Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 60F. Winds light and variable..
Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 60F. Winds light and variable.
Percy Agyei-Obese pushes toward the end zone against Villanova last season.
Percy Agyei-Obese pushes toward the end zone against Villanova last season.
Percy Agyei-Obese thought he simply sprained his ankle in the first quarter against Delaware last season — nothing serious. The sixth-year running back had his ankle taped during halftime, then continued playing as though nothing was wrong.
Except something was wrong. When Agyei-Obese had his ankle checked again that Sunday, he found out it was much worse than a high sprain. It was a season-ending injury that required surgery — Agyei-Obese’s first ever.
Knowing his season with the Dukes was done, Agyei-Obese said his goodbyes to the program. He then had no desire to redshirt another year. Instead of helping JMU on the field during its final season in the FCS, he spent it on the sideline.
Alongside Agyei-Obese, Sam Kidd and Isaac Ukwu also watched the game from the sidelines longer than they wanted to, dealing with season-ending injuries that forced them to change their mindsets. Now in their last year of college football, the three want this season to be more than another year in purple and gold.
This is the year they want to put JMU, and themselves, on the map to begin the new Sun Belt era.
“Those are the kinds of guys you want in your football program,” head coach Curt Cignetti said. “If you want to be successful, you need those passionate guys, and it burns deep in their belly.”
Sam Kidd: Walking on twice
Redshirt senior safety Sam Kidd came to Harrisonburg in 2017 as a “preferred walk on.” Essentially, he committed to JMU, but wasn’t offered a scholarship. Kidd said it never bothered him having that title, nor did it change his goal with the program.
He wanted to be at his best, and to play at his best.
“He’s a high-energy, [high-]effort guy,” Cigentti said. “That’s a guy you can count on all the time. Sam Kidd is so dependable. He’s one of the leaders on our team and I’m glad we have him.”
But Kidd wasn’t on the field his freshman season. Instead, he was a part of the defensive scout team, looking at what upcoming opponents were doing and finding ways to help JMU to prepare for each game.
Kidd had a brief summer surgery to fix his ankle and hand injuries he sustained before coming to JMU. It went well, and the safety was back on the field in time to play on the special teams unit in 2018.
It was the height of his early football career, and even as Cignetti took the reins as head coach in 2019, Kidd said he fought to keep the position he worked to have — but one bad hit put it all on pause.
At the end of training camp in 2020, Kidd dislocated his shoulder. He was told it would be better by the spring, so he simply took the break as it was, thinking very little of it.
“The doctor said there [was] a decent chance of it staying in,” Kidd said. “Then over winter when we got a few weeks at home, I was rehabbing. I put this brace on my shoulder pads, hoping to stay in and earn a starting spot.”
Athletic trainers later told Kidd that if his shoulder dislocated again, it would require surgery. So, when Kidd felt a pop during the first few snaps of the 2021 spring season opener against Morehead State, he said, his mind went blank. He felt a pit in his stomach as he walked to the sideline, fearing the worst.
He was right. Kidd was out the rest of the season.
“It was probably five to eight plays into the game,” he said. “I kind of already knew immediately that meant I was done for the season, which was pretty frustrating.”
Having to sit on the sidelines once again during that season brought a new perspective for the now-redshirt senior. It was the feeling of isolation, Kidd said, that made his recovery draining. He wasn’t able to play after working four years up the ladder to a starting role.
“People talk about injuries and surgeries — it’s 90% mental,” Kidd said. “You’re really, really isolated … It’s being patient and waiting to come back, because you can work out and get [into] shape.”
Kidd was cleared to play again last fall. Leading up to the season opener, again against Morehead State, Kidd said he wanted to focus on the game itself and not think about his shoulder.
The second he made his first tackle of the game, he popped up and shook out his shoulder as one thought raced through his mind — “Alright we’re good, it’s in there,” he remembers thinking.
Kidd played in all 14 games last season. He started in seven, logged 62 tackles: 34 solo, 5.5 tackles for loss and an interception. But this year, he wants more.
When reflecting on the past, Kidd knows he spent a lot of time on the sideline. Did it help him in the long run? He said he thinks so. But as he faces a new leadership role and takes on a new era in the Sun Belt Conference, he said the young freshman who found ways to keep working still lives inside him.
“I know how tough it is just to sit on the sidelines and watch,” Kidd said. “It feels like the end of the world at that moment but, you know, you’ll get through it.”
It was one thing to suffer one ACL tear. But two in back-to-back seasons was another animal.
Redshirt senior defensive lineman Isaac Ukwu played in three career games before the 2021 spring season. And at first, that was fine.
