by Sean Lowe
So I’ve known God pretty much all my life. Even when some of my friends veered off course during high school, I still believed. It’s interesting that Dad posed the question about switching high schools on a Sunday morning.
Sometimes you forget God is always there, nudging you in certain directions and planning good things for your future.
If I did transfer to Lamar, it would be a big change for my whole family. Lamar had a thousand more students than Irving. We’d have to move into a different school district, which would affect my dad’s commute to work and my sister’s drive to college. But mostly it would affect my mother. An interior designer, my mom had made our house into her little kingdom, and she made sure it was as beautiful and comfortable as possible. Did it make sense to uproot my family because of high school football? I looked at my dad standing in the door, and he seemed serious.
“Really?” I asked.
Dad nodded.
“Sure,” I said before stuffing the cereal into my mouth and taking a gulp of orange juice.
And that was that. Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t question this decision more. People sometimes pray more for parking spaces than I prayed about leaving my school a year and a half before graduation.
My parents put the house on the market. I was excited about the future and eager to get established in Lamar’s football program. Of course, that didn’t stop me from being a little choked up as I stuffed my clothes into a cardboard box and took down my Michael Jordan poster and my mini hoop. We found a new place to live within the school district—a temporary townhouse about fifteen minutes away from Lamar. Mom, I now realize, must’ve hated trading our home for a townhouse, but she never let on that she had been inconvenienced.
I remember walking through the front doors on my first day that spring semester and wondering, How will I ever feel comfortable here? People teemed through the hallways wearing the navy and gold of their Viking mascot, chatting at their lockers, and laughing in the halls. I ducked my head, studied the printout of my new schedule, struggled to find my classes, and couldn’t figure out the lock on my locker. But even worse was the looming noon hour.
Lunch is the worst part of high school. I had to make some immediate decisions: Who am I going to sit with? Where should I sit? I had to think fast on the walk from class to the cafeteria, and even faster once I walked through the double doors and checked out the scene. I needed to have a plan or else I’d end up sitting in the wrong spot and be forever isolated, drinking milk out of a carton by myself all year. Since I’d missed an entire semester, students had already settled in to their groups. Would there be a place for me?
Then I realized something awesome. Lamar students could leave campus for lunch.
“Hey, Mimi,” I said into my cell phone on the way to class. Mimi and Papa, my dad’s parents, live near the school. “Want some company for lunch today?”
She was thrilled that I stopped by, and I—avoiding the lunchroom as much as possible—went there every single day. Eventually, I made friends at school, and Mimi welcomed them all with a smile and big plates of fried chicken and fried okra. She also made sure they never saw the bottom of their glasses of sweet tea. Those were the perfect meals, because I was trying to get bigger. On days Mimi didn’t cook, Papa bought me two foot-long steak subs from Subway and asked me to step on his scale to see how much weight I’d gained. Everyone loved Mimi and Papa, and they loved my group of friends.
One of the advantages of spending more time with my grandparents was that I got to be around a marriage that has lasted more than sixty years. Papa, a World War II veteran, married Mimi when she was only nineteen years old and he was twenty-one. Now Mimi has white hair, and Papa has lost most of his. However, it’s wonderful to see them interact after all these years of matrimony.
“Papa,” I once asked him, “do you believe Mimi is your soul mate?”
He looked at me a little funny. To him, the phrase soul mate was hippie language. “Well, I’ll tell you this. I think men have the ability to be good husbands or not. I don’t think there’s this one magical person out there for you. Proverbs 18:22 tells us, ‘The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the LORD.’ Note that the Word doesn’t say, ‘the man who finds that certain someone.’ It’s less specific than that. You find a wife, you get favor from God. It’s not all that complicated.”
“Well, you found Mimi.”
“There were other women before Mimi.”
At this, I almost laughed. My grandparents had been together so long, it was hard for me to imagine Papa existing before Mimi.
