CHUCK McGILL,Charleston Daily Mail
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — He was once an unabashedly confident 17-year-old boy who stared into a camera on ESPNews and told the college football world on National Signing Day in 2005 he was going to take his talents to West Virginia University and become a 2,000-yard rusher as a true freshman.
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Months later, shortly after his 18th birthday, the Wyandanch native sauntered down a street in Morgantown and stopped to stare through a campus bookstore window, where a WVU football jersey was draped over a mannequin in the storefront.
The uniform had 14 screened on the front — the number then-West Virginia Coach Rich Rodriguez promised him if he would shun Southern California and Ohio State.
Jason Gwaltney, a five-star, blue-chip running back who had navigated life with great aplomb, suddenly felt the burden of Old Gold and Blue expectations before playing a down for the Mountaineers.
“It was way too much way too fast,” Gwaltney told the Daily Mail last week.
Gwaltney made 45 carries in his one injury-shortened season at WVU.
Since then, the now 23-year-old has been working toward his dream of playing professional football, a quest that prompted him to follow the country roads back here to West Virginia.
He is preparing at the H.I.T. (High Intensity Training) Center in Huntington for Pro Day, the scouting combine and April’s NFL Draft.
Last month, Gwaltney spent a week at the HBCU All-Star Game in Atlanta talking to representatives from 25 of 32 NFL teams.
He was candid about his unconventional, circuitous route to the NFL. He talked about his shortcomings as a teenager, the temptations for a star athlete and how he came to shed the bravado that accelerated his descent into anonymity.
“Most of the teams know his story,” said Taber Small, a mentor to Gwaltney and CEO and President of Team Player Management LLC. “They wanted to know if he would tell the truth. He really impressed people and you can see he really appreciates where he’s at in life.
“He looks you in the eye. You can feel that he knows the road it took him to get here. He had adversity and injuries, but he stuck with his dreams. You can see he appreciates how everything helped mold and shape him into who he is today.”
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Gwaltney endured a precipitous fall — from ballyhooed prep prospect to playing at WVU to pay-your-own-way student-athlete at Division III Kean (N.J.) University — but today, a few days shy of National Signing Day and six years after his national TV appearance, the 233-pounder is free of anger, jealously and regret.
“I would never take anything back,” he said. “Some people mess up in life and they sit there and dwell on it, but I would never do that. Everything I’ve done, positive or negative, I’ve learned from.”
He said he “didn’t realize the magnitude” of appearing on ESPN to announce his college destination, but he later learned from opponents that it was used against him as a motivational tool by opposing coaches.
“Everybody knew who I was and wanted to destroy me,” he said. “That made the transition to college football more difficult. Confidence is good to have, but it’s also about using it at the right times.”
Gwaltney played in the first six games of his freshman season before being injured in a win at Rutgers. He said rumors of his lack of commitment to his rehab at WVU were not far-fetched and he never returned that season.
He fell 1,814 yards shy of his rushing pledge, then left WVU to follow an elaborate plan that he hoped would lead him to USC and Coach Pete Carroll after a three-semester stop at Nassau Community College on Long Island.
Instead, Gwaltney compounded bad decisions with poor judgment, bailed on his aspirations to return to Division I football and ended up at Division II C.W. Post for the 2008 season.
“The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but I thought it was,” he said.
Gwaltney found himself back on Long Island among the riff-raff that had steered him wrong countless times before. He got kicked out of his home and was forced to find odd jobs in construction to make ends meet.
“I never had to develop responsibility on my own,” he said. “I had to get an apartment of my own, get a job, support myself. From 9 years old, everybody looked at me as a football god and all of a sudden nobody knows who I am and I’m just one of a million going to fill out a job application so I could pay for a place to live.”
Although he was back in his old neighborhood, he felt a long way from his days at North Babylon High School, where he became Long Island’s most prolific running back in history.
“Even though I was from a poor neighborhood I never felt poor because of all the attention I got from football,” he said. “Who knows how many uncles or relatives or friends of the family threw me $100 after the game? I didn’t have to work for anything.”
That, he said, had an indelible impact on him through his only season at West Virginia.
