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Princeton University Athletics
The Men Behind (And In Front Of) The Numbers
October 22, 2002 | Football
Oct. 22, 2002
taken from 10/12 Princeton Athletic News
There is a roster on this web site, which you can turn to if you get stuck, but try this game without looking at it.
How many names can you associate with their positions on the Princeton football team. For instance, if the position is running back, most can probably name Cameron Atkinson fairly quickly. You see his name in the newspapers, in the record books, etc.
Linebacker? Could be a little tougher, but Zak Keasey is the team's leading tackler, and Drew Babinecz is the captain, so you probably got one of them.
Wide Receiver? Yeah, Chisom Opara is the other captain, and B.J. Szymanski did have that tremendous performance against Lehigh. Quarterback? No trouble there, either? Didn't think so.
Offensive Line? Hello? That's right, the roster is under "Meet The Tigers".
Don't feel bad if you struggled with that one. It's not the position that lends itself to wild headlines or memorable individual performances.
It does lend itself to one thing, though. Winning. Not individually, mind you; the group will win as a unit.
And for the four senior members of the 2002 Princeton offensive line, guard Lance Baird, tackles Chris Havener and John Holownia and center Roger Patterson, that's just fine.
"If the offensive line had a great game, we'll all get credit," Havener says. "If one of us fails, we all fail. If a defensive lineman doesn't get through, somebody else could make the play. If a wide receiver runs a bad route, sometimes it will affect another route, but not always. If I fail at my job, somebody is going to get through and make a play, and now the offensive line has failed."
Failure has been the exception early in the 2002 season. Princeton didn't allow a single sack in two of three games this season and has outrushed its opponents by nearly 60 yards per game.
The anchormen of this accomplishment are a tight-knit group of young men. They traveled significantly different paths to Old Nassau, but there are two truths that are consistent among them.
They worked as hard as anybody to be here now.
And they are here to win.
* * *
Baird first realized his potential to play college ball after his junior year at American Heritage High School in Weston, Fla. He had just been named an all-county selection, the first of two such honors during his high school career, and decided to really concentrate on doing the things necessary to play college football.
"I concentrated on weightlifting," Baird says, "but I was also doing some things with technique. I was working on the basics."
Those basics helped him to all-county and all-state honors as a senior. People took notice. Universities from the Southeast, the East and the Midwest started sending him letters, but it was one particular school in the Garden State that caught the family's attention.
"After we got the letter from Princeton, my parents sat around and talked about going to an Ivy League school," he says. "To get an education from an Ivy League school and to get to play college football, it was the best of both worlds."
After a visit, he was hooked, and there were a number of reasons why,
"I really liked the fact that the University paid attention to the undergraduates as opposed to the graduates," he says. "There's the tradition. The support from alumni - not necessarily financially, but when you graduate from Princeton, you're part of a fraternity."
* * *
Martin Patterson was an iron worker in the Pittsburgh area during the 1970s. One day, he and a buddy decided to pick up and move. While many people have made similar decisions in their life, few chose the same destination as Patterson: Alaska. Ten months later, Martin's girlfriend Dianne, the future mother of Princeton's starting center, moved out to Alaska and the two were married.
And at least one person is really happy they made the decision (the one about moving to Alaska, although the one about being together and getting married sure helped too).
"I think it's the greatest," Patterson says. "I'm going to graduate from here, and that's where I'm going back to."
From airport to airport, he estimates that to be about a 10-hour trip. His original plan was for it to be significantly shorter. Patterson was serious about playing in the Pac-10; in fact, it wasn't until late in the process that the idea of going to an Ivy League school even played into the picture.
"I started hearing from Princeton, Harvard and Yale," he remembers. "It was different for me, having not grown up around here. I was like, 'wow, what an opportunity.'"
The opportunity looked even better after Patterson started to hear from the West Coast schools.
"I was offered walk-ons," he says. "I wanted to go somewhere where I felt the team and the coaches wanted me."
After a visit to Princeton, Patterson realized that he was wanted by a school that he wanted to attend.
* * *
Havener's journey to Princeton was significantly shorter than Patterson's. A lineman at local standout program Central Bucks West, Havener always had a goal of attending an Ivy League program. Early in the recruiting period, Havener visited a number of Atlantic 10 schools, mainly due to scholarship offers. After a visit to Princeton, a school only 45 minutes from his hometown of Doylestown, Pa., he realized that this was the school for him.
Havener had a pretty good idea of how the whole recruiting process worked, considering the number of Division I-A and I-AA football players that C.B. West produces on an annual basis. He also didn't deal with a problem that most freshmen run into when they begin a collegiate career.
"I was used to playing on an offensive line where I was at about the middle of the pack," Havener says. "I was used to not being the best player. Most freshmen were the big fish in a small pond, and struggle when they are a small fish in a big pond. I didn't have that problem."
Maybe not, but he was pretty happy that the pond was local.
* * *
Holownia always thought about playing college football. Visiting his grandfather left him no other choice.
"My grandpa was a big Notre Dame fan," Holownia said, "so whenever I went to his house, he always had the Notre Dame game on. I decided I wanted to go play football at Notre Dame." As he got a little older, he turned his attention to the schools in the East. On a day off from school, Holownia and his parents decided to drive to a number of colleges to visit. Rutgers was a planned destination, but nearby Princeton also ended up being part of the road trip.
Holownia was impressed with the facilities at Princeton and decided to head towards the football office, where he was able to meet with his local recruiter. What was basically once a chance visit was turning into something much more serious.
When the final decision-making process began, schools like Bucknell and Harvard were in the running. That is, until Holownia got a phone call from an assistant football coach at Princeton, informing him that he would likely get a letter from the Tigers very soon.
