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Aug. 22, 2008

Sometimes Stereotypes Hold True By Bob Socci

More than a routine, it became a season-long ritual.

Usually, it started with a chicken sandwich. Always, it included the same seat with a close-up view of what makes the Annapolis experience unique.

From the first steps of a midshipmen march-on, to the fleeting glimpse of jets roaring overhead.

In the company of thousands of others, it would seem a perfectly wonderful way to begin a football Saturday. The only way, really, if the words "Class of..." could be spoken as if attached to your last name -- a suffix of sorts from which others derive the year you left the Naval Academy, an officer and alumnus.

Except, if your prefix is a position such as "inside linebacker" with half a college career in front of you, it's the absolute worst way to spend time so precious, in a place so special.

A half hour from kickoff or so, you belong in there - in full pads, digesting the last little nugget of a game plan, psyching yourself up with your I-Pod's pre-game mix and visualizing just how great you can be.

Out here - joined by the band and color guard, surrounded by all those grads breaking from tailgating, left to chew on your Chik-Fil-A - this is supposed to be reserved for someday. Not today.

Yet, this is exactly what Clint Sovie experienced before every home game in the fall of 2007, sharing much more than space with his Navy teammate Jeff Deliz.

When the season began on the final Friday of August, they were Navy's most experienced defenders, combining for 19 tackles at Temple. A week later, on the first Friday of September, their season was over.

Trying to make separate plays on different runs by current Baltimore Raven Ray Rice, they were both injured in the opening half at Rutgers. Sovie suffered a broken ankle, Deliz a mid-foot fracture.

For each, the ensuing months meant surgery, arduous physical rehab and a seat next to the other at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

From the sideline at every home game, Sovie - his left foot in a boot - and Deliz - his right foot in a cast - waited through the pre-game pomp to watch the unit they were supposed to lead on the field deal with adverse circumstances.

Ravaged by injuries and restrained by inexperience, the Mids used 23 different starters on defense. Most, like inside linebackers Ross Pospisil and Tony Haberer, seeing their first extensive action at Division I.

But instead of giving in to helplessness, Sovie decided to give what he could. Mainly, coaching and encouraging.

"You could see Ross and Tony hadn't been in game situations," Sovie said of the two principals trying to overcome his absence. "I know what it's like. I remember when I was put in a game against Rice as a freshman."

Compared to practices, games are played at a hyper speed. Especially when, as an inside linebacker you are required to recognize an offense's formation and realign the defense to counteract. A correct call might lead to a stop. An incorrect one likely turns an opponent loose.

"You have to make calls a lot faster in games than in practice and you have to react much faster than in practice," he explained. "I wish I could (have been) on the field to tell them what to do."

Obviously unable, Sovie did the next best thing. He waited until they reached the sideline. And as it turned out, he was teaching and learning at the same time.

"I tried to help make it a learning experience, being able to explain what I was seeing," Sovie said after a mid-August practice. "It was a great learning experience (for me). It was almost like seeing things as a coach.

"It gave me an awareness of what coaches are always trying to tell (us). When you're on the field and a coach starts screaming at you, often you don't see what he's talking about. (But) I was able to start seeing things through the coaches' eyes."

Like a coach - or mentor that he was - Sovie looked on with pride when his guys were in the right place, even on those days when the defense seemed so out of sorts.

"Duke's really the game I was proud to watch them," he said, somewhat surprisingly referring to a 46-43 game - though one that featured Haberer's 23-yard fumble return and Ketric Buffin's late interception to set up Navy's game-winning score. "They fought through (adversity) to find a way to win."

As they would all season, rising to every critical occasion in a double-overtime win at Pittsburgh and a triple-overtime thriller at Notre Dame.

"The Notre Dame game was unbelievable to watch. I was going crazy where I was (back in Annapolis)," Sovie recalled of the moment the Irish's Travis Thomas was seemingly engulfed by the entire Brigade of Midshipmen on the final play of Navy's 46-44 victory. "On that last play all 11 guys ran to the ball."

Sovie wound up celebrating other moments that marked a coming of age. Against Army, the Mids yielded only a field goal in a 38-3 rout. At home vs. Northern Illinois, Pospisil made a remarkable 20 tackles. Then, opposite Utah in the Poinsettia Bowl, he produced an interception reminiscent of the play Sovie made the previous postseason, when he picked off Boston College's Matt Ryan.

