‘Football will take you crazy places’

PINE RIDGE— Most high school football players are not going to get big college scholarship offers, and they are not going to graduate summa cum laude. But these players do not lack heart, grit, or as the cowboys say, try. Journalists don’t write about them because they believe there isn’t much there to write about, but when it comes to kids like Pine Ridge’s Sam O’Rourke, they would be very much mistaken.

When Sam O’Rourke realized he would not be a star basketball player like his brother Kobey, he turned to football. Most reservation teams are rife with bungled plays and poor discipline, but Sam was a solid presence. He didn’t have to be the fastest or strongest. He had his head in the game, and a coach could count on him to do his job.

“Football was always something I drew interest in on my own,” Sam told NSNT. “I’d play with my friends outside of school. It was the only sport my parents didn’t force me to play, and it’s kinda funny, because it’s the one I am playing in college.”

Like most Pine Ridge kids, basketball was the sport he thought he would play. But basketball “never worked out.”

When they were in the SDHSAA, Mahpiya Luta played 11-man, and they made some noise in the playoffs. But because Native schools were getting routinely mercy ruled, it was hard to get kids interested in playing. Hence, the All-Nations Conference was formed. All teams in the conference play 9-man, and only against Native teams in the conference. Sam wanted to play 11-man, and he wanted to play against the best schools.

“After my sophomore year, I transferred to Pine Ridge,” Sam said. “And I was going to play there, but the pandemic hit, and that got put on hold. I ended up playing for Red Cloud again. I went through the hardship process with the state to get a fifth year on hardship. I transferred to Lakota Tech.”

Sam had spent one year at Mahpiya Luta under Coach Art Vitalis, playing 9-man, but at Lakota Tech he played for a fledgling 11-man program at a brand new Covid hampered school, Whatever the prospects for the team, the opportunity to face and overcome a challenge remained the same

“The score never mattered to me much,” Sam said. “I just wanted to go out and compete with the rest of the state. My whole high school career playing at Lakota Tech, the memories, the experience, just the whole year, I wouldn’t trade that for nothin’. We didn’t win a game, but we came close. We lost to Chamberlain by one point on Homecoming.”

When that final football season ended, Sam still wanted to keep playing in college, and as the school year wore on, the prospect did not look good.

“It was a long recruiting process,” he said. “My senior year ended, no interest, no offers. October, November came, still nothin’, December, nothin’. I ended up playing at the Indigenous Bowl at the Vikings stadium in Minneapolis. It was a great experience. Minnesota Morris Head Coach Marty Hoffmann was watching the game, and emailed me after the game and that was the first college interest I got.”

Morris is about an hour east of the South Dakota border, and Sam toured the campus and Hoffman made him an offer. It was an eight-hour drive back home, he was in a strange setting, in a different culture, most guys would have left after the first semester.

“I had to learn a lot of stuff I was never taught in high school,” Sam said. “That was see-ball-get-ball, but here I have gap assignments I have pass coverage stuff I gotta know, all these blitzes. I felt like a chicken with his head cut off at first, but I love football, I love to learn, I just love to compete. I’ve seen special teams time, and I’m still yet to see major impact on the field as a linebacker, but I came this far, why give up now?”

Sam is majoring in Psychology: “I had a couple of teammates who majored in it, older upper classmen, and we would have conversations about it. It’s such a broad field, there are so many things I could do, I can use it to do social work, I could work in a school setting. I have to go get my master’s degree, psychology major is good, but you kind of have to have that master’s to back you up, to get a good paying job.”

It doesn’t take much to please Sam. He sees every glass as half full, not half empty: “Coming here, I have a place to stay, I have a gym that’s open all the time, and there’s not much more I can ask for than that. It’s a good place to stay grounded. It’s a good place to get ‘locked in;’ as the kids say these days. It’s a blessing in disguise, to get a cheap education from a good university, and as expensive as college education can get, I can’t take that for granted.”

At 6-0, 210, Sam has added 15 lbs of muscle since high school, and no matter how his senior year at Minnesota Morris plays out, Sam is wired in such a way it will be a positive experience: “Football will take you crazy places, create bonds, brotherhood that lasts forever.”

“I did want to send a special shout out to my mom, Kelli, and my gramma, Cora,” Sam said. “They always made it happen for me. Their support has always been endless, and I would not be in the position I am without those two ladies today. I’m blessed to have such a supportive gramma and mother, and I love them, that’s my shout out right there.”

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)

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