Norwich to the Super Bowl
|
|
Indianapolis Colts receiver Pierre Garcon celebrates after his big day that helped land his team in the Super Bowl. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Toolbox
BY Tom Haley STAFF WRITER - Published: January 26, 2010
The 2004 football season was a special one at Norwich University. The Cadets went 7-3 to earn a berth in ECAC Northeast Bowl where they fell to Alfred.
Burlington's Nate Long was making a splash when he was able to play. Often injured, he only got in five games but his 63.6 yards rushing per game led the team.
But the headliner was Pierre Garcon. Yes, that Pierre Garcon. The one who had a record-setting game in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, helping the Indianapolis Colts to their victory over the Jets by catching 11 passes for 151 yards and a touchdown. The 11 grabs were a record for an AFC title game.
That freshman season at Norwich he caught 42 balls for 990 yards and 13 touchdowns in nine games. His big-play ability was evident in his first game when he had 137 receiving yards and two touchdowns with just three receptions.
Norwich University head coach Shawn McIntyre was the offensive coordinator that season.
"We knew he was very special and that he had extreme talent," McIntyre said Monday while on a recruiting expedition in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
How does a Division III school like Norwich pluck such a talent out of the state of Florida?
"He was overlooked in high school because he was playing with two great receivers who were going to Auburn," McIntyre said.
McIntyre credits Mike Yesalonia, the Cadets head coach at the time, with going down to John I. Leonard High School and bringing Garcon back to Vermont.
Following his year in Northfield, Garcon went to Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, another Division III school, but one that gets exposure on national TV nearly every year in the Stagg Bowl, the NCAA Division III national championship game.
"He was good and he knew he was good," McIntyre said. "He wanted to go where he could get on national TV, even if it was once a year, because he wanted to get drafted."
He had a spectacular career at Mount Union and achieved his objective, being selected by the Colts in the fourth round of the NFL draft.
"He is a natural 100-meter sprint man," McIntyre said. "If he was a full-time sprinter, I think he would be in the Olympics now.
"And, of course, he has great hands and runs great routes.
"I would tell our quarterback Matt Meehan, who had a great arm, to just try to overthrow him.
Every day, he got better and better."
But it's his competitiveness and love for the game that is just as an important part of the package, McIntyre said.
"He just loves to play games. In between double sessions, he is likely to in a pickup basketball game," said the Cadets head coach.
"He understood football very well. If you drew something up on the board, he grasped it right away."
That freshman season in a Cadet uniform landed him a spot on the All-Empire 8 Conference's first team.
And now he has landed in the Super Bowl.
McIntyre and others who remember that 2004 season in Northfield are not surprised.
tom.haley@rutlandherald.com
22