state schools just to be sure. I took recruiting trips to the University of Maryland, the University of Virginia, and the University of Notre Dame during and after my junior season. I made plans to visit the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the University of Miami in the fall of my senior year—all great schools with great football programs. The Miami Hurricanes were my favorite college team growing up because I used to choose the ’Canes as my team whenever I played the NCAA Football video game on my PlayStation.
What was I looking for in a school? For starters, I wanted an excellent education, but I was also looking for a great family atmosphere with the coaches and the football program. I wanted to attend a school where I could develop my skills as a football player. After that, it was a matter of weighing the intangibles, like the distance from home or the academic program in place for the football players.
During my visit to the University of Maryland, I met Vernon Davis, a 254-pound tight end. He was a ripped guy with a set of ridiculous washboard abs. I heard other recruits wonder, “If we come here, will we look like him?”
I enjoyed my visit to the University of Virginia. The campus had a lot of charm, but the South was not for me—just a bit too country. My official recruiting visit to Notre Dame was a broadening experience as well, but the school felt too far from home for me.
Each school I visited had its own characteristics—and its own pluses and minuses. The trick was finding the school that best matched my needs and my desires.
As it turned out, though, the choice wasn’t completely up to me: I also needed to prove myself academically before I’d get my chance to play.
The Dreaded SAT
All the full-ride scholarship offers I received from these great schools had one contingency attached to them: I had to score at least a 910 on my SATs. That seemed quite doable. I had always been a “good” student even though I had been diagnosed with ADHD—attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder—back in second grade.
My grades were adequate at Colonia: lots of B’s and C’s. But sitting in a chair for three hours on a Saturday morning for an SAT test wasn’t my strong suit. I was not a great standardized-test taker or even a good one.
When I sat for my first SAT test midway through my junior year, I was nervous. The motivation to do well was there. I concentrated hard for nearly four hours, and when the test was over, I set my No. 2 lead pencil down. I hoped I had done well enough.
When the results came back, I learned that I had received a score of 1060. I made it! Ten-sixty is better than 910, right?
I texted Coach Urban Meyer at the University of Florida—the Gators wanted me, too—with the good news. I texted Charlie Weis at Notre Dame and a bunch of other schools telling them that I qualified academically. I received replies congratulating me and saying they’d be faxing me a scholarship offer in the morning.
Then Coach LaSala got wind of what I had done and called me into his office. “Eric, you didn’t make it,” he announced. “You got a 790 on the first two parts, Mathematics and Critical Reading. The 1060 was for all three parts, including the Writing section.”
Ooh. That wasn’t good news.
“But Coach, I just texted all those coaches that I’m qualified. And now . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle everything. Bottom line is you didn’t make it, so we’ll have to keep working at it.”
I was devastated by this news. Are you kidding me? Can I be that dumb?
Maybe I had a bad day. I signed up for the next SAT, but I showed only a slight improvement, moving the bar from 790 to 830. Then I tried the ACT test, but that was a disaster, too.
We had a major problem on our hands. My scholarship offers and dreams of playing college football at a four-year school were ruined if I didn’t get my SAT score up. With an 830, I wasn’t going anywhere except a junior college.
Coach LaSala recommended that we bite the bullet and put me in a SAT tutor program. Mom called around, didn’t like the vibes from several learning centers, but she clicked with the person at Princeton Review, which had a program where they would send a tutor to our house. It was a bit more expensive this way, but Mom thought I’d do better in a one-on-one setting rather than a class atmosphere.
The cost: $2,800.
This was a lot of money for us. I tried to tell her it was too much to pay, that I’d do better next time, that I’d try my hardest, but she was insistent, saying that if $2,800 got my college education paid for, then it would all be worth it. She put the large fee on her credit card, and off we went.
My tutor was awesome. She came twice a week to my house after school and worked with me for two months during the spring of my junior year.
My next SAT was scheduled for April. I was prepared for the battle. When Mom dropped me off, she looked me in the eyes. “Oh, God, good luck,” she said.
I needed the prayer.
Two weeks later, I received my test results at school, and the numbers set off some whooping and hollering in the hallways. I got an 1190 on Mathematics and Critical Reading, an increase of 400 points or 50 percent, from my first attempt, and a 1650 on all three SAT tests!
“Maybe I should go to Harvard,” I joked to Mom.
This time, I didn’t text any college coaches, but I did text Coach LaSala, and he replied: “Amazing! This is great news!”
It really was.
Recruiting Visitors
As word got out that I was eligible for a scholarship, coaches from more and more programs came to Colonia High to visit me. It felt like every other day I was getting called out of class.
