MOBILE, Ala. – Having undergone four surgical procedures on his knees since the age of 16, it would have been easy for University of South Alabama defensive lineman Andy Dalgleish to have packed up his cleats and called it a career long ago. It’s hard enough to compete in any sport on the collegiate level just putting in the standard amount of time in practice, conditioning drills and watching film — not to mention taking care of all assignments in the classroom.
That Dalgleish hasn’t done so is the main reason why Jaguar head coach Joey Jones considers the Milton, Fla., resident one of the key members of the USA program, now in the middle of its third season of competition.
“To me, he is one of the guys who is the heart and soul of our team because he fights through adversity,” he explained. “The fact that he fought through that injury the way he did — a lot of guys wouldn’t do that; I don’t know if I could’ve, it’s tough to go through that twice — and come back and play great football like he is right now is a lesson for all our players. They might have to go through something like that one day, and they can say ‘this is what Andy Dalgleish did’ and follow his lead.”
Instead of inducing Dalgleish to quit, it is because of those injuries that the 6-foot-2, 275-pound junior continues to battle back, serving as an inspiration to many in the program.
“I have friends that I’ve played football with my whole life who over the years have lost their love of the game, they just hang it up. They’re good enough to play in college, but they don’t,” he said. “I’m playing college ball because I still love the game. I keep having these knee injuries and my buddies back home ask, ‘Andy, why don’t you just hang it up? It’s not worth it, you need to be able to walk and play with your kids one day.’
“When you are at practice and see the guy doing a little rehab with the trainers you think he is lucky, but you never want to be that guy. Once you are that guy, you’re over there thinking I could be playing. Missing that time really fuels your hunger, it feeds your love of the game — it feeds the fire, if you will, to try and bounce back and return as soon as you can.
“All these knee injuries have kept me coming back for more. Without these injuries, I might have hung it up years ago.”
For that, the Jaguars can consider themselves lucky.
The first injury came while Dalgleish was wrestling for Pace High School when he was 16 years old, as he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, although he recalled, “I didn’t know it, and the MRI didn’t show anything.” When the doctor went in to perform arthroscopic surgery, he discovered what had happened — Dalgleish had to wait to regain some strength and stability before the doctor could go back in and perform the reconstruction procedure.
After arriving at USA in the fall of 2008 as the program took its first steps, he participated in spring practice and was the Jags’ starting nose tackle when the team took the field for the first time ever against Hargrave (Va.) Military Academy on Sept. 9, 2009. Dalgleish would start each of the first five contests that fall, but in the week between a win over Fork Union (Va.) Military Academy and an upcoming game with Milford (N.Y.) Academy, he tore multiple ligaments in his right knee.
“I did that one right — ACL, MCL [medial collateral ligament], meniscus and a bone bruise,” he observed. It would cause Dalgleish to miss the last two contests as USA wrapped up a perfect 7-0 campaign, and after surgery on Nov. 20 he once again began the battle to get back on the field. “I busted my butt, it was a lot easier to get ready having gone through it before,” said Dalgleish. “With the help of the sports medicine staff, I was able to come back for spring practice stronger after putting the weight back on.”
It wouldn’t take long for the joy of returning to the field to be replaced with the specter of more rehab for Dalgleish. Less than a week, in fact, into preseason practice the following summer.
“The second day in helmets we were running pursuits, I had all this extra weight that my knees weren’t used to and I was running full speed, tagged the runner and went to stop real quick before I ran over somebody else on the sideline; as soon as I did it popped, the same one I just had surgery on,” he remembered. “You hear of knee injuries all the time where nobody even touched the person, this was one of those cases.”
Fortunately, he didn’t completely tear any ligaments in the knee again, requiring an additonal arthroscopic procedure as opposed to another reconstructive surgery. “When you’ve had surgery twice to reconstruct an ACL, arthroscopic surgery is nothing,” Dalgleish commented. “They offered me crutches, but I just got up and walked out of the hospital — I wasn’t trying to be tough, but with what I had been through it was nothing.”
