GoGamecocks.com
Iraqi War veteran finds new home as USC walk-on
South Carolina junior deep snapper No. 69 Matthew Grooms stands on the sideline and watches his teammates play during the Thursday night's N.C. State game.
Erik Campos/ecampos@thestate.com
Written by JOSEPH PERSON
jperson@thestate.com
Posted on 09.06.09
CommentsRelated Content
Another veteran
Matt Grooms is not the only Iraqi War veteran on USC’s roster.Walk-on linebacker Matthew Ansley, a member of the Army Reserves who joined the team last month, spent 18 months as a gunner based in Ramadi, Iraq. Ansley, who entered the Reserves after graduating from Valdosta (Ga.) High in 2005, worked on convoy security and route clearance in Iraq.
No one reads about the long snapper until he flubs the snap on a critical field-goal attempt or sails one over the punter’s head in a tight game.
If the starting snapper is obscure, that makes the third-teamer nearly invisible.
But South Carolina’s Matthew Grooms has a story that goes beyond football.
It started on a dirt road in Marlboro County, wound through the deserts of Kuwait and included a stop on the new sod at N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium, where Thursday night the 26-year-old walk-on and Iraqi War veteran stood on the sidelines for the Gamecocks’ opener.
Grooms made the travel squad, but did not play in USC’s 7-3 win.
But the season is young. And considering all the sweat he’s poured out and IV bags he’s taken in to get to this point, Grooms is not going to give up now.
An undersized offensive lineman at Marlboro County, Grooms joined the Marines after no schools recruited him for football. Following a six-month deployment to Kuwait, Grooms returned to the States and went back to school on the G.I. Bill.
He was cut from USC’s team twice — the second time after passing out during a workout — before he made the squad last year. He knows his only shot at playing time would come with an injury to first-team snapper Charles Turner or at the end of a blowout win.
Yet, he has stuck with it, earning the admiration of teammates and coaches with his willingness to jump in wherever he’s needed at practice. Coaches rewarded Grooms by taking him to Raleigh.
“He earned the right to go on that trip,” special teams coordinator Shane Beamer said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for the guy for what he’s done off the field and the things he’s been through, but also the kind of person he is. He comes to practice every day. He’s got a great attitude and wants to work, and he’s worked his butt of to put himself in a position to be our snapper.”
STRONG WORK ETHIC
Grooms came by his work ethic naturally. He is one of six children born to working-class parents who lived off a dirt road in McColl. His father, Donald, has worked 32 years in maintenance at a steel plant in Laurinburg, N.C., just across the state line from Marlboro County.
Bobbie Jean, Donald’s wife of 31 years, is self-employed in home furnishing sales.
Marlboro County’s Dean Boyd said he coached Grooms, two of his brothers and several of his cousins — and all of them were tough.
“Those are the type of kids that you don’t want to get in a fight with because they’re not going to quit,” Boyd said. “They’ve got no quit in them.”
During Grooms’ final two seasons, he and three of his cousins comprised four-fifths of the starting offensive line.
“They all lived off a dirt road out in McColl,” Boyd said. “So they called themselves the Dirt Road Gang.”
But because of his size, no college recruiters were calling Grooms. So he followed an older brother’s lead and enlisted in the Marines after graduating in 2001, and went to boot camp at Parris Island.
Grooms and his fellow recruits had just returned to their barracks after a training run the morning of Sept. 11 when their drill instructor wheeled in a TV and turned on the coverage of the twin towers burning in New York City.
“Looks like we’re going to war, boys,” Grooms recalled the drill instructor saying.
Grooms spent three years training and working as a diesel mechanic at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before shipping out to Kuwait. Grooms repaired the Humvees and five-ton troop transport trucks the U.S. forces drove through Iraq, and occasionally was called on to unload trucks from cargo ships.
Though safely removed from the fighting, Grooms experienced a couple of scary moments. Sleeping in a Humvee one night at Kuwaiti airfield, Grooms contracted an airborne virus that caused his throat to constrict and required hospitalization.
Back with his platoon, Grooms was awakened one night when a missile hit nearby, destroying a building but resulting in no injuries. When the bomb squad investigated, it found an American flag on the side of the Tomahawk missile.
“It was one of ours,” Grooms said.
He returned home in June, 2005, and finished his four-year enlistment a few months later.
THE ITCH TO PLAY
Lacking a couple of courses to get into USC, Grooms enrolled at Midlands Tech. He rented a house in West Columbia and took a job in the emergency room at Palmetto Richland.
