I’ve been contemplating writing about this chapter of my life for some time, and what’s kept me from doing so for so long is not knowing where to begin. I can’t get into the college chapter without providing some context on how I got there, because the odds were stacked against me from the jump. With great parents, some tough lessons learned, capitalizing on a couple of big opportunities, and a shit ton of work, I became the first kid from my high school to earn a full-ride scholarship to play football in the Big Ten in over twenty years.
Looking at it from the outside in… my experience with college football was not linear, nor triumphant, nor storybook - and yet, I cherish the path that I took, and all of the experiences that I got to have through that period of my life.
If I wrote about this time five years ago, or ten years ago, you would’ve gotten much different opinions and perspectives on it than you’ll get from me now. I guess that’s called… maturing? Who knows - anyways, I don’t have much of a plan or direction for where this entry is going to go, we’re just going to go. Which, ironically, is sort of how my college football experience went.
My Upbringing in Sports
Based on that ^ header, this section alone could be it’s own lengthy blog. In my little hometown of Byron, Illinois, the Sealby name was synonymous with athletics. Both my parents excelled in sports in their younger years and set an example for lifelong fitness in our household. Both my siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, eventually became collegiate athletes (my sister’s athletic ceiling could maybe have been the highest of the three of ours if not for major spine surgery to correct severe scoliosis in 2011).
It’s not hard to gather that we grew up in a pretty competitive environment. Iron sharpens iron, as they say, and that’s what eventually happened to me - and thank God that it did, because until I was in about 8th grade, my body composition was much more like play-doh than iron! I’m not kidding - I was softer than baby shit. Of course I always liked sports, because my friends all played them, but man I was pretty pathetic for many, many years. While my siblings were always generally lean, fit, and picked things up quickly, I was horribly uncoordinated, had rolls upon rolls on my stomach, hated sweating, and loathed anything cardio. To be honest, what I enjoyed most for much of my youth was making myself some pizza rolls and playing Runescape on the computer for hours. Long story short - I was about as far away as one could get from being a natural athlete.
I can point to a couple of different events in my youth that caused a 180 degree shift in my outlook on sports, fitness, and work ethic.
The first was in 8th grade, when after an 8-inch growth spurt, I started hearing whispers like, “maybe that Sealby kid may actually amount to be a decent athlete after all,” and I promptly went out and lost the first two matches of my 8th grade season.
0-2. Even being something like 18 years ago, I remember how embarrassing it was to be the tallest kid in my class with what was starting to shape up to be some kind of muscular, athletic frame, and having a 0 in the win column after the first dual meet.
Something had to change.
My dad had never really forced it on me, but had offered to show me how to lift weights and strength train whenever I wanted to. I took him up on it, and quickly fell in love with this new hobby - as many do when you first start out lifting and see massive jumps in your numbers week to week.
I finished my 8th grade wrestling season 14-2.
Becoming Obsessed
I think most people reading this can relate to that feeling of seeing and experiencing positive results after you’ve worked hard for something… and the addictive nature of that feeling.
I was self-aware enough entering high school to know that:
1) I had the size and frame to be a competitive athlete, and
2) I was going to have to work my ass off, because I was significantly lacking in the talent department. Shit did not come easy for me.
After seeing the fruits of my labor in the basement weight-room my dad built for me play out that 8th grade wrestling season, I doubled down in high school.
The second pivotal shift in my demeanor happened my Sophomore year in High School, after I qualified for the State Wrestling Tournament. I can count the number of sophomore state qualifiers from my high school on one hand, so my confidence was at an all-time high arriving at, “The Show.”
I lost in the first round by a score of I believe 7-6… after finishing the second period up 6-0 (if memory serves me correctly). My season was over. The loss stung, but not for long, because I knew I would have more opportunities with two seasons of high school wrestling still ahead of me. Nonetheless, it served as fuel on an already lit flame. I was getting closer, but I still had so much room for growth.
I picked up my hard hat and lunch pail, and got back to work.
Here’s an excerpt from the speech I wrote for my induction into the Byron High School Athletics Hall of Fame last year.
