Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1547542
D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 6 2 7 The real question was whether he would ever play again. The injury was only the start of Wal- lace's ordeal. His roommate, tight end Andrew Rappleyea, had torn his ACL right around the same time. They shared an upstairs apartment, which was less than ideal for a pair of players with severe mo- bility issues. "We were f---ed up pretty bad," Rap- pleyea recalled. "Excuse my language." Wallace's injury was so debilitating that he needed his roommate's help just to reach their apartment. When Rappleyea was cleared to begin putting weight on his injured knee, he would carry Wallace up the stairs. Playing football again might have seemed like an impossibility at a time when stairwells were an insurmountable challenge, but Wallace had no intention of medically retiring. Back home in Mount Vernon, Ga., his mother had persevered through difficulties while providing for her children. Others in his com- munity were doing the same, with fewer advantages than the ones that football had provided him. "While I'm here at Penn State, I'm blessed with this opportunity," he said. "Why would I give up?" More than two years after his injury, Wallace finally got to show what he'd been working toward. The redshirt junior rushed for a career-high 135 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries against Pur- due on Oct. 31, helping Penn State snap a four-game losing streak with a 31-17 vic- tory. He carried as often in that game as he had in the season's first seven contests combined. For the Nittany Lions, it was a long- awaited moment of catharsis in a season that began going sideways more than a month earlier. For Wallace, who had been waiting far longer for his payoff, the locker room scene was nothing short of joyous, evoking what he described as "happy, happy tears." "I've been through a lot in my career," he said, "but everything has been falling in place for the work that I put in." Pushing Forward Athletes often look inward when try- ing to recover from setbacks, reminding themselves of their goals and ambitions in order to find the strength to carry on. Wallace did the opposite. His motivation came from his family and from others who may have been following his career from afar, particularly the kids back home. Mount Vernon is a community of about 1,900 people in southeastern Georgia, about halfway between Atlanta and Jack- sonville, Fla. According to the U.S. Cen- sus Bureau, its poverty rate is roughly 39 percent, compared with about 13 percent statewide. When Wallace thinks about the challenges his community has faced, he finds it difficult to justify doing any- thing less himself. "I've got people who are looking up to me. If I give up, I'm giving them the mind- set that they can give up when something hard comes," he said. "As long as I keep pushing forward and doing what I need to do, I'm giving those young kids back home who are looking up to me the mo- tivation to keep going through whatever they're going through." Wallace had been a two-year captain and an all-state running back at Mont- gomery County High School. He was also a state runner-up in the 200-meter race, evidence of the speed that helped earn him a place as a consensus three-star re- cruit in the Nittany Lions' 2023 class. "I've got people back home who are looking up to me. If I give up, I'm giving them the mindset that they can give up when something hard comes. As long as I keep pushing forward and doing what I need to do, I'm giving those young kids back home who are looking up to me the motivation to keep going through whatever they're going through." W A L L A C E