Not much later, Holownia was on the phone with those other schools, informing them that he wouldn't be attending.
* * *
The journeys to get to Princeton were unique to the four men who now have seven games left in their collegiate careers.
Their journeys from the beginning of freshman year to this point were not as unique. Many football fans can see the intricacies of certain positions on the field, but the offensive line doesn't tend to be one of them. It's easy to look out and see nothing more than a number of big guys crashing into each other at the line, a sort of organized chaos.
Suffice it to say, there is much more to being a successful offensive lineman than just being big. There is a great emphasis on technique and footwork. The offensive schemes are complex, and that doesn't even begin to look at opposing defenses.
"My head definitely spun," Holownia remembers of his freshman year. "If I had been stuck in a game, we'd have been in trouble."
It was even tougher on Patterson, who had taken a year off between high school and college to deal with injuries.
"It was rough getting back into it," he says. "My first year was rough. Football wasn't going well, and it affected everything else. It affected my mood. I just had a miserable first fall here."
The transitional period didn't end after the final whistle of a 3-7 season in 1999. In fact, things were just starting. Former Dartmouth offensive coordinator Roger Hughes was brought in as the head coach. Among the members of Hughes' new staff was a former national champion at Penn State and NFL offensive lineman, Stan Clayton.
To a man, the senior offensive linemen credit Clayton with their development as football players.
"People outside the team see a big, loud, emotional guy," Patterson says. "He doesn't have a quiet voice. His technical side of coaching is unbelievable. Footwork, blocking assignments, line calls ...that's where he gains his credibility.
"He's just a great coach."
Clayton will meet with the linemen before practices and study film from a previous practice. The joke around the team is that the offensive line meetings last far longer than any other meeting, but let's face it: When you're responsible for the Splithoffs and Atkinsons of the team, you make sure you have everything right.
The players started to see their own progress during their sophomore seasons, especially during spring ball. They advanced even further due to a spring contest against a Japanese team. "All four of us started in Japan," Baird says. "We even went into a two-minute drill. The cohesiveness really started coming together in Japan."
Maybe more than any other position, cohesiveness is critical along the offensive line. The real work does not begin with the snap of the ball. It begins when the five men step up to their positions.
"The thing about the offensive line is that we work as a unit," Holownia says. "All the guys are making calls. The left tackle needs to listen to what the right tackle is saying."
He has to do more than listen. He has to understand how his role is affected by that call. And both men need to believe that the other will see the play and make the right decision.
"You find confidence in yourself," Patterson says, "and you find confidence in the guys next to you. You have to know that he's going to do the right thing. Communication is a huge thing. If you're going against shifting fronts, you have to trust that the guy next to you saw the shift too."
That type of confidence can be built in practice, but it is fortified on Saturday afternoons, when the linemen are making plays happen together. Throughout the first three weeks of the season, the line has gotten the job done in all facets of the offense. Most offensive linemen prefer run-blocking to pass-blocking, but there is likely a more protective side to the latter.
"We think of the quarterback as fragile," Havener says. "We don't want anybody to touch the quarterback. We love coming in and seeing the back of his jersey clean."
Of course, when the quarterback is Splithoff, that's virtually impossible. A defensive coordinator's nightmare, Splithoff excels at creating magic from a broken situation. Against Lehigh, he threw a 54-yard touchdown on a play that included a roll left, a fumble, a recovery, a near ankle tackle and a roll right.
And when all that is happening, the linemen know their roles. Find somebody. Hit them.
"We're looking to hit somebody downfield," Baird says. "He's so athletic, he just might get down the field for 10-15 yards."
Another athletic presence in the backfield is Atkinson, who has a real chance to break the 2,000-yard mark for his career. A speedster, the senior tailback has the added luxury of knowing what to expect from the men creating his holes.
"Having experienced linemen in front of me gives me a sense of security," Atkinson says. "There is always a certain level of trust between a tailback and his offensive line, but knowing that there is not much that these guys haven't seen makes me even more confident that they will give me somewhere to go with the football. The offensive line and I have grown together in our offensive system, and I think our maturation started to show as we picked up more and more yards on the ground last year. As any smart running back will say, a back is only as good as his offensive line. The success that we have had and hope to continue in the running game is a tribute to their talents, Coach Clayton, and their work ethic. My success is their success."
Their earlier successes are one thing, but its the future successes that motivate this bunch. Now seniors, they each know that this is their final chance to add another league championship to the already-impressive Princeton lore.
"This is the year I feel the most confident," Havener says. "It definitely helps that I'm contributing."
And they are contributing comfortably, finally confident in themselves and their system. Make no mistake, though. This is not a group to rest on its laurels. They are players who will stay after a practice and continue running drills. Three men stand a couple of feet in front of one lineman. Behind the lineman's back, Clayton will choose one to rush. The lineman has a split-second to get the block done. And to get it done correctly.
This is the loudest area of the practice field. The constant chatter of calls being made. The screams of Clayton, who seems to personally agonize on a failed block. And the roar of approval from the coach and the players when the line does it correctly.
The stereotype of an offensive lineman is that of a big man who stands at the line and hits somebody, but there is much more to it. Regardless of the outcome of this season, the likes of Baird, Havener, Holownia and Patterson have sacrificed plenty to put Princeton in the position to reclaim the Ivy throne. They have listened to both their coaches and the men who came before them, and they have a true respect for both the game they play and the position they own.
Those things transcend headlines and recognition. These are football players. If you can't remember their names by next week, so be it. Chances are, you aren't alone.
But never underestimate everything they've done to get here-to Princeton, to Saturday afternoons, to the level of respect that their teammates have for them.