“Dad hung a pull-up bar outside between two trees. I remember being able to maybe squeak out one pull-up, with a good swing and lots of kipping, in the 8th grade. By the end of my freshman year of high school I could do 14. Once I was proficient with pullups, Dad hung a rope off the same tree, and we switched to rope climbs and kept going.
At one point Dad cut down a giant Oak tree in our yard, and sliced it up into roughly 2’ thick slices. These had to have weighed 200+ pounds. We would roll these up the hill from the creek to our house, then let them roll back down to the bottom - over and over again.
Of course, we inevitably procured a massive tractor tire, and incorporated tire flips into all these crazy, old-school workouts we were doing.
Eventually, word spread, and “Man Camp” was born.”
You get the gist. I was fortunate to discover the correlation between hard work and results, and I capitalized on that discovery all through high school.
When Opportunity Knocks
If you work hard enough and step into the arena often enough, eventually, great opportunities present themselves to you.
The first and perhaps the biggest opportunity of my life (though I didn’t know it at the time), came at the Princeton Invitational Tournament (a.k.a. “The PIT”) at the beginning of my Senior wrestling season.
The PIT had a reputation for being the toughest regular season 1A tournament in the state. Year in and year out, a vast majority of the guys who placed at the PIT ended up standing on the podium as placers at the State Tournament a couple months later.
At the PIT that year, all roads in the heavyweight bracket that I was competing in led to the heavy favorite to win the Heavyweight State Title that year, Mitchell Keppy.
Mitch was already committed to play football at the University of Iowa - I actually think he was the first commit in the class of 2012. Mitch was a true heavyweight - weighing in somewhere around 280lbs., and had the most vicious headlock in the state. Nobody had really stopped it to that point, and Mitch was a pinning machine. Mitch had been the state runner-up at heavyweight in both his sophomore and junior seasons, so he was hungry for his ever-elusive state title, and the favorite to do it. He hadn’t lost to that point in the season, and I think he had pinned everyone he’d wrestled to that point.
The season before, I had placed 4th at the State Tournament at 215lbs. I was becoming formidable, but still very much under the radar, and most certainly not a threat in Mitch’s eyes. But, I was undefeated to that point in the season too, in my first season at heavyweight, despite walking around at only about 230lbs.
I had a tough road to get to Mitch, with a really close win in the semi’s against another relatively unknown kid at the time from Pittsfield, Coltyn Pease (we’ll come back to this), but sure enough, we met in the finals.
In anticipation of this inevitable clash, my dad, my coaches, and I had game-planned for hours on end for how to stop Mitch’s lethal headlock. I can’t tell you how many times these grown men tossed me on my head to prepare me so that it wouldn’t happen with Mitch. After being forged in that fire, I felt confident going into this match that if I could just stop his headlock, I was smaller, quicker, and athletic enough to maybe score a takedown or two and beat this juggernaut.
The match began, and what does this motherfucker do? For maybe the first time in his high school wrestling career, Mitch Keppy takes a shot - something I was completely unprepared for. So unprepared, in fact, that Mitch got in deep on my leg and for a fleeting moment, had an opportunity for a “cow-catcher,” to flip me on to my back and pin me - all within the first few seconds of the match. I think the only one more surprised than me was Mitch, who got a little overzealous and gave me just enough of a window to scramble out of the position and get away with no points scored. After that, Mitch settled back into what he knew best - which was the style I had prepared for - and I ultimately won the match, 3-2.
I was no longer under the radar.
A beautiful symphony of events were put into motion that day, that I was blissfully unaware of until months later.
As the story goes… first, there was a Princeton High School graduate from the year before, home from college at the University of Iowa where she was an athletic training student assistant for the Iowa Football Team, working mat-side at the PIT as an athletic trainer that day.
She of course knew that Mitch was an Iowa Football commit, and was stunned that he was upset by a relatively unknown heavyweight from up north. She told me months later that she texted the Head Athletic Trainer for the Iowa Football Team, Doug West, that day - and told him that Mitch had lost to an uncommitted kid from Byron, Illinois.
Allegedly, from there, a little game of telephone took place inside the Iowa Football building. Doug mentioned Mitch’s shocking defeat to a grad assistant, who mentioned it to a position coach, who mentioned it to a coordinator, and before I knew it - Reese Morgan, the Offensive Line coach at the University of Iowa, was en route to Byron High School to meet with me.
