GICC grads eager for a new year with Huskers

Seeing the red faces and sweat-soaked jerseys of Nebraska's players as they walk off the practice field at day's end, it's obvious that fall camp isn't a whole lot of fun.

It's three weeks of wall-to-wall football, jam-packed into 29 practices and hours upon hours of meetings. That's the annual price the Cornhuskers and every other team in the country must pay to get themselves prepared for the good stuff, otherwise known as game week.

Some drudgery is a given in the early part of preseason practices, especially when temperatures climb near 100 degrees and you're a fifth-year senior like Tyler Wortman and Todd Peterson. However, as Nebraska kicked off fall camp this week, both Grand Island natives said they were looking forward to college football's version of the dog days of August.

After all, it's the last go-around for the Central Catholic graduates. Both said they want to make sure that they don't leave anything in the tank for their senior seasons.

"I'm real excited," Wortman said. "It all kind of culminates into this year."

For Wortman, the anticipation for this season is particularly high. After working his way up the depth chart through a logjam of depth at the linebacker position, the 6-foot-3, 235-pounder entered fall camp as the starting "Buck" or strong-side linebacker position.

It seems the opportunity to live out his dream and be a starter for the Huskers will be enough to power Wortman through the rigors of fall camp.

"Knowing that I have a huge chance to go out there and make a big impact for the team makes everything that much better," Wortman said. "There were a lot of butterflies and just feelings of being ready to get going before that first practice."

While Peterson started earning significant playing time as a redshirt freshman in 2005 and has played in 36 career games, including five starts, the 6-4, 215-pounder said he's also eager for his senior season.

At the same time, Peterson joked that coming back to fall camp this year left him feeling like "an old man" on the team. He said he couldn't help but notice that the dormitory construction that used to wake him up in the mornings when he was living in the dorms is all complete now and faces of his teammates look younger and younger.

"It makes me feel like I've been around for a while and seen a lot of things happen," Peterson said. "But, I guess I'm only 22 right now, so I guess I'm not that old, but it feels that way sometimes."

Peterson said one thing that has certainly breathed some fresh air into the whole camp experience has been first-year head coach Bo Pelini and his staff. Peterson said Pelini's excitement for the game and the upcoming season are absolutely contagious.

"He's preaching passion of the game -- we've never going to stop, we're never going to quit, never say die, we're going to go," Peterson said. "(Pelini said) wins and losses will take themselves, but we're going to play our hardest and do what it takes to get it done."

Wortman said evidence of Pelini's impact is everywhere in the program.

"I think everybody's excited," Wortman said. "It's like we're starting over and we're all ready to begin."



Terry Douglass is sports editor for The Independent.