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What Pain? Rams' Young just plays
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Published: October 29, 2009
Stephen Young only smiles when asked how tough he really is.
"I guess it's from when I was in middle school, and I got picked on a lot," said Young, a sophomore defensive tackle at Winston-Salem State. "And then my freshman year of high school, I filled out a little and I got tougher."
At this point of the season, football players all over the country are playing hurt -- Young included. He can barely lift his right arm because of a torn shoulder muscle, an injury sustained Oct. 3 against Howard, but he will wait until after the season to have surgery.
"I wanted to keep playing," he said. "I really had no notion whatsoever to shut it down."
It would have been easy for Young, a two-sport star at Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge, Va., to have ended his season. But he said that a wrestler's mentality -- he was all-state in high school -- is about playing through pain.
"To me it doesn't hurt enough for me not to play," he said.
Young helped the defense in a late goal-line stand that preserved a 16-10 win over Bethune-Cookman last weekend and finished with six tackles. He missed the previous game at California Davis and practiced just once before the game at B-C.
"In the last game, I had two weeks to rehab it, but it felt pretty good," said Young, who led the Rams in sacks last season but has just one this season. "I know it's not as strong as it could be, but really the pain goes away once the game starts. Adrenaline is a funny thing."
Defensive coordinator Mike Ketchum said he wasn't surprised that Young decided to keep playing.
"We're in a special situation, going back to Division II," Ketchum said. "A lot of kids could have packed it in just because of that. You have that to deal with, and now here was Stephen who was hurt, and if he wanted out, he had an easy out, but he wanted to play."
Young, who is 6-3 and 280 pounds, can recall his freshman year in high school and how his life took a turn.
"I was a soft, chubby kid at about 293 pounds as a freshman in high school," he said. "And then wrestling just gave me a mindset to fight pain and always try to win, and that carried over to football."
The Rams won their first game last weekend, and Young says that the mood of the team is much better.
"I think everybody is just trying to stop the bleeding, that's what we've been about this season," Young said. "We all just want to play and win as many games as we can."
jdell@wsjournal.com.
727-4081
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