Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/717693
N yeem Wartman-White's eyes widen as he talks about it. Surrounded by a group of reporters, the veteran Nittany Lion linebacker stares through the table in front of him, seemingly watching a series of painful memories flash through his mind. Pain was definitely involved, but maybe not the kind that one might expect con- sidering the severity of the injury he sus- tained 11 months earlier. Wartman-White tore his ACL while de- fending a punt return in the Nittany Lions' season opener at Temple last Sep- tember. It was a major setback, but he wasn't overwhelmed by the injury itself. What really hurt was his tumble into the abyss of a months-long tenure in the Lasch Building weight room, a tenure plagued by monotony and frustratingly slow progress. "You get to the point where you're doing the same thing every day. And that's frustrating, to the point where you're getting mad," Wartman-White said. He trained himself to get a good night's rest, every night, in order to at least make the next morning's rehabilita- tion session bearable, but he still found himself wondering: When will I see some results and stop doing the same thing and do the stuff I see other people do? "You're so eager," he said. "I had to teach myself to be patient." Before beginning his rehab, Wartman- White reconnected with former Penn State teammate Michael Mauti, who overcame multiple ACL tears at Penn State and is now getting set for his fourth season in the NFL. He asked the New Or- leans Saints linebacker if there was any- thing special he needed to know regarding the ordeal he would soon be en- during on. "He just told me it gets annoying and you're going to get mad at the trainers," Wartman-White said. "There were times I was just mad, frustrated about not see- ing major gains. If I did curls every day with my arms, a month later I would have nice-looking arms. So that's what I was [expecting it to be] like with my leg." The reality, as he discovered, was that there were no quantum leaps to be made with his injured knee. Often, his progress felt like just the opposite. As he described it, he hit his share of roadblocks as he worked toward his stated goal of being back in playing shape for Penn State's 2016 season opener. Some weeks, he said, he would feel as though he was making big gains in his rehabilitation, but the excitement would quickly abate, and weeks would go by without any obvi- ous signs of continued progress. That was the pattern. For every improvement he made, there followed a demoralizing plateau. "You're back in that trap where you're doing the same thing over and over again. You see yourself putting more weight on and then boom, the weight you're trying to put on, it takes another four weeks and you've got to go through that process again with something else," he said. Brandon Bell, Wartman-White's fellow linebacker and close friend, said that he's tried to provide support when it seems appropriate. "As teammates, we're always here for him," Bell said. "You obviously don't know exactly what he's going through. I've never been through that injury, but I tell him to keep fighting the fight and it will be worth it in the end." The time for that payoff appears to be just around the corner. FOOTBALL 2016 READY FOR ACTION After months in the weight room rehabbing his surgically repaired knee, Wartman-White is looking forward to his final season. Photo by Ryan Snyder ENDURANCE ATHLETE | Nyeem Wartman-White aims to finish strong