Northwestern University Athletics
Marshall Thomas Blog Entry #2
12/18/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 18, 2009
Sorry for keeping all you fans on the edge of your seats for so long with my latest Outback bowl blog entry, but Coach Fitz has been making us earn our scholarships these past two days. This entry is more of a double entry so forgive me for the length and hopefully I don't bore you too much while you're reading it. Practice has been going great but I'll get into those details a little bit later because I have some great news. Coach Long has been placed into a regular room within the hospital, he's recovering well and from what I've heard is trying to make it down to the bowl game by any means necessary.
In our last adventure together I started off by talking about how we kept busy but I never really introduced myself. I just thought you all were stalkers who had already performed a background check on me, but I guess not. I'm from Miami, Florida, and according to most people I'm crazy for leaving that and coming up to NU. I agree to disagree because my experiences here have been nothing short of extraordinary, from making snow angels to riding razor scooters through the beautiful city of Kenosha. On a more serious note the friends I've made and things I've learned from our coaching staff here at Northwestern will stick with me forever and have a lasting impact on my life. I've had the privilege of playing defensive tackle and ramming my head into other people for these past four years.
Enough of the sappy stuff, lets get down to the nitty gritty. The past two days of practice have been challenging but fun at the same time. We practice at a high tempo in order to prepare us for the game and no one takes this more serious than the big boss man himself, Coach Fitz. He wants to make sure that we're working hard and having fun while doing it. He does this by having David "I only have two songs on my iPod" Reitz bumping nothing but the hits pre-practice and having various members of the team dance in front of everybody before we stretch. The latest two victims of rhythm were Drew "I can't bust a move when you're all looking at me" Moulton and The Jay Hooten (assistant strength coach). It was definitely team consensus that Jay stole all of his dance moves from Dirty Dancing and that Drew watches entirely way too much Nick, Jr. During practice things get a little feisty especially when we get to the competitive drills. The catalyst of the testosterone explosion comes when we get to board drill. For those of you unfamiliar with board drill it separates the men from the boys. Two players are placed on opposite ends of the board, in a stance and at the snap of a hat/ball ram each other until one person pushes the other off of the board. In short, it is the clashing of titans; egos are put on the line as we battle for pride for our position groups and ourselves. After board drill we head into the team periods and this is where practice really becomes fun. We go after it hard because this is what's going to prepare us for the game.
After practice, Coach Fitz brought us up to go through the announcements and to my delight my name was read off of the list to go and speak with the media. This is when the video of me plugging my blog was shot, shoutout to Mark Woodsum aka Young Drow, and it took me back to a conversation I had earlier with our athletic trainer Jennifer Brown before she kicked me out the training room as she usually does. I wondered why is the name of this blog simply "Big Bowl Blog II", and why couldn't we be more creative. Zeke, Brew and PK all got cool nicknames for theirs and I've come up with a couple of possible name changes to spice things up a little bit: Mixin' it up with M-cat, Oh Marsha! (Jen's suggestion because that's her corny nickname for me), Marshall's mambo no. 5, and I am, MARSHALL! Just a couple of suggestions as we get deeper in our relationship.
On Tuesday, after practice and a quick lunch we had about an hours worth of position meetings. The entire D-line was already in our room waiting for Coach Hank to come and start the meeting when Niko aka slim got the bright idea to put on a techno song by Kaskade and Deadmau5 called "Move for Me." Now as some of you may already know a majority of the D-line love techno music and in terms of the team we are definitely the best looking and best dancers. If you don't believe me just check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JdtyuDuuz8. So it was inevitable that as the tunes started crankin' we had to have a mini-rave. The O-line who is in the hallway waiting for coach Cush hears the music and bust into our room joining the festivities. Eventually Coach Hank comes into the room and we all try to get him to join in but he declines the offer and our meeting begins.
Wednesday night about 70 of us went down to the Blackhawks game because the team bought some tickets. They were in the suite level and I was very excited about the game. Yes, I know what you're thinking usually people like me don't care about hockey, but us Floridians are open to many things. Throughout the game I was sitting next to Ricky (no nickname necessary) Weina. I told him and the rest of the box that if the Blackhawks score first I'm taking my shirt off. Of course the Blackhawks did score first did and I did what I said. Everyone in our box asked me if I would do it if they scored again and before I could really answer they scored again. Instinctively I took my shirt off again and started waving it around in celebration. Mid-way through the second period I tried to lobby everyone in our box to join me in my celebration the next time the Blackhawks scored. They all said they would but only Brian "the ballerina dancer" Peters, Corbin "kiwi" Bryant, Corey "pumpkin patch" Wootton, Nate "rocky" Williams, Bryce "Captain Planet" Mcnaul, and Kevin "gingerbread man" Watt actually followed through and did it with me. The Blackhawks ended up winning 3-0 so there were no more opportunities for us to show our beach bods to rest of the United Center.
Hopefully I didn't bore you to death with this extra long entry but for your sake and mine I promise they'll never be this long again. I don't know what the weather report says, but lets make sure there's purple rain in Tampa on January 1st.