“And I think I could’ve made it work with one of them too,” Papa said. “So, no. I don’t believe in that soul-mate stuff.”
I wasn’t sure about the idea of love anyway. In high school, I had lots of friends, went on plenty of dates, and was the type of guy girls’ parents loved. Of course, my dating in high school consisted of walking together between classes and driving girls to the movies in my first truck, a ’97 Ford F-150. Though I was just getting familiar with the idea of girls and dating, I knew I had excellent role models in my own family for lifelong love.
I fit right in with the new Viking team at Lamar. My coach, Eddy Peach, had been the football coach since the school opened, and so had his offensive coordinator, Coach Jones, and defensive coordinator, Coach Ward. They were the coaching team during the 1970s, when my dad was a player. Lamar had a legendary football program and a playoff streak that had lasted fourteen consecutive years. (Oddly enough, the year I played we missed the playoffs.) The coaches were godly men and were quite a contrast to the screaming, yelling, and cussing coaches I’d left. As the first Texas coach to win three hundred games at the Class 5A level, Coach Peach knew the game. He put me as the school’s starting linebacker, where I thrived for the rest of my high school career.
By the time I graduated, I was ranked fifty-second among inside linebackers across the entire nation by Rivals.com, was a member of the Dallas Morning News All-Area Team, was listed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s top seventy-five prospects, and was Lamar’s most valuable defensive player. In my senior year, I had ninety-six tackles and four sacks. As a “three-star athlete,” several colleges were interested in me, but I narrowed it down to Oklahoma State, University of Arkansas, and Kansas State. In the spring of 2002, I accepted a scholarship to Kansas State.
My family’s decision to transfer me to Lamar was a big risk. I’m glad my parents had the guts to do it. In fact, it was a moment that shaped the person I was to become. Before then, risk taking was not a common Lowe activity—still isn’t, to be honest.
But something changed in me while I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch that Sunday. My dad, by asking a simple question, taught me an important lesson. He’d already instilled in me the virtue of being even-tempered and steady. But that morning, he showed me what it looks like to put aside fear, to risk comfort, and to dive in headfirst to a new adventure.
It was a lesson I’d use later in life: sometimes the right path might seem like a really crazy move.
And in the fall, I had another move to make.
“How many towels does a guy need?” I asked my mom, pointing to a stack Dad was loading into the back of our car.
“You can’t blame me for wanting you to be clean, can you?” Mom asked.
“No, but we might need a third car just to bring all this stuff,” I said, looking at the bags and boxes we had to load. “Or an extra dorm room.”
“Okay, I think I’ve got just enough space for the mini fridge here,” Dad said, making room in the Tahoe before slamming down the hatch. Mom had apparently been preparing for this moment all summer—physically, if not emotionally.
“Do I really need these?” I asked, holding up a pair of flip-flops.
“You never know how filthy the shower might be,” she said.
“Maybe I should explain to Sean what this is.” Shay held up a bottle of laundry detergent.
&nb
sp; “How would you know?” I asked.
The worried expression on my mom’s face indicated that she doubted I could handle the pressures and demands of college, but I knew I was ready.
“I guess that’s it,” Dad said as he stuffed the last bag into the vehicle and wiped his hands on his pants.
I took one last look at our home—the place where I shot many basketball hoops and tossed many footballs with friends—grabbed my keys, and jumped into the driver’s seat toward a new life. Mom and Shay rode together in the car behind Dad and me. For the next eight hours, we drove—through the city of Dallas, the lowlands of Oklahoma, and the Flint Hills of Kansas. You know that song “Home on the Range”? Whoever wrote it was probably imagining buffalo roaming in an area like the gently rolling acres of Kansas tallgrass prairie.
As the miles passed, I wondered what it would be like to be a part of the Kansas State team. In my experience, football teams had been, in a way, like a family. At least that’s what I’d felt at Irving High and then Lamar. Would a Big 12 college program have the same kind of vibe? Would I be able to hang with the other guys? I’d been recruited as a strongside linebacker. K-State’s previous three were drafted into the NFL. Would I be next?
