Northwestern Escapes to Practice Field

This place, the football field at the University of Wisconsin Parkside, is literally in the middle of nowhere.

It’s so far off the beaten path that one of the last bastions of civilization, the Mars Cheese Castle, is way back on Interstate 94, the road linking Chicago and Milwaukee.

This football field is where the Northwestern Wildcats on Friday opened their preseason training camp--nearly five miles off the interstate down County Highway E to Petrifying Springs Road, past corn fields, wooden barns, soaring grain silos and umbrella-shaded roadside vegetable stands selling cucumbers five for a dollar.

This is the place that, in years past, Northwestern players had come to detest--for the geographical isolation, the quiet nights, the brutal August heat, the removal from the intensity of the city and the glamour of big-time football.

Not this year.

Not even for their first practice after the Aug. 3 death of a teammate, Rashidi Wheeler, 22, of Ontario, a senior safety who collapsed while running a rigorous conditioning drill demanded by Coach Randy Walker.

“Finally, ‘Po has come back to the practice field,” fifth-year senior linebacker Napoleon Harris said, referring to himself as he sauntered onto the field shortly after 8 in the morning--a good half-hour before practice formally began.

Following shortly behind was senior safety Sean Wieber. “Oh, yeah!” he exulted as he clenched his fists and raised his arms as if he were curling weights.

A “sanctuary,” star running back Damien Anderson had called Kenosha the day before, and for more than two hours Friday morning, under a brilliant sun and a clear blue sky, the Northwestern team practiced plays, hit a little bit--and, true to Walker’s nature, ran a demanding conditioning drill.

The drill at which Wheeler collapsed Aug. 3 involved 28 sprints at distances from 100 to 40 yards. Afterward, Northwestern launched an investigation into the circumstances involving Wheeler’s death; because of the inquiry, Athletic Director Rick Taylor asked Walker to stop using that drill.

Walker said he would comply. The university has set no date for the completion of its inquiry.

On Friday, at the end of two hours of passing and hitting, Walker--standing first at one 30-yard-line, then striding to the other--put his team through 10 100-yard runs. In three waves, with about 45 to 60 seconds rest between each run, the Wildcats ran the length of the field, back and forth.

On Lap 5, Harris pirouetted across the finish line.

After Lap 6, the team let out a big cheer.

On Lap 10, Harris danced sideways the last 10 yards, his hands in the air.

“Just making fun of the test,” Harris would say afterward. “It was routine conditioning after practice, nothing too hard. I was just really trying to get everyone enthused.”

Enthused they were. Only a few seemed seriously winded. “Wildcats! Wildcats! Wildcats!” they sang loudly, clapping along, bouncing and bobbing and dancing as if they were a college glee club instead of one of the nation’s most highly ranked football teams.

The running led into a series of push-ups, sit-ups and up-and-down exercises. Then a discourse from Walker, the team gathered around him at midfield. Reporters were kept on a sideline, several yards away, but snatches of Walker’s speech floated up on the wind.

He lamented the weakness of a few laggards.

He declared, “We are tough.”

He asserted that “out-of-shape and poorly conditioned athletes fall down.”

In years past, the combination of heat and rigorous training had driven a handful of Northwestern players to the hospital.

There was little danger Friday of that. For one, the temperatures were in the low 70s and a steady breeze made it feel cooler.

For another, Northwestern had been planning for its Kenosha camp--as well for its first game, Sept. 7 in the desert heat against Nevada Las Vegas--even before Wheeler collapsed and died. The school has purchased two sideline air conditioners; it wasn’t anywhere near hot enough Friday to use them.

Trainers lugging liquid-filled coolers on dollies dashed around practice. Drink breaks were frequent.

The players Friday repeatedly expressed their confidence in Walker and his system.

Walker’s belief--expressed many times, particularly in the days since Wheeler’s death--is that rigorous conditioning keeps players safer, sharpens their focus and gives them both a physical--and, perhaps more important--a mental edge in the fourth quarter of a football game.

“They can’t think and be tired at the same time,” he said Friday, referring to his players.

In Walker’s first year at Northwestern, the Wildcats went 3-8. Last year, after a full year of his conditioning regime, the team finished the regular season 8-3 and in a three-way tie atop the Big Ten.

“I think he’s a very good coach,” said Pete Chapman, a 6-foot-4, 294-pound senior, a defensive lineman who was hospitalized last year during the Kenosha camp after overheating.

“The man has a clear vision. Everything in his program is calculated. He has been successful everywhere he’s been. You admire men like that.”

Walker said he has had no reason since Aug. 3 to question his players’ trust and confidence in him.

“I know they’re with me,” he said.

He also reiterated his belief that his players must be in supreme physical condition.

He said, “Guys, we didn’t invent hard work. You don’t think they’re busting their tails up at Wisconsin, do you? Those guys look pretty good to me. I saw those bulldozers they ran on the field.

“You don’t think they’re working pretty hard in Ann Arbor? Shoot, I don’t know, I’ve been to their practices. I’ve watched Michigan work for years. I’ve watched Bo [Schembechler] coach. I think they get it going there.”

In Ann Arbor and Madison, however, they don’t have to deal at the start of this new season with inquiries into the death of a player. Or with Jesse Jackson or Johnnie Cochran or the threat of legal action. Or even the possibility of an NCAA rules inquiry.

In Kenosha, in the middle of nowhere, all of that seemed very far away on a sunny Friday morning to Walker.

“There’s something about a little dew on the grass, the sun comes up on an August morning. It just,” he said, “feels like football.”