The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Yale football captain gives Bulldogs plenty of fortitude
NEW HAVEN — Nick Crowle went to his first game at the Yale Bowl when he was 6.
“That was it,” Crowle said. “I wanted to come here.”
Dreams began to congeal in middle school. He discovered a talent for football. He discovered he was a good enough student for a shot at the Ivy League.
“I spent three years in high school trying to make it here,” he said. “And I did.”
As Crowle sat at Mory’s on Monday, captain of Team 146 at Yale, it’s easy to chase the more high-minded of our angles. Easy to speak of this son of Milford and graduate of Fairfield Prep as a student-athlete and young man of some polish. Easy to place him on a campus among the Gothic architecture where SAT scores matter as much as 40-yard times.
And all of that would be true.
Yet when asked what he brings to the team’s culture as a captain elected by his teammates in late August after Kyle Mullen left the school for personal reasons, Crowle and coach Tony Reno gave the same response.
“Grit,” Crowle said. “Grit,” Reno said. A four-letter word that one needn’t own an Ivy League diploma to understand.
They talk about shared consciousness and empowered execution around the Yale football program. When freshmen arrive, Reno said, they are taught what leadership is. By sophomore year, they lead community outreach programs. Juniors run the offseason program. Older players rise, making sure each teammate is comfortable working in unison. From there, one captain is elected.
“Being a fifth-year player, Nick has overcome adversity just as Spencer (Rymiszewski) did,” Reno said. “That matures you as a player. Nick is very proud of how mature he is. He puts himself 107th every day, puts every guy on the team ahead of himself, and I’m very proud of him for that.”
Last autumn, Rymiszewski was the captain of the first Yale team to capture an outright Ivy League title since 1980. While he and several quality players have moved on, expectations have not. Yale, which opens its 2018 season Saturday against Holy Cross, is picked to defend its Ivy title.
“Spencer laid the blueprint (for) how that role should be fulfilled,” said Crowle, a 270-pound defensive lineman. “I’m my own person. I’m not going to be the same captain Spencer was. But the way he led and handled things internally with the team, there are a lot of concrete steps he made to change the culture of our team last year; obviously for the better.
“Most captains have a full offseason to adapt to the role. It’s something I had to pick up on pretty quickly. I feel like I have.”
While Rymiszewski missed the 2016 season with a shoulder injury, Crowle gained a fifth season through medical hardship after a freshman injury.
Let’s put it this way: The 18th Yale football captain from Connecticut knows adversity.
There was a low ankle sprain in the historic victory over Army in September 2014. Crowle tried to play the next week against Cornell and suffered a high ankle sprain.
“Done for the season,” Crowle said. “I was on an all-time high: freshman, starting, this is awesome, a sack in my first game. And then I immediately was put back down to level zero. Pretty hard to deal with.”
He made it back for his sophomore year, got mono in the middle of the season.
“I lost 20 pounds and was absurdly tired,” Crowle said. “It was more or less a lost season.”
Junior year? A concussion his sixth game ruined his season.
Senior year? Tore his MCL in the second game.
“I think overcoming every obstacle that comes your way shows what kind of character you have,” said Crowle, who has 49 tackles, including six for losses, in only 26 career games. “Are you going to be the guy that doesn’t get up? Or the guy who’s always pushing on? I always want to think of myself as the guy pushing on.”
He was recruited by Harvard, Princeton, Penn, a little by BC, but he had one school in mind. He went to a half-dozen Yale games in high school. As soon as he got an offer, in the spring of his junior year, he said yes.
“First commit from my class,” he said.
Reno first saw Crowle at one of Yale’s camps. He saw a big, strong tailback/linebacker.
“He was running over, around and through everybody,” Reno said. “I remember saying this kid could be a great defensive tackle. He played with great leverage. He was tenacious.”
The idea was to take a 245-pound high school kid and get him in the weight room. As a senior he led Fairfield Prep into the Class LL football championship, a game memorably delayed multiple times until nearly Christmas because of the weather. Crowle broke a 53-yard touchdown run as the Jesuits took a 28-14 halftime lead, but led by Yalebound Stephen Barmore, Southington scored three unanswered touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
“The last thing I remember was Stephen taking it to the house (67 yards) for a pick-6 to seal it,” Crowle said. “One of the toughest losses of my career.”
A few months later he would win the Class LL state heavyweight wrestling championship
“There is no better feeling than winning a wrestling match and no worse feeling than losing one,” Crowle said. “It’s all on you. Obviously, football is vastly different. No single play is all on you, but if you take ownership of your role as if it is, I think that is how you get a successful team. I also think it’s fair to say to be a successful wrestler you have to be pretty gritty. It’s a grueling sport. Wrestling two1 minutes is like playing 2 ⁄2 quarters of football.”
From the start, Reno said, Yale coaches loved Crowle’s energy and enthusiasm. He loves football. A political science major, he intends to chase a collegiate/professional coaching career full tilt.
“When he was elected captain, I was on the phone with my wife and I said, ‘One of the coolest things about Nick is he was on the field when we beat Army,’ ” Reno said. “That really spans a period of time for us. He typifies what we’re looking for in a Yale football player. He’s gritty. He’s tough. His energy carries the defense. He holds himself and his teammates to a high level.”
Crowle’s parents got him a nice little case with his name and number as a home for his 2017 Ivy League championship ring. That’s where it usually stays.
“My cousin got married over the summer, I wore it for that,” Crowle said. “It is a piece of our team’s history I’ll never forget the rest of my life.”
He smiled. “Hopefully, I’ll get a second one this year.”