By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Scooter Berry’s Diary:
Dear Diary:
Today I got my first sack. I also busted my shoulder.
Ouch!
Okay, so that wasn’t quite how that noted diarist Scooter Berry put it for the readers of his diary in The Sporting News this week, but that pretty much sums up the kind of day he had last Saturday.
“It was a bittersweet thing,” he said on Tuesday night, his right arm hanging at his side, getting some time outside the sling that wrapped around his neck. “It was my first sack of the season.”
Berry, of course, is a starting defensive end on the West Virginia University football team, good enough to be second team All-Big East and expected this year to move forward from there. He is a junior and had made enough of a name for himself that a national publication like The Sporting News was eager to use him as one of its collegiate diarists this year.
He was the perfect choice, outgoing, engaging, honest and funny.
“A few weeks ago Mike (Montoro, director of football communications) came to me and asked if I wanted to do the diary,” Berry recalled. ‘I said yeah, that’s definitely something I’ll take advantage of.”
He saw it as a way to let the world know a little bit more about him than just what they see in helmet and shoulder pads with a No. 93 on his back.
“I want people to know me inside and out,” he said. “I want them to know who I am, not just that I’m a football player. I want them to know me personally. I’m a great guy.”
There are some offensive tackles and tight ends who have had to block him that might think otherwise, but among his teammates he is one of the more popular players, a man with a ready smile and a word of encouragement.
Why not? He is a great guy.
But last Saturday, in the second quarter, he went chasing after East Carolina quarterback Patrick Pinkney, got a hold on him and brought him down but landed awkwardly on his shoulder. He knew right away he’d done something, but didn’t know what.
Still didn’t know on Tuesday evening, for that very day he had undergone an MRI to discover if there was any serious damage and it had not yet been read or analyzed.
Taking an MRI, as anyone who has done it, is not a pleasant experience, least of all when you are a muscular 300 pounds.
“I couldn’t fit in the machine,” Berry admitted.
Moved to an open MRI, Berry was put into a contorted position lying on his left side with the good left arm stretched out over his head.
“Forty minutes,” he said.
And then another 40 minutes.
“They had to do it twice because I moved,” he said.
Yes, not only his readers, but his doctors were getting to know him inside and out, too.
It goes without saying that Berry was anxious as he awaited the results. No news isn’t necessarily good news in this case, but Berry seemed confident that the results would not be devastating. He said he had regained some movement since Saturday and had done well in the therapeutic pool.
“I’m like Michael Phelps,” he joked, referring to the Olympic swimming champion.
One thing is certain, he really wants to play against an Auburn team that runs and runs the football, sitting second in the nation in rushing offense and possessing two players averaging more than 100 yards per game after two victories.
“I’ve been licking my chops watching their offense. They do like to run the ball. They have two great running backs,” said Berry, whose reputation is built around his ability to stuff the running game.
Certainly the Mountaineers would like to have answer the bell for this challenge, but Coach Bill Stewart does have some alternatives up his sleeve, maybe even some daring alternatives.
“The mix will be that the veteran guys will go,” Stewart said, referring to nose guard Chris Neild and defensive end Julian Miller, along with Berry’s backups Jorge Wright and Josh Taylor.
But he also was thinking in terms of taking Ovid Goulbourne, who weighs only 226 pounds and is a linebacker, and using him there.
“He comes off the edge and runs about a 4.5 and benches about 425 pounds,” Stewart said. “We have a plan to keep fresh people in. We hope Scooter will play, but I don’t know that he will. We don’t want to get him hurt; this is only Game 3.”
Berry’s season can’t end this early. What would he have to put in his diary?
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
