Blue White Illustrated

year from now I will be twice the man I was before I hurt my knee." This spring Wartman-White has been working to make good on that vow. He hadn't yet resumed contact drills as of this writing, but he said in late March that his rehab was progressing nicely and he is expecting to be a full participant when preseason camp begins in August. "Everything's been going great," he said. "I think I'm a little ahead of schedule." Wartman-White's workouts this spring have consisted of "noncontact stuff, run- ning, stuff like that. Nothing too serious." But, he added, "The knee feels great. It feels better every day." That's good news for a Lion defense that is short on experienced linebackers and has been without one of its best since last Sep- tember. The injury that ended Wartman- White's season occurred on a punt return when he tried to disengage from a Temple blocker. "He was holding me," Wartman- White recalled. "I had to get him off me, so I threw him off. When I planted, it just happened." Wartman-White had to be helped off the field, but the pain subsided quickly and he tried to convince himself that the injury wasn't as bad as it seemed. "Part of me thought [it was serious]," he said. "But the other half of me didn't want to believe it." Unfortu- nately – both for Wartman- White and for the Lions – it really was as bad as it seemed; tests the following day confirmed that he would need season-ending surgery. Wartman-White turned to his strong religious faith to help him cope with the disappointment. As a freshman at Penn State, he had begun attending Bible study classes, and he kept it up in the years that followed. Shortly after he went down against the Owls – the second season- ending injury of his career at Penn State, following a knee injury that forced him to take a medical redshirt as a true freshman in 2012 –someone sent him a Bible verse, Romans 5:3, which advises that "we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance." "We make plans, and God un-plans," Wartman-White said. "When that hap- pened to me, of course I had plans for the season, but I understood that everything happens for a reason. It's for the man up- stairs. So I just decided that wherever he wants to take me, he can take me. I'm up for the challenge. I'm not going to back down from it. So I looked at it as a chal- lenge. I feel like the Lord chooses strong people to go through worse things in life, so I looked at it as a challenge." Wartman-White decided that if he couldn't help the team on the field, he could serve as an extra coach, helping the other linebackers on game day by telling them what he was seeing from the sideline and by being available to watch film with them during the week. He took a particular interest in smoothing Jason Cabinda's transition from outside to inside linebacker to fill the vacancy that opened up with his injury. Cabinda went on to lead the Nittany Lions in tackles with 100, includ- ing 5.5 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks. Now, with Cabinda having asserted him- self as a solid Mike linebacker, the Lions are expecting to have a consequential po- sition battle on their hands when Wart- man-White returns to practice. One of the people most eager to see how that battle plays out is head coach James Franklin. "Cabinda has gotten a lot of work at Mike linebacker and he doesn't want to give that up," Franklin said. "So I think the battle between him and Nyeem is going to be really interesting. HIGHS AND LOWS After finishing sec- ond on the team in tackles as a sopho- more, Wartman- White had high hopes for his red- shirt junior season, but they were dashed when he went down with a knee injury in the Li- ons' opener at Tem- ple. Photos by Steve Manuel

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