I appreciate you more than you know, Sam.
Why Football?
Wrestling had been my primary focus in high school. When other eventual college football players were going to college camps in the summertime to impress college scouts and gain more exposure, I was just wrestling. When my high school wrestling season ended, I wrestled freestyle and Greco-Roman in the springs and summers. Wrestling was my passion, and all I cared about most of my high school athletic career.
Because of my obsession with wrestling, I was not being highly recruited for football. The teams I played on in high school were never very good, which doesn’t do you any favors with exposure either. I loved football, don’t get me wrong - and as my high school athletics career was winding to a close, I couldn’t decide which sport I wanted to pursue at the next level.
A few factors ultimately played a role in my decision.
First, if I’m being honest, I was getting burnt out in my senior season of wrestling. I had accomplished my goal of winning a state title, but at the cost of pushing myself physically and mentally to my absolute limit.
After losing the only match of my senior season (mindset shift #3), I pushed my work capacity as far as it would go.
Most days, around 5:30am, my dad would wake me up to wrestle for an hour or so before school.
I got selected for a pretty sweet gig as a “fire cadet,” in my senior year of high school, where I’d spend half the school day at the fire station helping out the firefighters, and I’d typically get an hour lift in at the fire station gym before I went back to the high school for lunch and afternoon classes.
During school, I’d eat lunch as quick as I could then get thirty minutes or so of drilling in with my science teacher, a D3 college wrestler at North Central College, before my next class.
After school, I’d have wrestling practice, where most of my live go’s would be with grown men on the coaching staff.
Then, a few nights a week, I’d drive right from high school practice to club wrestling practice where I’d get really competitive practices in with really tough kids from other high schools.
It took all of that - every single lift, practice, and rep, to accomplish my goal. I won my state title on a redline exhausted desperation body-lock throw in overtime to beat Coltyn Pease from Pittsfield (I told you he’d come back up) 5-1, finishing my senior season with a record of 43-1.
I knew that if that was the end of my wrestling career, I could hang my hat on that, satisfied. I couldn’t say the same for football. I had been a standout football player, but our teams only made the playoffs one of the four years I was in high school, losing in the first round.
The United States Air Force Academy
I was so torn still, however, between wrestling and football, that the day before National Signing Day, I was telling all of my friends that I’d be attending the United States Air Force Academy, where they had agreed to let me participate in both sports. I’m not gonna lie - the Air Force Academy has an unbelievable pitch to recruits on their official visits.
First off, they flew me out to Colorado Springs, which is just objectively a beautiful place to consider going to school. Then, they sell you on all of the military perks of their school - “you’re basically guaranteed a job flying fighter jets right out of school!” They walk you around the parking lot and talk about the loan program that these students are eligible for beginning their junior year, that most use to buy beautiful cars and trucks with… they took me to upperclassmen dorm rooms, which were not militaristic whatsoever and decked out with lavish bowl gifts… the whole 9.
To cap the visit off, we had dinner in the press box overlooking the football stadium, then afterwards, walked out onto the field through the opposing teams tunnel where they had sirens going off and warnings meant to intimidate their opponents like: 6,000ft ABOVE SEA LEVEL - MAY BE DIFFICULT TO BREATH.
I thought it was awesome, and I was sold…
Right up until the night before signing day. I’m not exaggerating - the night before I was set to put pen to paper and sign to be an Air Force Falcon, everything changed.
“Who is Kirk Ferentz?”
There I was, after school in wrestling practice. I was drilling casually and everything was right in the world, because I had made up my mind that I was going to Air Force, and that heavy burden of wondering where I’d spend the next four years had been lifted off my shoulders.
Until, in walks my high school math teacher - a big Iowa fan. I see him chatting with my head wrestling coach - an Iowa fan - and they’re both looking over at me.
What’s this all about?
A few weeks prior, Reese Morgan, the Iowa offensive line coach at the time, had paid a visit to my school and really stroked my ego with all the complements he paid me, but disclosed then that the best they could offer me was a preferred walk-on spot in their incoming class of 2012. Coach Morgan had said that they loved me, but since they didn’t start recruiting me until later in the process, their scholarship offers were all already accounted for - but I was “next in line.” I hadn’t taken an official visit to Iowa’s campus so I didn’t know much about it, and with a full-ride to play both the sports I loved at Air Force, I had decided Iowa wasn’t a place that I would seriously consider going to.
