The memories are still there, fresh enough to access at the drop of a question. Now, in the wake of Tyrell Sutton’s lingering injury, Northwestern junior running back Omar Conteh is on center stage. But when he was a freshman, slowed by a partial tear in his right knee, he could do nothing but struggle in the shadows.
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The injury happened in Kenosha, early in his first training camp as a Wildcat, so he had no chance to compete for the playing time that went to Sutton, who emerged as the team’s star.
“My freshman year, yuck. My freshman year, it was bad,” Conteh remembers of being deprived of his health and his passion.
“I was in a depressed state. I was watching my teammates as they played. It was hurtful a little bit. … My freshman year, spring practice, I could participate a little bit more. But I was always missing practices here and there, and at points I just wanted to walk away. It was like, ‘I just need a rest.’ I just didn’t want to be here. I was just hurting. Hurting physically and mentally.”
His family, he says, aided him as he waited, wondered and wandered through a personal desert he never had traversed before. The same was true of his faith, which is deep, and helpful too was a conversation with current Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald, who was then the assistant who had recruited him.
“He was like a lot of freshmen,” Fitzgerald says, thinking back on that meeting. “First of all, you have to make the transition from high school to college. That’s a huge transition in itself. Then you come here, especially at that position.
“Skilled position guys probably have been starting for at least two or three years at their high school. They’re used to being the guy everybody talks about. Now you’re making that transition, you’re competing to play, you get injured, it’s difficult.”
So they talked then of dealing with injuries, which Fitzgerald himself had been forced to do after breaking his leg late in the Wildcats’ Rose Bowl season of 1995. They talked too of handling homesickness, which Fitzgerald also had experienced, even though his family’s home was a mere hour from Evanston.
They talked, most pointedly, of communicating, reaching out and seeking help, basics that often are absent from the repertoire of an acclaimed athlete.
“As a competitor and football player, you don’t swallow your pride a lot. This game doesn’t allow you to do that,” Fitzgerald says. “That’s something he learned. He learned to communicate.”
Did he ever communicate to you that he wanted to get away from it all?
“No. But I think that’s pretty common. That’s not as rare as one might think. I remember my freshman year, it wasn’t a yellow brick road. You go to Kenosha: ‘What’s this? This is awful.’ You come back and you have a month worth of practicing. Then we went to Notre Dame, and I didn’t play. There are a lot of things going on in your life. Each day changes a little bit.”
Little changed last year for Conteh, who carried the ball just six times as a sophomore. But then, early in the Wildcats’ second game this season, Sutton suffered the high ankle sprain that still has him sidelined. That afternoon Conteh carried a screen pass 16 yards for a touchdown, and then, two weeks later, he emerged as the starter against Ohio State.
His afternoon in Columbus was as forgettable as all the Wildcats’, but Saturday against Michigan, he showed his possibilities when he popped up the gut on a trap, bounced left and outran the Wolverines’ secondary on a 49-yard touchdown dash. He ended his afternoon with 115 net yards on just 15 carries.
And now, with Sutton shut down indefinitely, it is Conteh’s burden to give his team’s spread offense the ground game it needs to succeed.
“Do I feel pressure? Honestly, no. I’m just playing. I’m just going to do what I’m going to do,” he says when asked about that burden.
And is he healthy enough to carry it going into Saturday’s game at Michigan State?
“Mentally, yes,” Conteh says, his long journey through the night finally over. “Honestly, everybody’s going to have their nicks and bruises. That’s something, like I’m happy I got hurt. It really helped me to focus on [that] the main thing is to just keep my mind in the right spot.
“My mental state, it’s just ridiculous now. I might go through pain in a game and I won’t even think about it. I just play. I’ve gone through it. …
“That’s a complete motivation boost now. I feel I’m getting my swagger back. I’m very confident right now. Very confident.”
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