Going for Two : Since the Death of His Best Friend Two Years Ago, Washington Tailback Bryant Has Had Extra Incentive

On the night before Washington played USC at the Coliseum two years ago, Washington freshman Beno Bryant tossed and turned in his hotel bed, unable to fall asleep.

A sleeping pill didn’t help, so he turned on the television.

“Tragic story tonight,” a news anchor said.

Bryant lifted his head.

A graduate of Dorsey High, Bryant had grown up amid the violence of gang warfare in South-Central Los Angeles, so he was used to hearing bad news.

The news anchor said it involved a high school football player.

Bryant sat up.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, I hope it’s nobody I know,’ ” Bryant said.

Not only was it somebody he knew, it was his best friend.

Kevin Copeland, a 17-year-old All-City wide receiver at Dorsey, had suffered a fatal heart attack during the first quarter of a game against San Pedro. He collapsed on the sideline and was pronounced dead an hour later.

“It just blew my mind,” said Bryant, who sat up much of the night with Matt Simon, who coaches the Huskies’ running backs, praying and grieving.

Bryant felt an emptiness, his desire to play gone.

Already homesick, he thought about leaving school and returning to Los Angeles to be reunited with his mother, Evelyn Burke, whom he missed.

He had thought about it earlier, but Copeland had talked him into staying at Washington.

“Then, after he passed, I couldn’t take it anymore,” Bryant said. “We used to do everything together. And when he passed, it just felt like somebody ripped out my heart. I just wasn’t motivated anymore.”

That feeling stayed with Bryant for several months, until the day he visited Copeland’s grave.

“I sat down and I was just talking, talking, talking, crying, crying, crying,” Bryant said. “Right then, something just clicked in and said, ‘Bean, you’ve got to do it for Kevin.’ And ever since then, I’ve been playing for two.

“And whenever I get tired or whenever I feel like I’ve got to dig down deep, I just talk to him. It gives me a boost of energy . . . gives me another set of wheels.”

The extra push has served him well, because, for the last two seasons, Bryant has been a key player for the Huskies.

Last season, when Washington probably would have won the national championship had it not been upset by UCLA late in the season, Bryant ranked among the nation’s best punt returners and was the Huskies’ No. 2 tailback behind senior Greg Lewis.

This season, with Lewis gone, Bryant overcame injury and illness and might have rushed for 1,000 yards during the regular season if the Huskies hadn’t won so many of their games so convincingly, prompting Coach Don James to rest his regulars.

In helping the Huskies to an 11-0 regular season and No. 2 ranking, Bryant ran for 953 yards and eight touchdowns, averaging six yards per carry and making game-breaking touchdown runs in the Huskies’ closest games:

--During a 24-17 victory over California on Oct. 19 at Berkeley, he ran 65 yards for a touchdown, breaking a 17-17 fourth-quarter tie only 65 seconds after the Bears had tied the score.

--During a 14-3 victory over USC on Nov. 9 at the Coliseum, Bryant scored both touchdowns on runs of 55 and seven yards, and ran for a career-high 158 yards.

“He’s as good a player as there is in our league,” Simon said. “When you had to have a big play or you had to make something happen, Beno Bryant was as good as there was in the Pac-10 this season.”

Wednesday, on his 21st birthday, Bryant will line up against third-ranked Michigan in the Rose Bowl, again fulfilling a childhood dream.

While watching Washington defeat Iowa, 28-0, in the 1982 Rose Bowl on his 11th birthday, Bryant turned to his mother and announced, “I’m going to play in this game.”

He watched the game so intently that his relatives brought out a camera and took a picture of him as he followed the action on the screen.

Bryant’s dream, though, was to play in the Rose Bowl for USC.

“I wanted to go to SC so bad,” he said. “I would have done anything. At one time, when Washington wasn’t going to give me a scholarship, I was talking about walking on (at USC). . . .

“I used to run up there and give them film so they could watch me.”

But the Trojan coaches, like a lot of others, weren’t sure that Bryant was big enough to play tailback in college at 5 feet 11 and 175 pounds, he said. UCLA even told him that he wasn’t fast enough, even though he was a state champion in the 400 meters and ran the anchor leg on Dorsey’s state champion mile-relay team.

“I didn’t understand that,” he said. “I was shocked.”