Until that night…
The two of them called me over, and showed me some “breaking news,” that would change the course of my life. A 4-star offensive line recruit who had committed to play football at Iowa was flipping his commitment to Auburn - the night before signing day! It was crazy.
They said that if Coach Morgan was being honest about me being “next in line,” for a scholarship, that I should keep my phone by me that night and stay available.
I got home after wrestling practice, and not long after getting out of the shower, my phone started to ring.
I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but it was something like,
KF: “Hey Reid, it’s Coach Ferentz at Iowa. We just had a scholarship become available and we’d like to offer you a full-ride to come be a Hawkeye. How’s that sound?”
Me: “Hey coach, nice to hear from you - I really appreciate the offer, and I’m going to discuss it with my parents and give you a call back.”
Again, I don’t remember exactly, but there was some recruiting rule at the time where I could only call a coach back once, and KF made that clear.
KF: “Okay sounds good Reid, just know that when you call us back, hopefully very soon, we’ll need a decision from you. We have two scholarships left and we need to know tonight.”
I got off the phone, and both my parents were up my ass immediately -
“That was Kirk Ferentz from Iowa? Did he offer you?!”
As a kid who really only grew up with an interest in college wrestling and not college football, I honestly didn’t know who Kirk Ferentz was (which, now today, I recognize is blasphemous). He could’ve been a position coach or a grad assistant - I had no idea. I hadn’t taken a visit there. I didn’t really understand the magnitude of the conversation that I’d just had, nor the urgency - but my dad did.
That phone call threw a massive wrench in my plan for the following day - to sign with the Air Force Academy. Though I didn’t know a lot about Iowa, or the Big Ten (as far as football goes), or Kirk Ferentz, based on my Dad’s reaction, I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and if I waited too long, it might go away.
About sixty seconds after getting off the phone with KF, my dad got a call from our neighbor up the street - Sean Considine.
In the early 2000’s, Sean had walked on and played safety at Iowa for Kirk Ferentz, where he eventually earned a starting role, was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, and played several years in the NFL - culminating in a Super Bowl victory with the Ravens in in 2013.
Sean was insistent - drive Reid up to my house right now, I’ll tell him everything he needs to know about Iowa.
So we did.
five minutes later, I’m standing in Sean’s barn with him, my dad, and another one of my high school coaches, coach Miller - who’s daughter’s had rowed at the University of Iowa.
Their sales pitch was assertive and convincing. I respected the hell out of these three men, and I made up my mind.
Even though I knew next to nothing about this school, this program, or this coach - I was going to go play football for the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Signing Day
Quoted in an article from signing day 2012, I apparently said,
“I don't watch too much college football, but Iowa is my favorite team now,” Sealby said, sparking laughs from the big crowd gathered to watch his signing in the Byron library.
That was the truth! I was naïve, but definitely excited. I didn’t feel a lot of pressure - it was mostly just support, which I’m grateful for. Maybe because I really didn’t know what I was in for once I arrived in Iowa City… ignorance is bliss, I guess?
Hilariously, Iowa had one more scholarship to offer even after me the night before - which they extended the morning of signing day to another awkwardly built, lanky kid from Oklahoma… his name was George Kittle.
Onward
With the college decision behind me, wrestling season finishing at the top of the podium, and no spring sport (I wasn’t going to do Greco or Freestyle since I had college football looming) I finally had a chance to breath, have some fun with my friends, and start thinking about the next chapter of my life.
The day after graduating from high school in June, I was in the car with my parents and all my belongings, driving out to Iowa City, Iowa, to begin summer workouts as an Iowa Hawkeye.
Thanks everyone for taking that trip down memory lane with me - it’s crazy that I had that much to write about, and in this story I haven’t even set foot on Iowa’s campus yet. There’s so much more I could have written, too - if I’m being honest, I was actively trying to keep everything condensed so I didn’t bore you guys with all the details!
This will be a really fun series to continue writing, and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do, looking back on it with some pride, some nostalgia, and a whole lot of other emotions.
Until next time,
Reid
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