Dad and I talked about football much of the way, and I assumed Mom and Shay were talking about my sister’s recent heartbreak. She had broken up with a guy she had dated for years, but she seemed to be in good spirits that day. I was proud of her. She took at least eighteen credit hours each semester, sold insurance while working another job, and studied all the time. Ever since she and her long-term boyfriend split up, Shay had been more serious than usual. I hoped things would look up for her soon, but our family wasn’t the type that sat around and talked about the details of our romantic lives.
“Sean,” Dad said as we neared the school. His voice cracked just a tad. “When you’re in college, things will be different.” Dad might’ve been driving me to college, but he wasn’t finished being my dad. “Remember . . . you’re going to be in the world, but you don’t have to be of the world.”
I looked through my windshield at Manhattan—a small city tucked away in the northeastern part of Kansas, known as the Little Apple.
Just a couple of months earlier, I’d gone to the bigger version of Manhattan—the one in New York—where my team was doing preseason training and conditioning. Immediately, I noticed my new teammates were huge, a reality check for someone who’d always been the big man on campus. There’s a major difference between an eighteen-year-old kid just arriving from high school and a twenty-two-year-old man who has been in the university weight program for a few years.
K-State’s training program was more intense than anything I’d ever seen. In New York, the summer workouts were led by the strength and conditioning team, and we’d run 7-on-7 in the evenings. It gave me a chance to learn the fundamentals of their defense and get to know the team. The upperclassmen had known one another for a long time and had a casual comfort with each other. They loved to make sure the freshmen always knew our place as the new guys: sit down and shut up! But one guy—Andrew, who was the captain of the team and probably six foot five—was kind to us when we showed up to train for our abbreviated two-week period. He was a senior, an All-American defensive end, and he treated even the lowly freshmen with respect.
“What are you doing for the Fourth of July?” I asked him one afternoon as I was preparing to go home.
“More of this,” Andrew said, motioning to the downtown gym designated for our training.
“Why don’t you come with me to Dallas?” I asked. “My family always gets together for holidays.” I wasn’t exaggerating. We get together with aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, you-name-it for almost every imaginable holiday.
To my surprise, he took me up on it. He threw some stuff in a bag and drove all the way to my hometown.
“I was bored,” he told me as he got out of his car and unloaded his bags onto our driveway.
This, to me, was what was cool about being a part of a collegiate football team—spontaneous friendships, new adventures. One of my buddies threw a Fourth of July party at his ranch, so I took Andrew to show him a good Texas time. We shot fireworks and basically acted like teenagers. It was a great weekend.
Kansas State University is located east of the junction of the Kansas River and the Big Blue River, and we were getting close.
“This is about as far away from New York City as you can get,” I said, noticing the town’s laid-back, Western feel. A young couple slowly walked their dog in front of us at a red light, and Dad consulted the map. The closer we got to the university, the more things began looking purple. Grocery stores advertised back-to-school deals for K-State students, gigantic purple balloons flew high above car dealerships, and some of the old cars on the road were seemingly held together with purple pride bumper stickers.
When we finally drove up on the campus, I found the dorm I’d be living in for the next few weeks. It was August, and the football team was arriving three weeks before the regular students. As much as I hated giving up my summer, I was relieved to get settled before everyone else. Being part of a team made the transition to college a little easier. By the time all the other nervous freshmen arrived, hopefully I’d already feel like I belonged.
“Mom, you really outdid yourself,” I said, my arms full of Target bags.
“Gotta take care of my baby boy.”
I groaned at those two words. “I’m eighteen, Mom.”
She smiled and shoved a bag in my chest. “Well, make yourself useful, then, and carry this up to your new room.”
After a long day of moving, we said a tearful good-bye. As I watched my family drive away, I was glad to have some breathing room—five hundred miles of it, to be precise. I was the youngest in the family, so it’s natural Mom doted on me. By the time I was towering over her, I resented that she treated me like a kid.