Ukwu sat behind a few well-known JMU defensive linemen, including John Daka (2016-19) and Ron’Dell Carter (2017-19). Ukwu said that while he wanted to play just as much as anyone else, having leaders like Daka and Carter to learn from were crucial parts of his off-the-field development, Ukwu said.
“I grew most in terms of maturity and getting my business done in a timely manner,” he said, “because when you come in as a young guy, you’re not really in a role to be someone people look to for production coming straight out of high school.”
It was the “mental rep” that accelerated his learning of the game, he said, even when he sat and watched from the sideline. Ukwu said he was confident in his belief that he’d get his turn to play, so while he was further back on the depth chart, he focused on envisioning himself playing at that level.
“I think it’s really developing a championship mentality,” he said. “I feel like that’s the biggest way I've been trying to learn.”
Ukwu tore his ACL the first time in 2019 during fall camp. He knew what was wrong almost instantly, he remembers, and faced the reality of waiting another year to play. He said it wasn’t easy for him to accept at first, but he knew he had the chance to play, so Ukwu just kept waiting.
He said he felt ready to play when the next year’s spring football period came. Ukwu practiced his mental reps again and again while waiting to play, remembering the feeling he had of starring in a college football stadium.
But when the second ACL tear happened, it was so much different.
It only felt like he “tweaked it,” Ukwu said, and it wasn’t until the athletic trainers broke the news that it was another tear that he realized the weight of not playing yet again.
“When our athletic trainer Brian [Schneider] told me, it literally broke my heart,” he said. “Because missing the previous season and especially the way the season before had ended, watching from the sideline again was really tough.”
After stepping back out onto Zane Showker field last September, Ukwu wasted no time making his name known. He described it as a release of energy that kept him focused on the field.
That moment of “wow,” as he remembers it, finally came after getting his first sack against Maine on Sept. 11 last season. Standing up, he said, hearing the electric atmosphere and remembering in that moment why he stayed and waited, made the heartbreak worth it.
“When you go through a season-ending injury like an ACL, it reallyw builds your mental toughness,” Ukwu said. “I feel like even though it sucks to have missed two full seasons from knee surgeries, it’s made me better in terms of my ability to handle adversity and how I approach the game.”
Percy Agyei-Obese: On to the pros, or so he thought
Agyei-Obese never got the ending he wanted to have at JMU.
After JMU’s loss in the FCS National Championship in 2019, the redshirt senior running back’s supposed-to-be final year took place during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic season. It wasn’t when he wanted to finish his collegiate career, so after conversations with his teammates, Cignetti and his family, Agyei-Obese chose to accept his COVID-19 redshirt waiver.
But then he had to get surgery, ending his season before it even began. On top of managing his recovery, he watched his teammates — some of whom he’d played with since his freshman year — finish their careers in the 2021 FCS Semifinals against North Dakota State on the television, and not alongside them.
“I was watching it on TV and just wishing I was about to be there with them and support them,” he said.
Agyei-Obese wasn’t sure he wanted to join the team again in 2021, let alone 2022. He was ready to make his dream of becoming an NFL player a reality, so this past winter he shifted his focus to JMU’s Pro Day this past winter.
“The coaches respected my decision, they were very understanding,” Agyei-Obese said, “so they gave me some time and I was just recovering by myself and just in my own headspace.”
Then came news that altered his perspective again — his ankle wouldn’t be healed in time for JMU’s Pro Day that March.
So, Agyei-Obese had a new decison to make: come back to JMU again, or take his chances in the NFL. That’s when he decided to give it one last, true go-around.
“I’ve never thought about this happening,” Agyei-Obese said. “But now this is here, on the table right now and this is something I have to do.”
Agyei-Obese now says he’s in “the best shape of my life” heading into this final season. He said it’s the perfect scenario to prepare for that next step in football, being challenged by FBS competition and see what he can truly do.
“People see me as an impacting player,” Agyei-Obese said. “But this year, how I’ve been going about things like working and mentally motivating myself, I feel like I have something to prove.”
While Agyei-Obese, Kidd and Ukwu took one hit after another throughout their years at JMU, the end is in sight. Their chance to solidify their goals at JMU is steps away.
On the last day of training camp, the younger Dukes carried all the seniors off the field after practice. It signified the beginning of the end for these three, but their final season begins in a matter of days — and this Saturday’s game is what they’re looking forward to the most.
Contact Madison Hricik at breezesports@gmail.com. For more sports coverage, follow the sports desk on Twitter @TheBreezeSports.
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