Russian Tackles a Life in American Football

A little less than 18 months ago, Sascha Anisimov lived in Moscow, spoke virtually no English and was just beginning to learn about a bizarre sport called American football.

Today, Anisimov, 22, is a starting defensive lineman and the kicker for Division III Hartwick College. According to a member of the NCAA’s statistics and research department, he is probably the first Russian to play football at an NCAA school.

His story involves many new experiences, but because he has not been home since his May 1991 departure from what was then the Soviet Union, it is as much about what he hasn’t experienced as what he has.

“I missed everything,” he said recently. “I missed history.”

He also missed his mother’s funeral, but that was after considerable consternation and much consultation with his father, Anatoly, who told him he did the “right thing” by not making the expensive and uncertain journey home.

“I think he’s very proud of me,” Anisimov said of his father. “He thinks it’s a great idea for me to be somebody. It’s very difficult to be somebody right now back home. People are too much into this survival complex; surviving daily problems like trying to get some food, get some clothing or get some money.

“They’re just not enjoying life. Until at least 30, you have to do something in your life to have fun.”

It would be easy to say no one on Hartwick’s first football team in 42 years is having more fun than the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Anisimov, but that may not be the case--especially with the presence of a 36-year-old teammate and a resurrected coach.

Located in Oneonta, N.Y. (about 60 miles west of Albany), Hartwick is a traditional men’s soccer power that decided in July 1991 to resurrect its football program as part of an effort to increase its male-student population.

Soon thereafter it turned to Steve Stetson, 41, who went from coach to insurance salesman and then back to coach. And as Stetson assembled his team, he was approached by Bill Mottl, 36, who wanted not to coach, but to play.

Mottl had played high-school football and semipro football, but never college football. When he read about Hartwick, he decided to stop working for the New York Department of Corrections and return to school.

But his dream was just miles away. Anisimov’s was a world away.

The Russian’s journey toward fulfilling it begin during the fall of 1990 when he became friendly with Bart Gorman, a Colgate student who was studying in Moscow. Anisimov came to visit Gorman in May 1991 on a six-month visa. He lived with Gorman’s family in Utica, N.Y., until August, when Gorman left for graduate school.

Because Anisimov wanted to stay in the United States, the Gormans, through a mutual friend, introduced him to Terry Tolles, whose family once hosted a student from Brazil. Tolles liked Anisimov and invited him to move in.

Anisimov spent part of his time traveling around the United States. He enjoyed being in this country so much that he got his visa extended, then began thinking about going to college. “He said to me, ‘Terry, this isn’t different country. This is a different planet,’ ” Tolles said. “I think he saw a chance to do some things.”

One of them was playing football. Anisimov said he learned the basics of the game in 1989 when he played club football in Moscow. He said the sport was portrayed in the Soviet press as “this wild game where people gamble and the players wear crazy uniforms and hurt people.”

But Anisimov found the game interesting, and while in the United States, he became obsessed with it. He said he watched NFL games, high-school games, college games--even World League of American Football games. Tolles said Anisimov taped games on the family’s VCR for later viewing. He had to play.

Back home, though, his nation was disintegrating. He was “just glued” to CNN, Tolles said. Anisimov said the reality of what had happened became most stark to him when he watched the Olympics and saw former Soviet athletes competing under the Olympic flag as the Unified Team.

“It was so sad when they won an event and there was no national anthem, no national flag,” said Anisimov, who plans to visit home after this school year. He added he was “pleased that the communist regime failed, but I was not pleased that the nation broke up. . . . I wish they didn’t have to break up the country to get economic progress and more freedom.”

Something began to dawn on Tolles. “The values he has are the same as the values my daughters have,” he said.

When Anisimov looked at colleges, he considered Ithaca, Hamilton and Hartwick. But Hamilton and Ithaca have established Division III football programs. Anisimov felt he had a better chance to play right away at Hartwick. Helping matters, Tolles had known Stetson from Stetson’s days as the head coach at Hamilton, where Tolles’ father is on the faculty.

During the summer, while playing golf with Tolles, Stetson said Tolles told him, “I have this 6-3, 240-pound Russian. Now, Terry’s a great guy, but he’s also a prankster. I thought he was trying to get me off my game, so I didn’t pay any attention. But about a week later he called me and said, ‘Look, I’m telling you. I have this Russian kid.’ ”

Stetson was impressed with the size and athleticism of Anisimov, who had participated in track, basketball and weightlifting at home, in addition to serving a mandatory period in the Soviet army.

Tolles said Anisimov was an interesting sight at Hartwick “walking around with a Russian-English dictionary in one hand and his playbook in the other hand.”

After starting out as a defensive tackle, he’s been moved to defensive end and has become the team’s second-leading tackler with 30 in four games (understandably, all losses).

As the kicker, Anisimov has made one of three field goals and two of three extra points.

“It’s like you’re a pioneer,” he said. “It’s like you’re making history, so it’s very cool.”