Making an Impression
May 26, 2004 12:00 PM | General
May 26, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There comes a point in every successful player’s career when he realizes he has made his mark in the eyes of his peers. For one-time West Virginia University walk-on linebacker Scott Gyorko, that moment came following an afternoon practice his freshman year in 2001.
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| Linebacker Scott Gyorko went from walk-on in 2001 to starting linebacker last season. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
“Coach (Rich Rodriguez) came in from practice one day and this was before the season started and he was like, ‘If everybody is working as hard as Gyroko is on the scout-team defense then we’re going to be pretty good.’ I was like, 'Well, at least someone is noticing me out there.’”
Unlike most of the players in the room that day, Gyorko’s moments to shine were few and far between. Being a walk-on, there are only so many opportunities to catch a coach's attention. Gyorko, already having a chip on his shoulder because he wasn’t recruited by a single Division I school, knew he had to do something to set himself apart from the rest of the players.
“I was like, ‘I know I’m good enough to play here,’” he said. “I came in with that kind of attitude and I made up my mind that I was going to play here. After I got in there a few times everything just kind of fell into place.”
It wasn’t that Gyorko was a bad high school football player at University High School located almost within the shadows Milan Puskar Stadium. He earned all-state honors for the Hawks and was invited to play in the state’s North-South All-Star Game. It was just that he was a linebacker who stood a shade under 6-feet tall and weighed less than 200 pounds. Those measurements don’t pass the eyeball test as far as college recruiters go.
If it wasn’t WVU, then Gyroko probably would have wound up in the West Virginia Conference someplace close to Morgantown so his family could see him play.
“I don’t even know where I would have gone,” he said. “It was pretty much here or bust for me.”
In reality, Scott Gyorko couldn’t have picked a better place to walk on. In 2001 new Mountaineer coach Rich Rodriguez was looking for fresh bodies to help replenish a program he inherited from long-time Coach Don Nehlen.
Rodriguez was a former walk-on player for Nehlen in the early 1980s that, through hard work, managed to earn a scholarship. Rodriguez has always taken a special liking to those hard-nosed players with a knack for overcoming great odds.
“For him to do it and realize how hard it was for him to do it ...,” mentioned Gyorko, shaking his head.
And while Rodriguez has a special place in his heart for the Rudys of the world, he isn’t getting paid to develop charity cases. Rodriguez only presents walk-ons with an opportunity: it’s up to them to produce.
Gyorko made the most of his opportunity. He was one of just a handful of true freshmen to earn a letter in 2001 playing on special teams, showing a kamikaze-like abandon flying downfield on the kickoff and punt teams. At first Gyorko says his only goal was to run as fast as he could and try to blow someone up.
“It didn’t matter what happened ... I was going down there to hit somebody,” he said. “I was aiming for the whole back wall and trying to take them all out.”
Rodriguez, also known as a hitter who never backed down from a scrum during his playing days at WVU, loved Gyorko’s aggressiveness. Even though he was small by Division I standards, Gyroko was exactly the type of player Rodriguez was looking for: Someone smart who also wasn’t afraid to run into someone. Plus, he could run a little bit, too.
In 2002, Gyorko got his weight up to 200 pounds and became Grant Wiley’s backup at weak outside linebacker. He produced a total of 32 tackles and won the “Hammer Award” twice for big hits against Syracuse and Miami.
Scott parlayed that success into a starting job as a junior in 2003. He finished the season third on the team in tackles with 119 and his ability to be in the right place at the right time against Boston College helped West Virginia to an important 35-28 road victory. In addition to his team-high 16 tackles, Gyorko swatted away a BC pass attempt in the end zone that would have tied the score on the final play of the game.
Gyorko says he covered a lot of ground from his very first college start in the 2003 opener against Wisconsin to his outstanding BC performance nearly two months later.
“At the beginning of the year I wasn’t too self-confident,” Gyorko admitted. “I was just kind of in there trying to do what I needed to do to stay alive. As the season progressed I felt my confidence growing. It really helped my level of play because my mind got better.”
Gyorko laughs when recalling his first play as a starter against the Badgers, “I said to myself, ‘I’m hitting the guard and taking care of my gap. I can’t go wrong if I take care of my gap.’ So I just flew down in there. Afterward I said, ‘Man, it was good to get that one out of the way.’”
During his most tense moments on the field Scott usually reverts back to what seems to be his lifelong football motto of if in doubt, blow someone up.
When pressed, Gyorko says he sometimes gets that Bobby Boucher glossed-over look in his eyes when he’s mad, particularly when the offense has had an easy time marching down the field (Bobby Boucher being Adam Sandler’s Waterboy character who transforms from a mild-mannered pushover into a football assassin). Gyorko also admits that when he gets the Bobby Boucher look it usually means trouble.
“I just don’t think out there when that happens,” he says. “You’re always thinking out there and when you’re not that’s when they’re going to catch you.”
For the most part the mechanical engineering major has been able to keep his emotions in check, but having that little unbalanced side makes opposing teams a little more uncomfortable playing against him. You’re just never quite sure what he’s going to do. And Gyroko says West Virginia has more than one Bobby Boucher playing on defense this year.
“Just like Mike Tyson says, ‘everyone has a game plan until you get hit in the mouth once or twice,’” he laughed. “Hopefully teams will start thinking like that. It will be a lot easier on us if they are.
“That’s basically what Coach Rod has told us, ‘If you don’t have a hard-edge you’re not going to be playing.’ We’re going to come out there and hit you every time. If you win this one we’re coming back and we’re going to win the next one,” he added.
In all honesty, Scott Gyorko had no realistic chance in the world of playing Division I college football without his hard-edge. Now, through the tender loving care of Mike Barwis and his group of masochists masquerading as strength coaches, Gyorko has transformed himself from a 195-pound football wannabe into a sculpted, 220-pound wrecking ball.
“I’m getting up there,” he says proudly. “We’re in the best shape we’ve ever been in.”
Asked to describe what he believes the defense’s best attribute will be this year he simply says, “Everyone wants to win. It doesn’t matter how we win: we just want to win.
“If you have a bad game and we end up winning then everyone is going to pick you up because you know you’re going to do well next time. It’s kind of like that. If you fall down we’re going to help you up and we’re going to get through it,” he said.
After Monday’s surprising announcement by Athlon Sports predicting West Virginia to finish fifth in 2004, times may have just gotten a little tougher on the Mountaineers. Now everyone on West Virginia’s schedule is going to be gunning for them.
Asked for his appraisal of the situation Gyorko shrugs and simply likens it to hunting in the woods, “It’s just like paintball: everybody’s coming after you but when you’re in the woods you can always fire back.”
Season tickets for the 2004 Mountaineer football campaign are now on sale. They can be ordered by calling toll-free 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com
