Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/541265
P R E V I E W NORTHERN STAR He watched, he waited, and now Akeel Lynch is ready to shine | T hey all doubted him. Akeel Lynch knew that from the start, and maybe that was the most bothersome part: They didn't even try to hide it. A transfer student from Toronto, Lynch had enrolled at St. Francis High in suburban Buffalo in hope of landing a football schol- arship at an American university. During a team meeting before the season, the Red Raiders' running backs coach asked his players to list their goals. Lynch, who had grown up playing the Canadian version of the game, rattled off a series of ambitious statistics: 1,500 yards, 20 touchdowns, eight yards per carry. His new teammates burst out laughing. "You're crazy," they told him. "This isn't Canada." Lynch was stunned. I'm in a different place now, he said to himself. I'm not back at home. I don't have the credibility that I once did. Maybe their reaction wasn't so surpris- ing. In truth, Lynch had been having some doubts himself. He was a 16-year-old kid living away from home for the first time. He missed Toronto, missed his family, and on top of all that, he was having a vicious allergic reaction to his new city. "My allergies were kicking in horribly because it was the summer," he said. "I had a sinus attack, and I didn't have any allergy pills. I was coughing, I was sneezing. I had no idea what to do." Lynch called his mother hoping she would bring him back home, but the school year was about to begin and it was too late to back out. Realizing he had no choice but to follow through with his plan, he recommitted to the task at hand. St. Fran- cis coach Jerry Smith reassured him he would not regret it. "You might not know it now," Smith told him, "but you'll see it down the road." The coach turned out to be right. By the second game of the season, Lynch was the starter. He went on to rush for 828 yards and 10 touchdowns, numbers that would no doubt have been even bigger if he hadn't suffered a ruptured tendon in his hand. Then, as a senior, he gained a school-record 2,131 yards and scored 25 TDs. The awards began rolling in, and the major-college recruiting offers that he'd been seeking since leaving Toronto were all piling up. It's now been five years since Lynch moved to the U.S. in pursuit of his football dreams, and no one is doubting him anymore. After two seasons as an understudy to Bill Belton and Zach Zwinak, he's the presumptive starter in a young but promising Penn State backfield. The man known as Big Maple – he has former head coach Bill O'Brien to thank for that memorable nickname – has built up a considerable head of steam. Lynch led the Nittany Lions in rushing as a redshirt sophomore, finishing with 678 yards even though he only started two games. He was especially productive late in the season, rushing for 130 yards against Temple, 137 against Illinois and 75 in the Lions' Pinstripe Bowl victory over Boston College. His 35-yard dash to the goal line helped Penn State storm back from a fourth-quarter deficit against the Eagles, and it also gave rise to hopes that there will be some spillover into 2015. Said coach James Franklin, "The way the season ended with him, I think he's done some nice things." Lynch sees the end of last season as a springboard not just for him, but for the entire offense, particularly the line. "We had a lot of new guys," he said. "For them to see me doing well gives them confidence that they're doing well, too." Lynch has added about five pounds in the off-season and is now up to a solid 220. He may look to add a few more pounds before the season depending on how he feels with the extra weight during summer conditioning. Franklin has said he'd like to see Lynch lower his shoulder and take on tacklers this year, so the extra ballast would help bring another dimension to Lynch's game, which is built upon a blend of attributes rather than one defining characteristic. Franklin describes him simply as a ca- R U N N I N G B A C K S