Josey Jewell the Nordic Fest dancer

LOS ANGELES — Before Josey Jewell was a budding star middle linebacker for Iowa, he was a Nordic Fest dancer.

Jewell is from Decorah and the region is heavily Norwegian. The town's Nordic Fest started in 1967. The Nordic Fest dancers are selected from third-grade classes at Decorah's elementary school every four years. Jewell's 2012 class was on that schedule and he made the group after an audition.

Of course, the group learns traditional Nordic dances like the schottische and the halling, which is kind of a mating ritual dance sort of thing where the male dancer leaps in the air and knocks a hat off a broom stick held by his fair maiden, who's standing on a chair while holding the broom stick out aways.

The male dancer stands a few steps back, spins and takes a high kind of Karate kick at the hat. When it was Jewell's turn to do this as a senior at Decorah High School, he did a back-flip and knocked the hat to the floor.

'You saw that and, yeah, maybe you think something is there,' said Joel Rollinger, who coached Jewell in football and track at Decorah.

The Decorah community always knew something was there with Jewell, who led the No. 5 Hawkeyes (12-1) in tackles during their Rose Bowl renaissance season. Jewell was the youngest of Paula and Bobby Jewell. His brother, Robby, was a terrific football player at Luther. Sisters Samantha and Jess also were star athletes at Luther. Samantha scored her 1,000th point in basketball in 2011. Jess set the school shot put record in 2008.

And, yes, they hammered on their little brother when it came to sports on the Jewell family farm.

'They used to kick the crap out of him,' Decorah basketball coach Jon Carlson said. 'I think that's where he gets a lot of his piss and vinegar.'

Something was there in Josey Jewell. Something raw, physical.

Believe it or not, Jewell played basketball. Yes, everything says wrestler, right? He grew up on a farm. He played linebacker and running back for Decorah. He grew a little at Iowa and is now 6-2, 230 pounds, but everything about Jewell coming up screamed wrestling.

Especially the way he played basketball.

'One of the coaches in our conference called him the dirtiest basketball player he had ever seen,' Carlson said. 'It was never like that. He was just a bull in a china shop. He might've made a better wrestler, actually, but he was good for a couple of form tackles in games.'

Carlson estimated that Jewell has grown 1 1/2 to 2 inches since the redshirt sophomore arrived at Iowa in 2013. This growth spurt came a little too late to help Jewell blend in the shot put and discuss rings when he threw for Decorah High School. He was all-Northeast Iowa Conference in discus as a sophomore and junior and finished 18th in the state as a junior.

'He had great natural strength and was extremely quick across the ring,' Rollinger said. 'No, he wasn't a huge guy. He looked like a troll out there compared to some of the huge guys, but he had explosion.'

Jewell also ran the shuttle hurdle relay and the 4 x 100 relay. He kept bugging Rollinger to throw him into an open 100 meters. He eventually relented. And, no, Jewell didn't win.

'He was one of the last three, I think,' Rollinger said. 'He wasn't 100 meters fast, but his first 30 meters was great. He also had great rhythm in the hurdles and really attacked them.'

Talk to enough people about Jewell, the topic usually tracks back to one statement 'Hates to lose.' That winds back to the Jewell Farm, where they raise turkeys, beef and corn along the Upper Iowa River.

Pure and simple, it was hard work. Decorah athletics director Adam Riley said Jewell took on a lot of similar traits to his grandfather, Robert Jewell, Sr. There was a stubbornness that would not be beaten down. Riley said Josey earned the nickname 'Stonehead.'

This Stonehead didn't help him on the farm, especially when it was time to take turkeys to the butcher.

'You had to throw them into individual crates and they would flap and hit you in the face,' Jewell said. 'That would get you irritated throughout the night and throughout the day.'

The corn and alfalfa field were pretty easy to deal with. The cattle, the Jewells have 200 or so heads, that also was a bit of a chore.

'You've got to throw them in the back of the pickup or the gator to tag them or give them shots,' Jewell said. 'It was pretty hard some times with their mother around chasing you. It created a little bit of hostility with the animal.'

The farm routine, you've seen countless farm kids come through and excel in the Iowa football program. It's not a coincidence.

'It's a huge part of who I am,' said Jewell, who had a pin placed in one broken hand as a kid to fix a break and who now has a plate in the other after he broke his hand going into last season. 'It's a huge part of me growing up, me understanding what needed to be done and just kind of getting a routine in my life.

'During the summer, we had to have certain things done. First, we went to breakfast at my grandma's and then we did chores, the kind of handy man work, where you just went and fixed some fences. You can't really get off it. You have to do the chores or the animals are going to die or the plants won't grow right. It's a routine you needed to get in and I think that definitely applied to here, college and football.

'You have to manage your time with school and football. That was a huge thing on the farm. You can't spend too much time on one thing and let the other stuff fail.'

And, who knows what you'll find on the farm from one day to the next?

When Josey was 5 or 6 years old, they had a mean runt of a dog on the farm that the family wanted to keep away from Josey, him being the youngest. One day, the family lost track of Josey. Bobby Jewell saw the runt dog and saw Josey around the corner of the barn.

The dog growled. Josey growled back.

'He's on his hands and knees looking at this dog who's growling at him, they're face to face almost,' Riley said. 'And he says, 'Bite me, [bleep].''

Iowa assistant coach Reese Morgan didn't see that particular moment. Or maybe he did see it in everything else Jewell did in sports, which also included baseball (by the way, most scholarshipped college football freshmen run off to school and skip their senior seasons of baseball, but Jewell didn't in that summer of 2013, instead sticking with the Vikings and playing third base and pitching — 'That meant the most to me at the time,' Jewell said).

Jewell's Rivals.com profile shows offers from Iowa and Northern Iowa and that's it. The offer from UNI was money to pay for his books, which was nice but not what Jewell was looking for.

'I was most likely headed to Luther, with it being so close to home,' Jewell said.

When Morgan makes a pitch for a recruit, it comes with passion and a sincere belief that the prospect can not only help the program, but help the program beat Nebraska and Wisconsin and the rest. Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz didn't know if Jewell was fast enough.

Ferentz listened to Morgan and the scholarship offer was made somewhere near the 2013 Super Bowl, the one when the lights went out and the Ravens beat the 49ers.

'The guy is a heckuva football player,' Ferentz said. 'He's got a real presence about him that, to me, is kind of special. He's a magnetic guy, not a rah-rah guy, but guys rally to him. A big part of that is the way he plays the game. He's totally committed.

'. . . Instinct is an overused word. I think, a lot of times, it's just because guys prepare and are really serious about what they're doing. In Josey's case, he's almost ahead of his time that way, the way he plays, some of the things he does out there.'

Former Iowa middle linebacker and wearer of the No. 43 Pat Angerer has seen enough, tweeting his thoughts during the Big Ten title game.

Best 43 in Iowa history December 6, 2015

Best 43 in Iowa history #TheOutlaw

— Pat Angerer (@PAngererUSA)

(Yes, Jewell is named after the 1976 Clint Eastwood movie, 'The Outlaw Josey Wales,' a named his didn't particularly like when he was teased as a kid, but one that he thinks is pretty cool now.)

No. 6 Stanford (11-2) knows all about Jewell. He's a couple of chapters in the scouting breakdown.

'Just sideline to sideline, making play after play, chasing things down,' Stanford offensive coordinator Mike Bloomgren said. 'For a guy that reminds you a little bit of Blake [Martinez], one of our linebackers that can really run sideline to sideline. Just really impressed with how he never gives up on a play and how many plays he's able to make from whatever position he starts.'

And they haven't even seen Jewell's schottische or halling yet.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com