Enyi Uwazurike shares importance of Iowa State football senior speeches

AMES — Some stories are better left untold.

Iowa State defensive line coach Eli Rasheed told reporters on Wednesday that defensive lineman Enyi Uwazurike has “an incredible story” and that reporters should ask him about it.

Rasheed offered two tidbits to go off of. The first was that Uwazurike’s dad was in and out of his life while he was growing up and the second was that Uwazurike came to Iowa State as an academic redshirt.

Uwazurike came to the interview area about an hour after Rasheed was done.

“My story is all I know,” Uwazurike said. “It’s normal to me but everybody walks a different path in life. When people hear mine, it might be different than theirs and they might assume I’ve had it hard, but to me, everyone has their own reality. Everybody feels a certain way about their path and those paths might lead to the same place but every path is different.”

Uwazurike’s path led him to Iowa State, where he’ll be a four-year starter when the Cyclones kick off their first game against Northern Iowa on Sept. 4.

Uwazurike now has his degree and is working on his master’s. Not bad for someone who had to academically redshirt as a freshman.

“He came to us as just a young, big kid,” Rasheed said of the now 6-foot-6, 320-pound Uwazurike. “He’s had so much growth in life and in being a leader and doing the right things off of the field. For him to graduate and then to start working on his master’s is incredible. There’s nothing like that. As a coach, you love that.”

What Rasheed offered might be all the public gets to know about Uwazurike’s story.

Uwazurike wasn’t too keen on offering his story to reporters.

“Coach Rasheed has a crazy story himself that you should ask him about,” Uwazurike said when asked what his story was.

A person’s story is theirs to tell or not tell to the public.

In a moment of humanity during the interview surrounded by a dozen or so reporters, Uwazurike admitted to not being very comfortable speaking publicly.

He was nervous for his senior speech, which happened Thursday.

Since Matt Campbell arrived in 2016, he’s had the seniors, day after day during fall camp, get in front of the team and tell the team their stories.

Uwazurike had always loved hearing different players’ stories, hardships and triumphs. He said it helps unify the team and bring the team closer.

On Thursday, it was Uwazurike’s turn. He always enjoyed the stories. Now, it was his turn to tell one. For a guy who admitted to reporters he wasn’t comfortable as a public speaker, it could be easy to imagine a person stumbling over his words and sounding nervous.

But just seconds after Uwazurike told the media about his fear of public speaking, he gave this 293-word quote about what the senior speeches mean to him that was so eloquent, you would’ve guessed it was written down and rehearsed, which it wasn’t.

“We see each other all of the time and it’s just strictly about football,” Uwazurike said of the importance of the senior speeches. “Yeah we all crack jokes with each other but inevitably, some people get to know others better.

“You build your own individual friendships on the team and some are inevitably going to be stronger than others. But at the end of the day, we’re all a whole. There are a lot of people on the team and we can’t get to know everyone on a deep, personal level. We don’t know their lives or what they’ve been through.

“We just started this year’s senior speeches recently and we’re learning about people’s heroes, hardships and everything they’ve been through. It brings the team so much closer together. You can see a guy, judge them and think, ‘Oh this person had it easy. They had an easy path — they had both parents at home.’ And you can think all sorts of things like that. But hearing every senior’s hardships and the path that they’ve taken is just amazing.

“It brings everyone closer than you thought possible. It helps everyone bond. That’s what culture is, really. We get to hear everyone’s story and it’s just incredible how unified everyone is after — it becomes our team’s spirit. It’s everything for us. That’s what we play off of. That’s where the energy comes from on the field.

“Doing what we’re doing by giving senior talks and passing it down to the younger guys at the back of the room, when they come to the front of the room, hopefully they can tell their own story and keep it all going. The senior speeches are one of the most productive things we do as a team. That’s how we keep the culture going.”

The five-paragraph quote from a guy who just said he didn’t like public speaking left all dozen or so reporters a little stunned.

John Walters, the voice of the Cyclones, told Uwazurike afterward, “You’re a hell of a lot better public speaker than I was at your age. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re great.”

The football team will know Uwazurike’s story well because Uwazurike, even though he’s not comfortable, is a great public speaker.

The public might not ever learn his full story, but what the public should know is that his story turned him into a four-year starter, two-time All-Big 12 player, a college graduate and one of the most thoughtful people on Iowa State’s team.

And maybe that’s all we need to know for now.

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