Between classes and his hospital hours, the 6-foot Grooms exercised infrequently and quickly gained back the weight he had lost in the Marines — and then some. Grooms said he was “just sitting around the house, playing video games and eating everything in sight” during his free time.
“Taking it easy,” he added. “That’s what I was calling it.”
Grooms would stop at Bluff Road whenever the Gamecocks held spring or preseason practices that were open to the public. Though never considered more than a Division II prospect, Grooms began to get the itch to play again around the time he was accepted to USC.
“Coming by here and watching the guys practice every day when I was at Tech, it lit that fire under me,” he said. “I wanted to come back out and give it a shot.”
Grooms had ballooned to 260 pounds — up 90 from his Parris Island weight — when he showed up at USC for walk-on tryouts in the spring of 2008. He did not make the first cut, and figured his football days were done when he received a call from special teams coach Ray Rychleski two weeks later.
Rychleski, now with the Indianapolis Colts, was intrigued by Grooms’ background and reasoned that a team can never have too many long snappers. To Rychleski, Grooms’ age was not a deterrent.
“The thing I liked about him was he was old,” he said. “And if he ever developed, you’ve got a quality guy doing it for the right reasons, wanting to play ball.”
Rychleski invited Grooms to join the team and told him to begin attending the team’s 5:30 a.m. conditioning sessions. At one of the first workouts, Grooms began lagging behind during the 100-yard sprints.
Former USC strength coach Mark Smith, noticing that Grooms was unsteady on his feet, told him to sit down. Responding as he had to his Marine superiors, Grooms yelled, “Yes sir!” He plopped down in the middle of the field and passed out.
Turner, the Gamecocks’ first-team snapper who was running next to Grooms that morning, said he figured the ex-Marine would have been in better shape.
“I was like, ‘Man, what’s he doing?’ Because I was hurting myself,” Turner said. “I wasn’t paying attention, all of a sudden I look over and he looked like he was a little behind. I was like, ‘This isn’t going to work.’”
That was also Rychleski’s reaction when he learned that Grooms had been transported to a local hospital and had nine IV bags pumped into him.
The following day, Rychleski called Grooms to his office and told him, “Matt, you’re not going to die on me,” and was prepared to cut him loose.
“I told him, ‘You’re 24. You don’t need this. I understand going to school. But the chances of you playing are slim,’” Rychleski said. “I could just see it in his eyes that it was crushing him. I just saw that it meant so much to him to be part of the Gamecocks, and a little bit (of) here’s a guy that served our country, and I just couldn’t do it to him.”
Instead, Rychleski told Grooms to spend the rest of the summer working out on his own. If he reported to preseason camp in good shape, he could try out again.
So Grooms picked up the summer lifting and running plans from Smith and trained on his own at USC’s intramural fields, using his T-shirt and water bottle as makeshift cones.
By August, Grooms had shed about 30 pounds to get to his current weight of 230. He made the team last summer, and has had no problems with conditioning since.
After sitting out last season, Grooms impressed the coaching staff this preseason by volunteering to play defensive end when the Gamecocks were running out of bodies to fill out the third-team defense for scrimmages.
“Grooms gets in there and competes. He doesn’t just go in there and take up space,” Beamer said. “He loves to play football, loves to be out there. And with what he’s been through, coming to football practice is a piece of cake.”
Grooms said teammates talk to him about the types of guns he fired, and ask him to identify helicopters that fly over the practice field.
“It’s fun hearing him talk about Iraq and all his experiences because that’s a completely different life than any of us are used to,” Turner said. “He’s a little more mature than the rest of us because he’s seen a lot more and been through a lot more.”
But Grooms is experiencing new things, as well.
On Wednesday night he called his parents to tell them about the hotel where the team was staying in Raleigh. He recently received a standing ovation in a public speaking class when he introduced himself an Iraqi War veteran.
His goals are to play in a game and earn a scholarship for his final year of eligibility after his G.I. Bill runs out in January. In the meantime, the ex-Marine is enjoying life as a college football player.
“I’m tickled to death,” his father, Donald, said. “He’s tickled and I’m tickled. He just wanted to make the team.”
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
Most Viewed Stories
- USC fends off Bulls' charge
- Last-second goal ends USC's soccer season
- Miami coach had brief USC tie
- USC wary of Spiller on kickoffs
- Norwood among final five on Butkus list
- Barnes Has Good Visit With USC
- Lattimore Sticking With Visit Plans
- Emerson: Hold off on wait and see coaches
- Big Tackle To Check Out USC
- Gamecocks' bowl bid needs 1 for the road
@Nyx.CommentBody@