Northwestern University Athletics
ON THE RECORD...With Mark Woodsum
9/8/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 8, 2009
Any campus, and especially Northwestern's, offers up a smorgasbord of delights, yet the football player is often too busy to savor them. But last spring, at the urging of 'Cat marketing maven Tracie Hitz, senior superback Mark Woodsum took a taste and now he plans to fill his last year in Evanston by sampling even more from the table. He discusses his plans with NUsports.com's special contributor Skip Myslenski in a piece that originally appeared in the Sept. 5, 2009, edition of The Den.
On The Record...With Mark Woodsum
There are a couple of names for it. "The Adventures of Mark Woodsum." "What Wouldn't Woody Do?" I don't know what we're calling it yet.
We haven't really started it. But I'm excited to get started.
Tracie asked me to check out the Waa-Mu Show. I'd heard about it, but I'd never been. She said, "Check it out and see what you think."
It was really an impressive show. The dedication of all the students really showed through. They're really talented. I always knew we had a good theater department, but I'd never taken the effort to check it out.
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I had a great time and, because of my experience there, I wrote a letter to the Daily Northwestern. They published it.
I basically said I'm a senior, it's my last year on campus here and I'm trying to do a lot of different things. I'd been supporting a lot of athletes and all the sports they participated in. But I hadn't branched out to the other extra-curricular areas at Northwestern. That was the first thing I did.
I told Tracie I enjoyed it and she said we should do more things like that.
She got the idea from "Dhani (Jones) Tackles The Globe" on the Travel Channel (where the Bengal linebacker tries new sports around the world). The one I last saw he was learning how to play jai alai.
Last year I did spend a lot of time with the marching band and got to know them and the spirit things they do on Thursday before our games. One of our ideas is to hang out with them some more and learn to play a musical instrument.
They have spirit sessions every Thursday night. They would come up with poems or rhymes or songs about the upcoming opponent. They were pretty funny. The marching band here is really an out-going group. They're pretty wild and fun to be around.
Tracie has a lot of ideas. I gazed at them and went, "Wow. I'm going to be busy this year."
I'm excited to do it, to be with different groups on campus. Theater. Greek. Philanthropy events.
As a football team, we do a lot of things on campus to try and generate interest in upcoming games. We try to put faces out there so it's not just, "Oh, the Northwestern football program." Sometimes we hang out at The Rock. We did that last year before the Michigan State game.
We're always out there trying to get students to come to our game. So this is like a thank you to them. I want to reach out and support the other students who support us and have an interest in all the things they do.
I'm pretty outgoing and I like adventure. I like doing different things. I'm always out for something different. Routine is kind of boring to me, so I'm always looking for something new to do.
I haven't had time for new sports since I've been in school. But whether it's a new restaurant or just driving to a destination a different way. I guess that's kind of silly. But, yeah, I'd say I'm outgoing and open to trying a lot of new things.
I had a great vacation adventure. Zeke Markshausen and Andrew Brewer (both receivers) and I went to Canada, Red Lake, Ontario. Zeke's family owned a fishing lodge up there. We went there for four days before we reported.
I've been to the Kentucky Derby a couple of years with my roommates. Me, (receiver) Kevin Frymire, (tackle) Kurt Mattes, and some others, we all went down to the Kentucky Derby last year. That was my third time.
You see some interesting things down there.
Your time here on campus is so short in the totality of life. But the opportunity to see different things and be involved, the possibilities are endless. There are different things going on all the time.
I don't have a wife, I don't have kids, I don't have a job. I just have football and school. All the other time I have, you can hang out, play video games, watch movies. But my college time is going to end soon and I want to see all that Northwestern has to offer.
Eric Peterman (the former wide receiver) was very involved on campus and I was like, "Wow, he's doing a lot of things." But I never thought, "You know what. I could be doing all of this." When I saw Eric graduate, he was a pretty good friend of mine, and just hearing him recall all the things he did, I was like, "Wow, he's done a lot here."
I realized I was fortunate enough to have another year and maybe I could do some of those things.
Looking back, I wish I'd gotten started with this my freshman year. But I'm really thankful I have the opportunity now.
I've always focused on athletics and how successful we've been. But like I learned from the Waa-Mu Show, the students here excel in so many other fields that don't get the kind of publicity sports does. It's a testament to them that they do what they enjoy and they're very, very talented at it. They don't get the coverage on TV and things like that. So the people you go to class with, you wouldn't know they excelled in these other fields unless you'd checked it out.
With the football team, Coach (Pat) Fitz(gerald) always tells us we're a lot bigger, we stand out on campus. So it's easy to get separated.
I think that's what happened to me early in my time here. I was, "I'm on the football team. I'm with my football friends. We do all this stuff." But looking back on it, I really wish I had done more, got involved in more activities.
Sometimes we laugh and say, "It would be easy to go to school here if we didn't have football." But I really think there are a lot of students here who are just as busy as us. They have jobs to help pay bills and they're still doing what they enjoy on top of that. I don't think there are too many students who just go to class and go straight home and study. They're involved.
I'm looking forward to the adventures in general. I'm looking forward to doing as much as I can while I'm still here and hopefully I can bring some guys with me. We'll all have a great time.
Hopefully this experience will make me a more well-rounded person and let me connect with more students on campus.