I was responsible enough to earn a free ride to college, after all. And not to just any college. I was a Kansas State University athlete, which meant I had the honor of playing under one of the best college football coaches of all time, Bill Snyder. When he came to Kansas State in 1988, he inherited a program that easily had the most losses of any team in Division I-A at the time. Sports Illustrated called K-State “America’s most hapless team.”1 In ten years under Coach Snyder’s leadership, Kansas State had an undefeated regular 1998 season and earned its first-ever number one ranking in the national polls.
That’s why the entire community was so supportive of the Wildcats. After years of having an abysmal program, they didn’t take Coach Snyder’s success for granted. Most of the locals were somehow connected to the university—either through employment or attendance—so it was hard to go anywhere in town without being reminded of our team. Wildcat gear could be found everywhere. Preachers wore Wildcat ties, girls wore purple bows, guys wore K-State jackets, and I even saw a baby wearing a onesie that read “I Drool Purple.” Plus, as a part of the Big 12 Conference, the games would be broadcast nationally every week.
Every time I felt this excitement, I remembered: I was a part of the team. It was a little heady.
The players were required to stay together as a team before school started, even the upperclassmen who had the privilege of living off campus during the school year. Before we put on the pads, before we started training, and before we could take one step onto the gridiron, we met together in the dorms. Everyone laughed and joked about their misadventures in New York that summer. It was great to see everyone—including Andrew.
“If you need any help finding anything on campus,” he offered, “just let me know.”
The next day, the team’s intense practices began. These would help determine who’d start and in what position. I was redshirted my first year, which meant I practiced, lifted weights, and watched films with the team, but I didn’t play in games. That gave me a year to grow without losing a year of eligibility. The coaches hoped I’d eventually be a
starting linebacker, so they were willing to wait to let me become more seasoned.
The summer training session was the first time I got to see Coach Snyder in action. During the season, he ate one meal a day to save time, slept only four or five hours per night, and always wore Nike Cortez tennis shoes. (He wore the same type of tennis shoes for two decades and hoarded dozens of pairs when Nike stopped making them.) That meant his shoes—as well as his work ethic—were a blast from the past. He made us wipe our feet before we walked into the athletic complex, wouldn’t tolerate earrings, made sure everyone’s facial hair was neatly trimmed, and always had a mug of hot coffee during our intensely long practices. They lasted three hours—Monday through Wednesday—and we did them in full pads.
Old school.
Every morning, my alarm went off at five thirty to lift weights at six. (Pretty soon, I was as strong as an ox and no longer intimidated by my teammates.) My business classes started at eight o’clock, but it was sometimes hard to pay attention to my professor after such an intense morning workout. In high school, I made all As and was in the National Honor Society. But in college, I could tell I’d really have to buckle down and study. At two thirty in the afternoon, I’d head back to the football complex and work out until four. That’s when Coach Snyder would walk in, pop in the tape of our most recent game, and settle in to his chair with remote control in hand. He’d evaluate a single toss from our previous game for five minutes. After we watched ourselves and learned from our mistakes, we moved on to watching films of our upcoming opponents.
Then we ate at the training table until seven o’clock. Because the university had so much invested in us eating the right balance of carbs and protein, they provided us with a smorgasbord of options. They told us what we ate was as important as how much we could lift. But that didn’t stop me from eating just about everything in sight. I’m not built to be a huge guy, so I had to eat all the time to bulk up for the season. My teammates with big frames were naturally formidable on the field. Since I was smaller, I set my goal weight at 240 pounds. Our coaches didn’t monitor our diets, so I’d pile my plate full of chicken fried steak and pizza. Sometimes I’d eat pasta five times a day. After dinner, we had a mandatory study hall from eight to ten. Every second of my life was scheduled from five thirty in the morning until ten o’clock at night.