Bucknell University Athletics
Change Works Out for Best for Bison and QB Daris Wilson
9/21/2004 8:00:00 AM | General
Sept. 21, 2004
Daris Wilson was ready for his big day.
Many high school ballplayers bound for the Division I ranks are honored with a press conference at which they announce their college intentions and sign on the dotted line. It's more than just a photo op, however. The ceremonies represent a public acknowledgment of four years of hard work. In 2000 at Archbishop Rummel High School in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, the baby-faced Wilson, alongside a teammate headed for Kansas State, was just a few days away from announcing to the world his intentions to head northeast to a fine academic institution in the Patriot League.
Only now that he is firmly entrenched as the star quarterback at Bucknell will he admit, with a sheepish smile, that he was just days away from signing with Holy Cross.
Even though Wilson was the school record-holder with over 4,500 total yards and the district most valuable player as a quarterback, the major-conference Division I-A programs labeled him undersized and begged off. But in truth, the very first piece of recruiting mail to land on his front porch came from Bucknell.
"To be honest I had never even heard of Bucknell, knew nothing about it," recalls Wilson, who will lead the Bison into their home opener tonight against Cornell. "But they really stuck with me. Once that dream of playing big I-A football went away, my focus shifted to academics." Holy Cross and local favorite Nicholls State entered the fray, and despite Bucknell's persistence, in the hours leading up to the media event Wilson had his mind set on the Crusaders. But in a stroke of luck for fans of the Bison, Rummel coach Jay Roth, simply trying to get Wilson to assure himself of perhaps the weightiest decision of his life, asked the prep star to go through the entire decision process one more time just to be sure.
"[Roth] reminded me that sometimes your first instinct is best," Wilson remembers, "and that because I had visited Holy Cross more recently maybe they were just freshest in my mind. I really thought it out and when it came down to it I went with Bucknell, and I'm glad I did."
Raised along with his single mother in his grandparents home, Wilson's next challenge began in the summer of 2001 in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, some 1,200 miles away on the map but a universe away in terms of the culture and customs.
"It was definitely different," says Wilson, understating the juxtaposition of New Orleans and the Central Susquehanna Valley. "But I'm usually able to adapt to any environment so really it wasn't a big deal. It was a change coming from a big city to a more rural area, but I knew what I was coming into."
Easing the transition was a network of older players and classmates who, according to Wilson, quickly crystallized into a family.
"I became really close with Anthony Lewis," offers Wilson, "and guys like Jerome Acy, Tim [Johnson], Will [Smith], Jabu [Powell] and Adam Minggia. The camaraderie of the team is what really swayed my choice. When I came here on a visit with my grandfather, we saw a team that resembled a family. I really liked that, because that's how it was at my high school."
Along with the move away from home and the transition to college coursework - a challenge for any student, athlete or not - came another significant shift on the gridiron, as Wilson and late head coach Tom Gadd were in agreement on a position change from quarterback to wide receiver.
"When Coach Gadd asked me what I wanted to do I told him that I wanted to play a position that would give me a chance to get on the field," Wilson explains. "In most cases only one quarterback gets the opportunity to play, but teams sometimes use a rotation of three or four receivers. I just wanted to play."
Wilson eased into his first taste of college football, appearing in eight contests and catching seven passes as a freshman. He doubled that number in 2002 as a sophomore, but that was the year that everyone at Bucknell would like to forget.
Bed-ridden by the cancer that would soon take his life, Gadd was unable to coach that season, and a rash of early-season, gut-wrenching losses would snowball into a 2-9 season. One thing that became apparent as that campaign agonizingly progressed, though, was that Wilson had become a struggling offense's most athletic weapon, and the ball needed to be in his hands.
Earlier that spring, then offensive coordinator Kurt Beathard had actually installed a package of plays featuring Wilson at quarterback, but the Bison did not utilize the change-up look until week nine against Lafayette. By then the season was in tatters, and Bucknell managed only 10 points in the final three games of the year, but little did anyone know that the foundation for the future had already been poured.
When Tim Landis and his vaunted spread option attack was summoned from St. Mary's College that December, he already knew who his starting quarterback would be thanks to Wilson's three-week trial under center.
"Whoever decided to bring Coach Landis here, I hope they know that I really appreciate it," beams Wilson. "I'm not your prototypical quarterback in size, so the triple option is to my advantage."
It is a common misconception that Wilson was bred in a wishbone offense in high school, particularly considering he racked up 2,325 yards and 26 touchdowns on the ground. Rummel was a tailback oriented offense that did run some lead option, but Wilson was never asked to make the split-second reads required of a true option signal caller.
"[Landis' offense] was definitely different for me," says Wilson, "but I felt like the entire offense made a lot of improvement from the beginning of that spring to the end."
For Wilson, who started his very first high school game as a freshman and led his team to a 7-7 tie against nationally ranked John Curtis Christian, the 2003 campaign was a success, despite an ankle injury that cost him all or part of four games and left him thirsting for more.
"This team's attitude and chemistry is a lot better," notes Wilson, who rushed for 720 yards and passed for 848 in Bucknell's 6-6 season. "Coach Landis and his staff did a great job coming in here and changing the attitude. Just having the same coaches is big. This is my first time running the same offense in consecutive years, so we finally have a chance to just get better at what we were doing the previous year."
Named co-captain along with senior linebacker Kevin Ransome prior to the season-opener at Villanova, Wilson's take-charge attitude on the field belies is quiet, reserved demeanor away from football.
"Playing football is my element," says Wilson, who broke the Patriot League record for rushing yards by a quarterback a year ago. "I am a lot more comfortable playing football than talking in front of people and being the center of attention. I know people will say that you are the quarterback so you have to be the center of attention, but there are also 21 other players out there on the field."
While the varsity was idle last weekend, Wilson did have a chance to watch one of his protégés scorch the Christy Mathewson FieldTurf in the junior varsity game. Terrance Wilson (no relation), a gangly freshman from Trenton, N.J., racked up 155 rushing yards, highlighted by touchdown runs of 27 and 60 yards, in a 21-17 victory over Lackawanna. Daris Wilson sees a lot of himself in Terrance, who shared time with another rookie in Ryan Ahern, and feels responsible for the young player's development in much the same way that Powell, Minggia and Lewis treated him.
"He's going to be a good one," lauds Daris, who idolized Florida State's Charlie Ward and Nebraska's Tommie Frazier as a youngster. "We all know what he can do on the field, but he is also very coachable and he works hard. We talk a lot. He was my roommate in preseason camp, and we talked a lot during his recruiting process. I try to tell him everything that I learned, because I feel like some of it I learned a couple of years too late.
"I do feel a sense of responsibility, because once I leave here this is always going to be my alma mater, and I am always going to be a Bison." For all that has changed in Daris Wilson's life in the last four years, at least one thing will remain the same.
