For his Wednesday post, Skip Myslenski weaves the story of cornerback Nick VanHoose, who emerged from a small town in Ohio to earn a starting role as a redshirt freshman and this season ranks among the nation's leaders in passes defended.
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The unincorporated community of Westville (pop. 150) is nestled there in central Ohio between the village of St. Paris (pop. 2,089) and the town of Urbana (pop. 11,793). It has a post office and a zip code, a single stoplight and a single thoroughfare called Stickley Road. "Good Old Stickley Road," is how 'Cats junior corner Nick VanHoose refers to it. "My family has lived on the same road for about 58 years now. Where I live, I live next to two cornfields out in the middle of nowhere.
"This (Chicago) is completely different from back home. It's two worlds basically that I get to enjoy."
Two Saturdays ago, in the 'Cats' win over Wisconsin, Nick VanHoose led them in tackles with nine and pass breakups with three. Last Saturday, in their loss to Minnesota, he encored that performance with an interception and seven more tackles. Now, as they await Nebraska's Saturday visit to Ryan Field, he leads the Big Ten in passes defended (11); is second in the conference with a pair of interceptions; and is even there at No. 18 in tackles (7.2 pg). "He's playing well. He's playing well," says Jerry Brown, the team's defensive backs coach.
"And I'll be honest with you. I expect him too."
Pony Wagon Days is an annual festival in St. Paris and, back when he was in the sixth grade, Nick VanHoose rode his horse in the parade that is part of the celebration and tossed candy to the children that lined its route. "I used to ride horses before sports took over my life," he explains. "It's fun."Fun for him too were those games of tag in his grade school playground, where he first manifested his special physical skills. For here he was so swift and so shifty that he never, ever, was "it."
"That was my game," he avows with a soft smile.
Just over three years ago, in the summer of 2011, Nick VanHoose trotted out for his first practice as a Wildcat. "It's a big adjustment," he remembers. "You come out, you've got the jitters, you're scared, you don't know if you're going to be fast enough to play with the guys. Then a couple weeks go by and you tell yourself, `I'm as good as these guys or I can be better.' I think I became the most comfortable after my redshirt freshman year. There was talk that they were going to pull my redshirt.
"I was not ready whatsoever."
Nick VanHoose would star at tiny Graham High School (enrollment 626) and after both his junior and senior seasons, he was named the area's Player of the Year in both football and basketball. Still, there were doubters. "A ton of people," he remembers. "We're D2 in basketball, D3 in football. Most people would say, 'He's not fast. Everyone else is just slow.' Or, 'The people that he's playing obviously just aren't as good.' That was a big thing for me. I wanted to go to a Big Ten school to prove to everyone else that I am good enough."
But the `Cats were not among those doubters and here they hoped he would attend their camp in the summer that separated his junior and senior seasons. Instead he went to the one sponsored by Indiana, whose defensive coordinator Brian George was a Graham alum, and soon enough he verbally committed to the Hoosiers. "They," says Pat Fitzgerald, "made it pretty hard for him to walk away without taking a scholarship."
But then, after Hoosier head coach Bill Lynch and his staff were fired, VanHoose de-committed, and soon enough he called Fitzgerald. "They were interested in me, so I called him back again, took a visit here, fell in love with the place," he explains. "The great academics was probably the biggest thing. And the guys that are here, the family mentality."
"We were high on him," says Fitzgerald himself. "But because of his small town, we needed to see him live in camp. That didn't end up working out early. But really glad it worked out in the end. He's been a joy to coach."
Graham High School is 99 percent Caucasian. But one of Nick VanHoose's birth parents is African-American and the other is Caucasian. Still, he will say, "It really wasn't much of an issue. I'm adopted. My parents are both white. My whole entire family is white."
But later, as this part of his history is discussed, he will add, "I was the different kid in school. I was always the odd man out, kind of. But everyone treated me equally. There was no hazing or anything like that."
Which is why he is asked if being the odd-man-out helped him make the huge adjustments needed when he joined the `Cats.
"It made it a little easier," he says. "I wasn't one of those people that just had a specific group of friends. I bounced from clique to clique. I could get along with basically anyone."
Nick VanHoose got along well enough on the field that he opened the 2012 season, his redshirt freshman season, as one of the `Cats' starting corners. He flourished in that role as they rushed off to a 6-1 start, but then, during their one-point loss to Nebraska in late October, he went down with a damaged shoulder. He would now miss three games; return for their victories over Illinois in the regular-season finale and Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl; and eventually be named the `Cats' Defensive Newcomer of the Year and to ESPN.com's Big Ten All-Freshman Team.To call up some familiar lyrics, his future now looked so bright he had to wear shades. "But it's interesting," Jerry Brown would say this week. "When he was a redshirt freshman, he had a fairly good year. And then the next year (last year), he was just kind of so-so. Our guys seem to go through these little slumps. It's almost like that one year when he was pretty good as a redshirt freshman, I think you almost take it for granted. Maybe it's almost too easy and they go into a slump. It's happened to Ibraheim (Campbell, the senior safety). I remember it happening to Jordan Mabin. The one it didn't happen to was Sherrick McManis (who's now with the Bears)."
"I fell into a sophomore slump hard," agrees VanHoose. "I just got way too comfortable. I was out there, but I didn't have the same adrenalin I had as a freshman. Freshman year you're out there, you're so excited to be out there you're ready to play. But after you've been out there so long, you get used to it. You get comfortable. You get complacent. That was my biggest problem.
"I've had a chip on my shoulder since last year because I know I could have played a lot better. I was just out there going through the motions. This year I put it on myself to be much better for my teammates."
Some 250 miles separate Evanston from Good Old Stickley Road, but Nick VanHoose has surely traveled much further on the journey that has transported him from his home town's cornfields to the college town that is now his home. Along the way he has snubbed his nose at all those doubters who once sneered at this work at Graham, and adjusted to an environment that is so very different from his rural roots. He has also endured both an injury and a slump, and rebounded from them both, and now he is a linchpin of his team's defense and performing at an elite level.
Yet his past is still very much a part of him. His father Roger has attended every `Cats game this season, both home and away, and for one at Ryan Field earlier this fall, his family and friends on hand numbered 30. He is aware of these hopes he carries, aware too that he is the first football player from Graham to play at a Big Ten school, and this is something he carries with him always into the fray. "Absolutely. That's one of my biggest things," he will finally say.
"Having the VanHoose on my back, and having my family and friends and all my supporters from home, that's one of the biggest things that I use as motivation."
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