But, as any athlete would attest to, the plays of your past and your teammate's present are all relative when you're laboring toward your own future return. Early morning treatments in the trainer's room, afternoons in the weight room, evenings in a red jersey on the fringes of the practice fields.

Those are the times you could use someone to do for you what you've done for a Haberer or Pospisil. Someone like the guy seated next to you.

"It was already hard enough," says Jeff Deliz. "At the time I got hurt, I thought my career was over. (Rehabbing together) we could vent to each other. If he was down, I would pick him up. If I was down, he'd pick me up. We pushed each other in the weight room."

"It would have been a lot more difficult had (Jeff) not gotten hurt and I didn't have someone to go through it with," Sovie said of his road to recovery. "We always pushed each other. He was a big help and a good friend."

Deliz was also a companion at a crossroads.

Their medical hardship, incurred so early in the season, made both candidates for an extra year of football eligibility granted by the NCAA.

Recovering from two surgeries, Deliz was forced to withdraw from classes at the Academy, delaying his commissioning. Meanwhile, Sovie was on track for a December graduation the following year.

Still, Sovie considered a late-season comeback, perhaps to confront Army or Utah and forgoing a full schedule in 2009. Until his own body convinced him otherwise.

"Physically my ankle was ready, but my muscles weren't," Sovie said of abandoning hopes of a December '07 return. "Two days after I started my running program, I tried to run the 40-yard dash and pulled my hamstring."

He also accepted the input of coaches and trainers and conferred with his kindred spirit - the one with the other bum wheel.

"It was almost a case of, `I'll do it if you do it,'" explained Deliz, who was soon linked to Sovie by yet another common denominator.

His teammates' choice for defensive captain in what figured to be his senior year, Deliz decided to resume his career this fall. By which time - last spring to be exact - Sovie was elected his successor, joining the offense's anointed leader Jarod Bryant.

With former and current captains playing on the same side of the ball - the latter expecting to play next season as well - it's a situation unlike any other in the previous 127 years of Navy football.

As titles go, it puts Sovie in a class by himself.

"In my mind, I'm a senior this year," he says of this Annapolis oddity. "I'm just going to be a two-year senior."

Just as Sovie has his own way of defining himself, Deliz believes his teammate must develop his own way of leading. Albeit, with a touch of patience applied to his usual intensity.

"Don't change yourself just because you have the label of captain," Deliz, a soft-spoken Michigander, said of his advice to the fiery linebacker from Jacksonville, Fla. "(But) Clint can get heated quickly, so I just told him to calm down and take it one step at a time. Clint's doing a great job."

Sovie and Bryant quickly exercised their leadership, introducing several new ideas to first-year head coach Kenny Niumatalolo - beginning with a simple objective.

"We usually have 10 goals, eight that are the same (each year) and maybe two that change (annually)," said Sovie, alluding to constants such as beating Army and Air Force and reaching a bowl game. "We don't want to simply have 10 goals posted on a wall (in the locker room) that we walk past every day.

"We have one goal, beat whoever we play that week. (This week) our number one goal is to beat Towson and we have no goals after that. It's the same whether it's Pop Warner, college or pro football. Win the week, win the day."

Sovie's also into team building. As if possible, to draw the Navy "Brotherhood" even closer than it's been for generations, while branching out the family tree beyond just the football team.

"We want to bring the team closer as a family," Sovie said, acknowledging that players tend to run in the same circles, created mostly by the nature of their positions. "We want the offense and defense to be able to kick back with each other.

"This summer we got the team together in the wrestling room and played dodge ball, just to get loose and have some fun."

The thinking being, the team that plays together - outside of their own little worlds during practice drills or at position meetings in the film room - stays together.

"Whether it's the last guy on the scout team or a player who just got hurt, everyone always has a role on the team," he says. "I think the most important people on the team are scout team players. They go through the grind every week and suck it up and give us the best look they can." . Respectful and inclusive of others, no wonder Sovie was the people's choice.

"I can't speak for them," he says of the teammates who elected him captain. "I hope that's what they see."

It's certainly what one hears as Sovie speaks of another goal.

"One of the (other) big things is to get the brigade involved to where we have a huge home field advantage," Sovie says, aware the Mids slipped to 3-3 last season in Annapolis. "We want (other midshipmen) to remember us for something different than just another team that wins six games and goes to a bowl game. We need to show them we care about them as well."

If he has his way, Sovie says game days at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium will become as frenzied as a Saturday in "The Swamp" in Gainesville, Fla.

