Calvert fought darkness, now is seeing bright side
UCLA senior linebacker leaned on a tight bond with his father to battle through concussions and losing years and looks to build on Bruins’ success.
The father-son talks usually started with a text message.
“How’s it going?” David Calvert would ask his son Bo, the UCLA linebacker. “Yeah, it’s all right,” Bo would respond. “You need to talk?” “Yeah.” With that, David would grab his car key and head out the door of his Westlake Village home. Sometimes he’d pick up Bo from his campus dorm and head over to BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse in Westwood Village for a dessert pizza.
Their chats on those dark nights three years ago invariably ended in the parking lot outside Bo’s dorm while sitting inside David’s black Dodge Ram.
“Sometimes we wouldn’t even talk,” David said. “The last hour, we’d just sit there and he’d say, ‘OK, I’m good’ and then get out and go to sleep.”
The heavy silence reflected Bo’s inner struggles — the repeated concussions, the 16-hour days of drudgery on a team that went 3-9, the almost giving up on football.
They also made what would follow more exhilarating.