Actually, due to injuries Dalgleish had suffered, he has hardly been able to participate in spring drills. He missed the first spring game in the program’s history the previous April after tearing ligaments in his ankle in the final practice conducted in full pads prior to the event, sat out the entire 2010 spring season rehabbing from the ACL reconstruction, and was unable to take part in offseason drills prior to this year after tearing the meniscus in a knee. “If you look back, I haven’t played in a spring game since I’ve been here,” he stated.
For many who have suffered injuries, the hardest part returning to competition is not the work put in during rehabilitation. “The hardest part is the mental recovery and trusting it [the injured part] again,” Dalgleish explained. In his position, not only did Dalgleish have to overcome any self doubt he had about his knees and ankles; playing on the defensive line, his position is the one most susceptible to lower leg injuries with other offensive linemen, tight ends and running backs chip blocking while engaged with the opponent.
“I don’t ever think about it because I wear two knee braces — I’ve been wearing them so long that I feel like I couldn’t perform without them,” he said. “Those things are titanium alloy so I’m thinking, ‘You can cut me all day long, you’re just going to get a headache.’ My ankle would go before my knee if I get cut real bad.
“But you can’t play like that, if you do you’re going to play soft. I do my best to dismiss it and trust in the knee braces. It goes back to the mentality that my knee is ready, so trust in it and perform.”
And perform he has, particularly this fall. After collecting 15 stops in 15 games the program’s first two seasons, Dalgleish is among the team leaders on the defensive front with 19 tackles entering this evening’s game against Mississippi Valley State. That total includes four tackles for loss, one pass broken up and a forced fumble.
“Andy’s been great this year,” observed USA assistant coach Brian Turner, who leads the Jaguar defensive line. “He’s been doing what I’ve asked him to. He’s very smart and recognizes things which enables him to make tackles in the backfield.”
The highlight of the year was a career-high five-tackle performance in the Jags’ first-ever match-up with an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision opponent at North Carolina State on Sept. 17; all five stops were unassisted, including one behind the line. He also had four tackles in wins over West Alabama and Lamar, and a stop for loss at Texas-San Antonio.
What makes the performance even more noteworthy is that, traditionally, defensive linemen often do not rack up eye-catching tackle totals. “Nose guard is a pretty humbling position, I suppose; you obviously don’t get a lot of glory. But that’s fine with me, I’m happy to be playing,” stated Dalgleish. “The way our defense is designed our responsibility on the line is to plug gaps, though coach Turner wants us to make plays. Most of the time that’s what happens; we plug the gaps, the running back sees they can’t run there so they cut it back and there’s our linebacker.
“It’s selfless football, it’s about the team making the stop.”
Dalgleish — who has yet to start a contest since first suffering the knee injury in the fall of ’09 — may believe that he is just filling a role, but according to Turner his performance helps set the tone for the Jaguars on the line. “Andy brings a very tough mentality to our group, and the guys feed off his energy as far as taking on double teams and doing all the little things right,” he commented. “He may not have the athletic ability, but he makes up for it with his technique and his toughness.”
Perhaps that humble assessment of his role comes from Dalgleish’s upbringing. Prior to remarrying, his mother Keri was single and raising three boys.
“My mom has never let me quit anything in my life, I give her all the credit in the world; she’s made me the young man I am today,” Dalgleish said. “She’s a real tough woman. I would come home from practice and tell her my shoulder hurt when I moved it a certain way — she would just say, ‘Then don’t do that.’”
He and his brothers participated in sports as soon as they were able to sign up, and not just because it was fun for them but for the assistance it provided their mother. “She put us in football and T-ball at the age of five as a means of day care; we could burn our energy somewhere else while she had to work, and when she got us back we would be tired,” Dalgleish explained. When finances under the circumstances became tight, the trio were left to make a decision — football or baseball.
