OSUSTORM
10-31-2008, 07:56 PM
BY JUSTIN HITE click here (http://www.stillwater-newspress.com/osusports/local_story_305182155.html)
One lasting memory for Bryant Ward from his first season as a walk-on at Oklahoma State was being completely dominated by Brandon Pettigrew.
While playing on the scout-team kickoff coverage unit, Ward lined up across from the All-Big 12 tight end. When the two finally collided a few moments later, the seconds following more closely resembled an older brother subduing his younger sibling than two competing college football players.
“He threw me on the ground and I was trying to get away and he was holding me on the ground,” Ward said. “I was trying to get up but I just started laughing because I couldn’t do anything.”
Whether it was the laughs the two shared or the determination of the young freshman, the memory has been engrained in Pettigrew’s mind as well.
But it is just a distant memory as Ward, a former walk-on who is now the Cowboys’ fullback, has developed into another one of those key, yet nameless, contributors for an Oklahoma State team that he had grown up watching.
The Ward family moved to Stillwater when Bryant was in the second grade. His dad tried to walk-on to the Cowboys, and from then on, Ward became very familiar with the program and with some of the players he had watched on television in high school and competes again.
“I don’t really idolize people, but it was pretty cool (playing them for the first time),” Ward said. “They are just normal guys like me, so I had to get over it ... at first I was a little (star-struck), but after you are here for a little while, you realize they are just normal people.”
Only two years removed from his graduation from Stillwater High and roughly a dozen years removed from watching his father try and play in the same lineup, Ward has taken a role that he didn’t think he would have.
“I knew I was going to get recruited,” Ward said. “I didn’t know (I was going to be) here.”
But he was never highly recruited out of SHS, mainly because of an injury during his junior year — the year most college coaches observe rising talent. He spent his senior year working his way back and after no schools offered him a scholarship, he decided to come to OSU and walk on to the football team.
“I didn’t really get picked up by anybody,” Ward said. “I knew that I could always walk-on here.”
The preferred walk-on as a freshman realized, when he first put on a Cowboys’ uniform, that he could compete with nationally recruited talent.
“By the second year, if I didn’t start I was going to be mad at myself,” Ward said. “It was something that I wanted to do and one of the goals I set.”
He has achieved his goal and as the team’s fullback is among those unheralded in the improvement of Oklahoma State’s rushing attack.
“The Cowboys were on the rise and I was seeing it too,” Ward said. “I just felt like this would be a good place to go.”
Ward’s goal of starting at a Division I-A program is complete, but he still has one more to go.
“Everyone dreams of the NFL and if I wanted to try to do that, this would be one of the better places to go and get the experience for it,” he said.
One lasting memory for Bryant Ward from his first season as a walk-on at Oklahoma State was being completely dominated by Brandon Pettigrew.
While playing on the scout-team kickoff coverage unit, Ward lined up across from the All-Big 12 tight end. When the two finally collided a few moments later, the seconds following more closely resembled an older brother subduing his younger sibling than two competing college football players.
“He threw me on the ground and I was trying to get away and he was holding me on the ground,” Ward said. “I was trying to get up but I just started laughing because I couldn’t do anything.”
Whether it was the laughs the two shared or the determination of the young freshman, the memory has been engrained in Pettigrew’s mind as well.
But it is just a distant memory as Ward, a former walk-on who is now the Cowboys’ fullback, has developed into another one of those key, yet nameless, contributors for an Oklahoma State team that he had grown up watching.
The Ward family moved to Stillwater when Bryant was in the second grade. His dad tried to walk-on to the Cowboys, and from then on, Ward became very familiar with the program and with some of the players he had watched on television in high school and competes again.
“I don’t really idolize people, but it was pretty cool (playing them for the first time),” Ward said. “They are just normal guys like me, so I had to get over it ... at first I was a little (star-struck), but after you are here for a little while, you realize they are just normal people.”
Only two years removed from his graduation from Stillwater High and roughly a dozen years removed from watching his father try and play in the same lineup, Ward has taken a role that he didn’t think he would have.
“I knew I was going to get recruited,” Ward said. “I didn’t know (I was going to be) here.”
But he was never highly recruited out of SHS, mainly because of an injury during his junior year — the year most college coaches observe rising talent. He spent his senior year working his way back and after no schools offered him a scholarship, he decided to come to OSU and walk on to the football team.
“I didn’t really get picked up by anybody,” Ward said. “I knew that I could always walk-on here.”
The preferred walk-on as a freshman realized, when he first put on a Cowboys’ uniform, that he could compete with nationally recruited talent.
“By the second year, if I didn’t start I was going to be mad at myself,” Ward said. “It was something that I wanted to do and one of the goals I set.”
He has achieved his goal and as the team’s fullback is among those unheralded in the improvement of Oklahoma State’s rushing attack.
“The Cowboys were on the rise and I was seeing it too,” Ward said. “I just felt like this would be a good place to go.”
Ward’s goal of starting at a Division I-A program is complete, but he still has one more to go.
“Everyone dreams of the NFL and if I wanted to try to do that, this would be one of the better places to go and get the experience for it,” he said.