“Where do you develop being a responsible, accountable person?” Gwaltney said. “Talent-wise, there’s no doubt I should have been playing for West Virginia in 2005. Mentally, I should not have been playing.
“It’s not about athleticism; it’s about developing a student-athlete as a man. But my jersey was selling in the Book Exchange, so let’s play him.”
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Gwaltney played out his final two seasons of collegiate eligibility at Kean, where he had his 2009 season cut short because of an ankle injury. He intended to head to the NFL after that year, but the injury derailed his plans once again.
“I had to rehab my ass off to get ready for the next season,” Gwaltney said. “I showed that I was committed to my craft and I wasn’t going to shy away from getting back on the field.”
He finished 2010 — his senior season at Kean — with a school-record 1,412 yards, including four consecutive 200-yard rushing performances.
“He didn’t big time anybody,” said Dominic Cuniglio, Kean’s running backs coach. “I didn’t know him when he came to Kean, but I looked at it one of two ways: He would come in and say he’s the man and everybody should bow to him, or he’s going to be humble. Jason was very humble.”
Gwaltney still wore No. 14, but his jersey wasn’t hanging in Kean’s bookstore. There was no one in the huddle squirting water in his mouth, no chartered flights, no one asking for his autograph.
“The situation really developed me,” Gwaltney said. “I went from all the pampering to scrapping for everything I could get.
“There’s nothing more humbling than going to a D-3 school. I’ve got linemen who are smaller than me and I have to encourage them every down. I felt it taught me how to be a leader.”
“Everything that happened to me I had to learn from and I know it’s going to make me into a complete player and person. I’m not just talking football, but a better father, husband and man.
“Football is a small part of life, but I have to use this outlet to make a better life for myself. Respect it and stay humble; have confidence, but know when to use it; learn from mistakes.”
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Gwaltney is adamant about his lack of regret.
If he would have landed at USC or Ohio State, he might have been relegated to an I-formation running back. At West Virginia, he learned the nuances of the spread, like how to run zone and pick up blitzes and block in shotgun formations.
It also forced him off his pedestal and thwarted his three-year plan to run into the NFL.
“Little things like that developed me,” he said. “I might not be the first-round top 10 pick that I thought I could be, but I know a lot of top 10 picks who aren’t in the league anymore.
“They go in there too easy and didn’t go through the adversity I went through. I’m a lot better off now than being a 20-year-old going into the NFL signing a million-dollar contract. I would have been in trouble.”
Gwaltney said he is asked often about the Mountaineers’ run that coincided with his departure, but he harbors no ill feelings — especially when it comes to Steve Slaton, the running back who flourished in his absence.
“People on the outside might look at it like I was mad or upset,” Gwaltney said. “I never hated on anybody that was getting it after I left the stage. At the end of the day, I did it to myself.
“I never held any animosity toward anybody. I just used it as the fire in my pot to get back on it; it motivated me. I never looked it as I should have been there doing this and that; that was my issue coming out of high school. I thought everything was going to be handed to me.
“I learned life’s not like that.”
That is why Gwaltney is here for the next eight weeks living with his half-brother, Scooter Berry. They chose Huntington to be isolated and free of distractions. Berry, who finished his WVU career this past season, calls the town “The Cave.”
“They gave us a scholarship together because of me, but my man took it and ran with it and he hasn’t stopped running since,” Gwaltney said of Berry, a defensive lineman who made 41 career starts at WVU.
Gwaltney and Berry work out at the H.I.T. Center five days a week. They lift weights, condition, partake in arduous swim workouts, do Pilates and flexibility training, and even box and grapple.
This week, they begin practice for the Wonderlic, a test given by NFL teams to determine basic intelligence and problem-solving skills.
Gwaltney hopes to parlay his hard work into an NFL job. If not, the UFL and CFL have piqued his interest. He is using athletic training as a fallback option. If so, he might stay and work in the Mountain State.
“I’m back where I belong,” he said. “I still have blue and gold running through my veins.
“And if I get on a Monday night game, it’s going to be WVU and Kean. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what’s coming out of my mouth.”
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Information from: Charleston Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.com
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
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