“We all chose football, it’s more fun,” recalled Dalgleish. “My brothers probably should have gone with baseball, they are more natural athletes, but I was bigger and stronger.”
And thus his path was set. When Dalgleish got to Pace High, he started wrestling and participating in weightlifting as well. On the field, he was a key part of a team that finished 13-1 his senior season, collecting 67 tackles including 11 sacks; he would help the Patriots advance to the semifinals of the state 4A playoffs twice in three years on the varsity. But his taking part with the other two squads was more about helping his performance in football, although he did finish fifth at the state 2A weightlifting meet his senior year.
“I tell people all the time that wrestling made me a far better football player than football would’ve ever made me a wrestler,” Dalgleish stated. “Part of that was my brother whooping up on me in wrestling — he was a district and regional champion his senior year. Wrestling teaches you how to use your body weight and use another guy’s against him; that works on the defensive line. It makes you more of a natural athlete — when you wrestle, the next day you have sore muscles that you never knew you had. And it builds up that intestinal fortitude, gives you guts. I just did weightlifting to get stronger for football.”
When it came to recruiting, Dalgleish was ready to play for Jones at Birmingham-Southern; Jones was more than familiar with the family, as older brother Eric was already a part of the Panthers’ football program.
“When you look at their family, I think it all starts with their mom. She’s a tough, hard-nosed lady, and she brought those kids up that way,” Jones observed. “Eric was one of the toughest guys I’ve ever coached, mentally and physically. He was just hard-nosed, and Andy is just like him. When we found out we had a chance to get Andy early we were excited because we knew he would be the heart and soul of our football team. The things we are trying to build our program around, the characteristics that we were looking for — tough-minded, motivated people who had played in winning programs — made Andy a perfect fit for us in those early days.
“And he’s still a perfect fit, obviously.”
When Jones made the move to Mobile, Eric was one of a handful of players to transfer from BSC to follow him. That, plus another former member of the squad who Dalgleish was familiar with, set the path in motion for him to become a Jaguar. “Chris Cooke and I were pretty good friends, I was a senior in high school when he was a freshman at Southern Miss; he wasn’t happy there, but coach Jones offered him a scholarship,” Dalgleish said. “I’m pretty close with his mom, she works at our school, and one day she told me, ‘Chris is at South now.’ I hadn’t heard about the school, but she told me that I should try it out.
“I thought it would be cheaper — which would help my mom out — I loved coach Jones anyway, and would go from four hours to an hour away. What did I have to lose?”
Though he was interested in the fledgling program, Dalgleish wasn’t sure the staff felt the same way about him.
“I remember the first time coach Turner came to our school, he took one look at me and had that look that said, ‘He’ll never play,’” he remembered. “But I love getting that look from people, it just motivates me. I’m not the most athletic guy, it’s obvious people can see that; when you see Romelle [Jones] or Randon [Carnathan], they are really athletic for their size. I try to make up for it by keeping my motor going and being a technician, I don’t have the legs that I used to so some of my agility is gone.”
“No, that’s not true,” Turner refuted. “I talked to his head coach at Pace High, he told me how tough a guy Andy was and that he was really a smart player. We were looking for guys like that to come in that year, our first one here, and he’s been that same guy ever since.”
Not only have injuries affected Dalgleish’s path to this point, but they will likely influence the lives of many others in the future. He is expected to graduate next summer, with plans to enroll in graduate classes in the fall while he plays for the Jags in his final year of eligibility. After completing his master’s degree, the expectation is to attend PT school and get a doctorate in physical therapy.
“That’s the goal, the dream right now,” explained Dalgleish. “Dealing with all these injuries, it’s something I would love to do — help people through their injuries, whether it be athletes or the elderly, because I have been there. I know the long road to recovery, and how you battle bouts with depression.
“I’ve been there, so I feel like that is something I could be good at.”
For if the past foreshadows the future, he’ll help more than his fair share of people. Because one doesn’t earn consideration as the heart and soul of a program by walking away early.
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
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