I was on my way back from a bathroom break from chemistry class one morning—well, a prolonged bathroom break that included a long, long stop to sample some of the fresh chocolate chip cookies from the cooking class—when I saw my chemistry teacher running after me. “Eric, you have to get to the Guidance Office now! A coach from Penn State is waiting for you there.”
I did a U-turn and sprinted to the Guidance Office, where a perturbed Coach LaSala was cooling his heels. He got in my face and said, “I’m going to jack you up!”
Wondering what I had done wrong, I backed up to the wall as he advanced on me.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I had half my health class looking for you.”
“I was in the Cooking Room, Coach.”
“What were you doing in the Cooking Room? You were supposed to be in—”
A smile formed on Coach LaSala’s lips. “Oh, I know. Making sure the cookies weren’t poisoned, right?”
I looked around the Guidance Room, and the other counselors had their heads down. Coach LaSala calmed down and led me to a nearby conference room, where a Penn State football coach had been waiting patiently to see me. He had been told that I was home sick and was on my way to see him, which is why I was delayed.
I survived that morning even though I thought Coach was going to kill me. But I almost didn’t survive the glare I received from Charlie Weis, head coach of Notre Dame, when he dropped by Colonia High to talk to Coach LaSala about me.
“Coach Weis was very specific,” Coach LaSala told me before his arrival. “He said he didn’t want anything crazy going on when he gets here.”
“Got it,” I replied.
Coach’s smartphone buzzed. “I’m here” was the message from Coach Weis.
A long, sleek black limousine with tinted windows rolled up to the school entrance.
Coach was approaching the car when two students rushed up to him, clutching pieces of paper. “Can we have your autograph?” one of them said as Coach Weis stepped out of the limo. I guess word got around that he was visiting.
More students started to head over, but Coach LaSala shooed them away. Our principal was waiting inside, and the next thing you know, pictures were being taken of Coach LaSala, our principal, and Charlie Weis seated at the table, with Coach Weis’s huge Super Bowl ring clearly visible on his right hand. He had won four of them over the years coaching for the New York Giants and New England Patriots.
Apparently, this was an “unofficial visit,” so Coach Weis had to “talk” to me through my coach. So he’d look at Coach LaSala and say things like:
I think Eric would really like coming to Notre Dame.
Tell Eric that our recruiting class is rated in the top ten.
Rules are rules, and rule compliance was a big deal with college football coaches.
Decision Time
What I was learning through this process was that the top football schools all wanted to know where they stood by the end of your junior year, so they press recruits to make a commitment, one way or another, before the start of summer camps.
Late one afternoon in May, I received a phone call from Coach Schiano. We made the usual small talk, and then he got down to business.
“Eric, we have been recruiting you since your freshman year, and we have been by your side through everything. We really want you to come and play here at Rutgers. We had a big season last year. We were 11–2 and ranked number twelve in the nation. We want you to come be a part of the excitement at Scarlet Nation, so now we need to know where your head is at. Have you made a decision? Can we count on you coming to Rutgers in the summer of 2007?”
I needed to scramble out of the pocket. “Coach, can I call you back?”
He said that was fine, and Coach reminded me that he was available for any questions I might have.
I hung up and thought about how Rutgers had been with me through this whole recruiting thing. They were always my number one. They offered me as a freshman, they were close to home, and I had been on campus a hundred times. There was a family atmosphere, and I believed that Coach Schiano and his assistants honestly cared about me as a person and as a football player.
I called Mom and told her about the phone call from Coach Schiano. We knew this call was coming sooner or later, and now it looked like things were coming to a head. “Mom, I’m thinking about committing myself to Rutgers.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Is this really where you want to go?” Mom was asking me to think this through one more time because this decision would impact my future in many different ways. She knew I was only sixteen years old and wouldn’t be seventeen until the following September, so I didn’t have a lot of experience with life-changing choices such as the one before me.
I exhaled a deep breath. “I believe Rutgers is where I want to go. You can go to all my home games, and I’d be close to home. They’ve recruited me from day one.”
I could hear my mother relax on the other side of the phone. “If you want to go to Rutgers, I’ll be more than happy,” she said.
“Good. Let me call Coach Schiano back.”
Just five minutes had passed when I reached Coach Schiano. I didn’t waste any time. “Coach, I’ve made my decision. I’m coming to Rutgers.”
Once again, I heard an adult say, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
There was a pause. “So you’re telling me that you’re giving me your word. Only men give their word and really mean it and keep it.”
“Coach, I’m giving you my word. I know I might be a young man, but I’m giving you my word that I’m coming to Rutgers. And I’m not changing my mind.”