One day, Bryant said, he got a call from former USC assistant Clarence Shelmon, who told him that the Trojans had decided to recruit him as a tailback.

Bryant was thrilled, but he never heard from USC again.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “It made me feel kind of worthless. It makes you feel like, ‘They don’t want to give me a chance.’ ”

James and his staff, he said, were more straightforward.

But Bryant wasn’t sure the Huskies would give him a chance when, on the night they visited Bryant’s home, James and two of his assistants, Simon and Larry Slade, heard the popping of gunfire. They found out later that the incident, which occurred around the corner from Bryant’s home, involved actor Todd Bridges, who was charged with shooting a drug dealer eight times. Bridges was later acquitted.

The Husky coaches cut short their visit, Bryant said.

“I was kind of scared,” he said. “I thought Coach James was going to say, ‘We don’t want this kind of stuff (at Washington).’ ”

But before he left, James offered Bryant a scholarship.

“If anything, it made us respect him that much more,” Simon said of the incident. “We talked about what kind of character it really takes for a kid to raise himself from an environment and a situation where those kinds of things go on.”

As for Bryant’s lack of size, James wasn’t concerned.

“The thing that appealed to us about a guy like Beno was, we felt like we could plug him into nine positions,” James said. “He’s plenty big enough to play in the secondary, and he could play either wide receiver position. And he could play tailback. He could help out in a lot of ways.”

When he arrived in Seattle, however, Bryant was about ninth on the depth chart, and unsure he would ever move up.

“I felt like I would never play tailback,” he said. “I thought I was going to be a kick returner.”

Simon knew otherwise.

“If I’d never seen him in high school, I probably would have considered moving him because he’s not exactly what your typical tailback looks like, in terms of size,” Simon said.

“But I was really sold on Beno Bryant being a tailback because I was really impressed with his power as a high school player. A lot of times, small guys get tackled easily. We’ve had small guys who weren’t as good in heavy traffic. But Beno always seemed to come out the other end and play big against big people, even though he’s a little guy.”

Although he was slowed by a knee injury at the start of the season, creating an opening for Jay Barry to establish himself to the extent that Barry and Bryant shared the position the rest of the season, Bryant proved durable.

Sick for two weeks before the Cal game, he fainted and collapsed on the practice field less than 48 hours before the game. About 30 minutes before kickoff, his nose started to bleed.

But during the fourth quarter, he made the run that ended the Bears’ Rose Bowl hopes.

More of a breakaway threat than Lewis, Bryant constantly reminds himself that he is a different type of runner than his predecessor.

“Greg had such great vision that he could see little creases and slide through there and get six yards,” Bryant said. “The way I run, I’ll get stuffed a few times, but my motto is, ‘You can’t hold me the whole game.’ There’s going to be at least one time in the game where I’m going to break loose.”

That proved true on several occasions, none more memorable for Bryant than the day he broke through the USC defense during his best game of the season.

“I felt like I could run back to Seattle,” he said of his feelings afterward. “I think I could have bench-pressed the stadium.”

Though he felt rejected by USC, Bryant still follows the Trojans and considers himself a fan. Among his best friends are Trojans Curtis Conway, Travis Hannah and Marvin Pollard. Bryant said that he has stolen moves from Conway.

“I like their style and the way they carry themselves,” he said. “When we have to play a team that they’ve already played, I’ll take a USC film and pop it in (the VCR). I don’t watch what I’m supposed to be watching. I just watch them.

“I used to love their little fight song--the one everyone hates now. I still like it--they just play it too much.”

Bryant, though, is grateful to Washington for giving him a chance not only to play, but to play in the Rose Bowl--twice now in three years.

“Not many people can say they played in the Rose Bowl,” he said.

Fewer still can say they played in it on their birthdays.

Last December, Bryant’s mother reminded him of his childhood boast, telling him how proud she was that he had made it come true.

This year, she told him, “You’d better score me a touchdown.”

Bryant is determined to oblige--not only for himself and his mother, but also for Copeland, whose No. 80 will be worn, as always, on Bryant’s right wrist band. On his left wrist band will be Copeland’s initials and on a towel hanging from his pants will be stitched, “W.M.A. 80.”

“We’ll meet again,” said Bryant, explaining the initials.

Bryant said he thinks about his friend “all the time.”

Before Wednesday, Bryant will again visit Copeland’s grave.

On it, he will leave a rose.