Nobody on the Wake Forest football team has a bigger, sunnier smile than sophomore Gelo Orange.
Keith Henry is hoping that Orange will have plenty of reasons to flash that smile this Saturday.
Henry is the assistant coach in charge of defensive ends, a job that got a bit more challenging last Saturday when Kyle Wilber broke his leg and was lost for around six weeks. Wilber, a sophomore who had four sacks in his first eight college starts, was easily the most experienced and dynamic defensive end on the team.
"That was a big blow to the defense," Henry said. "He was a key, and looking to have a great year."
Henry said that either Orange or Will Wright, another sophomore with scant experience, will start Saturday against Elon, but, regardless, both are expected to play prominent roles. Coach Jim Grobe was asked this week if Orange, a native-born Haitian who didn't move to the United States until 2004 and didn't begin playing football until 2006, is ready to make his mark in college.
"I think he's got to be," Grobe said. "He plays with a lot of energy and he really is a pretty strong guy. He's got good explosiveness.
"The biggest problem with Gelo is that he played linebacker all last year. You talk about inexperience, and he's young. So being a young guy who goes from linebacker to defensive end, not only are you still a pretty young guy as far as maturity, and now you're playing a brand-new position.
"We need him to play better quick."
Orange said he would prefer to still be playing linebacker. He was moved to defensive end two days before August practices began.
"Yeah I was kind of mad," Orange said. "But I said, ‘If I'm going to get on the field faster I have nothing to worry about.' So I didn't have to worry about it."
At 6-1, 225-pounds, Orange is small to be playing on the defensive line. Wilber is 6-5, 230-pounds, Tristan Dorty, a sophomore starting at the other end, is 6-2, 250-pounds and Wright is 6-4, 230-pounds.
"It's not a big deal because I'm not that small," Orange said. "The guys I go against, they're kind of bigger than me. They're big guys.
"So I've got to use my quickness and my speed to get around them."
Henry said that he'll probably decide on a starter after today's practice. He said he'll also be looking hard to see how much help he might expect from Kevin Smith and Derricus Ellis, two redshirt freshmen who have yet to crack the substitution rotation.
Smith, who is from Plano, Tex., is 6-4, 230-pounds. Ellis, the brother of Chantz McClinic, a former linebacker at Wake Forest, is 6-2, 235-pounds.
"You've got Derricus and Kevin in the mix," Henry said. "Obviously Will and Gelo are probably ahead of the other two guys.
"But we'll see as we go along as we get to Thursday."
Both Grobe and Henry said that if a first-year freshman is pressed into action, it will probably be Zach Thompson, who is 6-5 and weighs 250 pounds.
"Zach's probably, of all our young guys, more physical," Grobe said. "He's a bigger guy.
"But once we make that call, my feeling is we've got to find a whole bunch of snaps for him. We hesitate to do that. We don't want to do that."
dcollins@wsjournal.com
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