I heard another exhale of relief on the line. “Eric LeGrand, let me be the first to welcome you to Rutgers University. Congratulations. You are now part of the Rutgers football family.”
Then Coach put his phone on speaker, and it was apparent that he was in his office or a conference room because several Rutgers coaches hollered their congratulations. That just confirmed in my heart that I had made the right choice.
The next phone call Coach Schiano made was to Coach LaSala to tell him the good news. “I don’t want Eric to see any more coaches because he’s committed to us,” Coach Schiano said.
Over the next few weeks, and right through my senior season, coaches from Virginia, Michigan, and Michigan State contacted Coach LaSala to make their pitch with me, but he said I had committed to Rutgers and that decision was firm. I was so gung-ho for Rutgers that I started recruiting my friends—the ones I had met at the Rutgers summer camps—to come join me at Piscataway. I got Scott Vallone from Long Island and Art Forst from Manasquan, New Jersey, to commit. It was shaping up to be a great freshman class at Rutgers, but I still had some unfinished business at Colonia High.
Finishing Strong
I dropped down to 240 pounds for my senior year, ten fewer than my junior weight, because I felt that 250 was too heavy to be playing linebacker even though I made a bunch of tackles during my junior season. It wasn’t a lack of discipline that got me up to 250, although I was basically eating everything I wanted to. Our coaches were on all of us to add weight, so I went with the program. In fact, there were times I tipped the scales at 260 pounds during my junior year. But I worked hard during the off-season—and laid off Mom’s fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies—to slim down to 240 pounds for my final year of high school football.
We also had an excellent turnaround on the field, winning seven of ten games and capturing our first Greater Middlesex Conference White Division championship since 1999. You could tell Rutgers was on my mind when we defeated a tough South Plainfield team in double overtime, 10–7. “We just kept coming back, kept chopping the whole game,” I told a reporter from the Newark-based Star-Ledger. I’m sure Coach Schiano was smiling when he read that. Our conference championships qualified us for the state championship playoffs with a first-round matchup against Scotch Plains–Fanwood High School. We felt this was our year.
Before the game, Coach LaSala pulled me aside. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is Jordan Edmonds can’t start. The good news is that you know all the plays, so you’re going to play quarterback tonight.”
I gulped. I knew that our quarterback hadn’t been feeling well all week, and during the pregame meal, Jordan sipped Pepto-Bismol instead of eating with the rest of the team. But I had all the confidence in the world that I could quarterback this team to victory.
First down on offense, I dropped back and hit my friend Nate Brown on a post route, good for twelve yards. Then I had to roll out to escape a blitz. As I headed toward the sideline, looking for an open receiver, the ball fell out of my hand. I watched helplessly as it bounced out of bounds, allowing us to retain possession.
On my next pass, I was going long the entire way. I saw Cory Jacik streaking up the sideline. It looked like he had a step or two on his man, so I chucked the ball up there, sixty yards in the air. I must have put too much oomph under the throw because their cornerback intercepted the ball. Maybe playing quarterback wasn’t as easy as I thought.
After three series, Coach LaSala had seen enough. He inserted a pale-looking Jordan Edmonds back into the game, and he threw five interceptions. In all, we had eight turnovers and lost by six points, 19–13.
I was devastated. We should have easily won that game. I felt like we were definitely the better team, but the turnovers killed us. After the final seconds ticked off, I sat on the ground and couldn’t stop my body from shaking uncontrollably. I felt responsible for the loss, I had let my team down, shattering our state championship dreams.
Coach LaSala did a great job of keeping our spirits high after the letdown against Scotch Plains–Fanwood. We still had one more game left—our annual rivalry game against Woodbridge High, which was always played the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We dressed in our locker room at Colonia for the Saturday morning game before boarding a bus for the ride over to Woodbridge. As a senior, I knew this was it—my last game in a high school uniform. We were playing for the Bragging Rights trophy against our crosstown rivals, so this was our chance to finish strong.
Leaving the locker room, I passed under the door, where a sign was attached just above the transom. In big black block letters, it said:
BELIEVE
My teammates jumped and tapped that sign as they exited the locker room, a ritual that bonded us together before every game. Believe was our motto. We had to believe that we would play well and win. There was power in the conviction of things not yet seen.
For the last time as a Colonia High football player, I jumped and tapped the sign with my left hand, slapping my fingers on the EL . . . for my initials, Eric LeGrand.
We won my final game of high school football against Woodbridge High, but little did I know that BELIEVE would come to mean something completely different for me at Rutgers University.