Long Time Coming : UCLA Running Back Sharmon Shah Finally Finds Success, Satisfaction

The Rose Bowl watch on his left wrist and the ring on his right hand are reminders of what was: UCLA success, personal despair.

The 1,000-yard season is testimony to what is: personal success in a season of UCLA frustration. In between, Sharmon Shah embarked on a search for truth and learned that the longer he looked, the more he understood he had had it all along. What he needed was time to look back and some trials to understand it all.

His knees gave him both.

When Shah followed right guard Chad Sauter through the Arizona State defense Saturday night, gaining 26 yards to put him at 1,016 for the season, he verified the faith that some had in him, that he had in himself, but that some had lost.

When, later in the third quarter, he swept left end, cut back and scored on a 65-yard run, he punctuated a season that has one more game to go. Yes, he can break a big play.

“Sometimes a big play like that is like a team getting a win,” said Coach Terry Donahue. “Sometimes it takes so long, it comes so hard, but when you get one, you get more. I think he’ll feel good about that. It will make his 1,000-yard performance this year . . . a nicer accomplishment.”

Last season was going to be Shah’s. He was a sophomore with loads of potential. Then he injured a knee while working out before fall practice. Arthroscopic surgery set him back. Then another injury, to the other knee, set him back more.

He ran 40 times for 187 yards against Stanford in the third game, dropped to four times for 17 yards against San Diego State, then dropped to nothing.

His season was finished because the knees wouldn’t let him play.

“Once I got hurt, I tried to find myself,” he said. “I’ve always been a truth-seeker. Although I was brought up in Islam, my dad never forced it on me and I really didn’t know too much about it. . . .

“But last year, it was time to know. I tried to read about Christianity and different faiths and started to wonder, ‘What if I find out that another faith is right for me?’ My dad would be disappointed, but I have to do what’s best for me. And then I found Islam.”

He also found time for Sharmon Jr., his son, now 2, fathered when he was a 17-year-old senior at Dorsey High. He found time for school, which had always taken a back seat to football. And he found time for knee rehabilitation. Because football had gotten him where he was, he needed football to get where he wanted to be.

He spent much of the summer in Long Beach working with Poly High Coach Don Norford, joining Ram defensive back Marquez Pope and others in a program that has turned out first-round NFL draft picks Willie McGinist, Leonard Russell and Mark Carrier.

Norford is a taskmaster, making pupils come and get him in the morning if they want to work. “I got an assessment of what he was trying to do,” Norford said. “That helped me prepare a program for him.”

It involved short, intense workouts. “It’s all quickness, balance, vision,” Shah said. “A lot of things I thought you had naturally, I learned you don’t have when I worked out with this guy.”

Said Norford, “Sharmon wanted to be perfect, and I can see he is bothered when he isn’t. I watched him on the 65-yard run Saturday night on television, and I saw him do all of the things he was supposed to do.”

At last, satisfaction.

“There is something inside of me that knows I got the best out of a run,” Shah said. “When you get the most out of your opportunities, make the right decisions, the right cuts, that makes for a good game.”

Shah is learning that mental preparation turns out 26-yard runs, occasionally even 65-yard touchdown runs.

It goes back to Norford and to August, when Shah’s faith was on trial again. He talked a good game, of learning what his body could take so that it was ready to give 100% when required. But actions did not follow the words.

He worked too hard, and his knee hurt less than a week into practice. Surgery was mentioned again. Doctors were curious as to why he was limping.

Shah felt betrayed.

“I had learned my lesson last year,” he said. “I had stayed strong. I had gotten with my books. I had done everything I was supposed to do . . . but I was wondering what else should I have done? I do all these things and I’m in the same situation and they tell me I need a ‘scope. So I listened to people I trust and believe in and they told me to stay strong, to not get an operation and continue to pray and here I am now.”

The person he trusts most is Naim Shah, his father.

“I’ve known the physical part of life for a long time,” Sharmon said. ‘My dad taught me that.

“Once I got hurt, all the physical went out the window. I had to learn the mental part of football. My whole game was predicated on running up and down the field so I could get confident. Now I had to learn a new way to get confident.”

Shah found it and his body responded. It has healed enough to take the pounding that comes from carrying the ball 185 times. His mind has matured enough to get 180 yards on the last 14 of those carries, 65 yards on the final try against Arizona State.

And now a game remains, with archrival USC and wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, his teammate when they were at Dorsey, in the midst of the turf disputes between the gangs. Shah avoided allegiance to any gang.

“Pop’s belt kept me straight,” he said. “I had my share of problems, but I think everybody has a story that’s written before they were even born. I was just acting out my story. I was protected in so many ways.”

So Shah was able to concentrate on football, even when football wasn’t always going right.

“Coach Donahue says that a crisis situation won’t make or break you, but it will reveal you for what you are,” Shah said.

In his case, it revealed a 1,000-yard runner at peace with himself. At last.