By mentioning the home of the University of Florida Gators - rather than that of his childhood favorite Florida State Seminoles - Sovie shows just how far he's willing to extend his imagination in an effort to make his goals a reality.

Actually, to Sovie - buoyed by the optimism that permeated throughout the preseason - it's not much of a stretch at all.

"We're very upbeat," he says. "I've never been through a (training) camp where everybody's been upbeat the whole time. We just have a lot of guys focused on the right goals now."

It was evident in the offseason, when a team-wide commitment to conditioning made the Mids not just stronger, but swifter. Specifically on his side of the ball.

"We may have more speed than we've ever had," Sovie says, noting the depth created by and experience gained by a defense in flux throughout 2007.

He's especially high on his fellow inside backers.

"It's a huge advantage," Sovie said of the playing time Pospisil and Haberer were accorded last season. "You can always throw in another guy to do the job. At linebacker we haven't had that in a while, three guys on the same level."

And three guys who complement one another as this group does.

"Ross studies (tape) a great deal, Tony's hard nosed, I may be a little faster," Sovie says. "Each brings something the other ones don't."

Navy's new linebacker coach Steve Johns, a 17-year collegiate assistant, agrees.

"All three are unique, they all have different skills," said Johns. "I feel like all three are equal almost. Ross plays as hard as anyone I've seen, always a hundred miles per hour on every play. He stands out by sheer effort. Tony's a very intense, tough, physical player.

"(Clint) is a player who gets to where he wants to go very fast. The speed with which he plays the game (stands out). He can play sideline to sideline. He also times things up very well. He's a good blitzer. Some guys have a knack for it."

Explaining his assessment, Johns singled out Sovie's performance in the Mids' first August scrimmage, when two perfectly-timed blitzes and an uncanny ability to outmaneuver blockers led to a pair of sacks.

That performance reaffirmed what Sovie had established long before, when he was able to cut in either direction on his surgically-repaired ankle during winter workouts. It also confirmed Johns' preconceived notion of a Navy football player.

"Everyone has stereotypes of service academy players," says Johns, who previously worked alongside Niumatalolo at UNLV. "Every commentator on television says the same things, `They're great kids who play hard.' Well, sometimes those stereotypes are true. They're all really good kids who care about football.

"Clint cares a lot about it and tries to absorb everything you tell him. He's a talented player who makes up for whatever he lacks with speed and a football sense."

His openness to soak up the words of others and the resulting sense of self ultimately put Sovie on the path to Annapolis. By way of Savannah, and a few words from his father, Greg.

Clint was between his junior and senior years at The Bolles School of Jacksonville, when he was asked to attend a Boys Home football camp in Savannah. Charles "Corky" Rogers, the all-time winningest football coach in Florida high school history, had a tradition of taking upper-class Bulldogs north to mentor children less fortunate.

Mindful of his father's words, that "good things happen to people who do good things," Sovie volunteered, as he would the following year.

A regular at the camp happened to be Paul Johnson, the former Georgia Southern head coach who was turning Navy into the dominant service academy at the time. The two of them met and a day later Sovie was contacted by Johnson's assistant Ivin Jasper.

With an interest in flying since attending an air show as an eighth-grader, Sovie took Jasper's words to heart. Even while other Division I latecomers started dialing his number.

"At the end of the (recruiting) road, I was sitting in the (school) weight room," Sovie remembers. "My coach told me that (Central Florida) and (South Florida) were interested in visiting me. At the same time, Coach Jasper was waiting on me, I was about to commit to Navy."

His parents left the decision to him alone. Though, first, Greg and Connie Sovie recommended Clint answer a few questions.

"They've always sat back and let me make my own decisions," Clint says. "They said to ask myself, `Would a service academy be the type of place I'd like to go? How did you feel when you met Coach Johnson? Do you feel God is leading you to do that?'"

In the end, the answer to each was obvious: Yes, sir.

Four years later, as he's about to begin the first of his two senior campaigns, Sovie is more certain of his response than ever. And while his lone goal this week is to win the day against Towson, he has a very good idea of where fate is leading him next.

Yes, he still wants to fly. And yes, you guessed it, the closely-cropped, rugged linebacker wants to be a Marine.

Steve Johns was right. Sometimes, stereotypes hold true.

"The way they take pride in what they do is like nothing I've seen in any other service," Sovie says. "Marines are the best of the best. I don't have any other explanation for it."

There's no need for one.