Football: Making up for lost time

While there were many factors that contributed to the football team’s dismal showing in the 2010 season, injuries to a lot of top players on both the offensive and defensive sides is at or near the top of the list. Junior defensive lineman Caraun Reid — who sat out most of last year with a pectoral injury — knew this, and he could not take it.

“He was frustrated,” head coach Bob Surace ’90 said. “He wanted to be out there. He’s a team player; you love how unselfish he is. He was trying, but I can’t put a guy in who’s not healthy. It’s not worth it.”

It was the first game of the season, a road contest at Lehigh. Coming off a strong freshman year in which he recorded 34 tackles, including four-and-a-half for a loss, and shared Princeton’s Defensive Freshman of the Year award with linebacker Andrew Starks, Reid stepped onto the gridiron expecting to establish himself as one of the elite defensive players in the Ivy League.

But five plays into the game, Lehigh’s center went down, giving the opposing guard the opportunity to pick Reid off. Reid’s legs got crossed up, and he fell to the ground. Not immediately recognizing the severity of his injury, Reid stayed in the game until the end. He continued going to practice the following week until he and his coaches realized something was wrong.

“I went to practice, and I was nothing like what I used to be,” Reid said. “That preseason, I felt the best playing football that I’ve ever felt in my life. When I came back, I felt like I was struggling to keep up and do the simple things that I’m used to.”

At first, the coaching and medical staff figured that he would be able to return about a month later, one or two games into the Ivy League season. But as the weeks went by and Reid’s health did not improve, he was forced to confront the fact that he would not play for the rest of the year.

Reid never quite accepted it, however. He watched as player after player went down on the defensive end — from senior captain and linebacker Steve Cody to senior lineman Brandon Glyck — and as offensive linemen, linebackers or inexperienced freshmen took their places in the interior. According to Surace, Reid would ask to be put in because he felt there was more he should be doing to help the team.

It was also tough personally on Reid, who said that his home life in high school consisted primarily of church, schoolwork and football. Taking one of those out of the equation was not easy.

“Every single time when I’m tired, when it hurts or I’m way too fatigued, I just think about how it felt last year to be on the sidelines and not playing with everyone, feeling like just a mascot,” Reid said. “I had on the uniform, but I couldn’t do anything to help the team out.”

Despite losing football for a season, the injury did not preclude Reid from rethinking his academic focus and maintaining his involvement with religious life. He began his Princeton career as a pre-med, but said that after realizing that science was more of a fascination than an academic interest to him, he decided to study sociology, his true academic interest.

Reid’s religious involvement dates back to his childhood, when he spent much of his time in the church his parents had founded near their home in the Bronx. His father is a bishop and his mother a minister, and Reid and his two brothers made most of their friends and participated in many activities through the church. Currently a member of the a cappella group Old Nassoul and the University Gospel Ensemble, Reid developed his passion for singing in church, being a part of two choirs and leading worship every Sunday.

Though he could not play last season, Reid kept up with the team’s bible study, a weekly meeting of interested players run through the national organization Athletes in Action.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“There are guys who have just interest and general questions, and there are guys who just want to be a part of something closer,” Reid said. “As a freshman, unless you have roommates, it’s really hard to make friends outside of football, so it really helps to build a community within the football players with guys with similar moral values. It really does bring us together.”

Surace noted that while many players do not participate, those that do often find the sessions rewarding.

“You develop friendships in a meaningful way, and in this case there are guys who are finding maturity and growth,” Surace said. “It’s another way for them to develop relationships, friendships, and discuss life.”

Reid has had a very positive start to this season on the field, recording 31 tackles, including six-and-a-half for losses. Both Surace and senior offensive lineman Cameron Browne — a close friend of Reid’s — attribute the junior’s success to an improved pass rush technique. Before, he was simply a “one-trick pass rusher” who relied on his strength and explosiveness to run his opponents over. Since returning from the injury, Reid said his improved technique helps him create more opportunities to use his strength to his team’s benefit.

“Watching Caraun and going against him in practice, I feel like his pass rush moves have improved the most, and I know that it is the one aspect of the game he placed a large emphasis on during the offseason and it shows,” Browne said in an email.

As his technique and statistics continue to improve over the season, Reid hopes to demonstrate that he is prepared to play professional football. At 6 feet 2 inches and 290 pounds, Reid is unusually fast for a lineman of his size, which could serve him well in the draft.

He will be just 21 when he graduates and missed a year of weightlifting due to his injury, two factors Surace said could work against him. However, Surace said that if Reid continues to work hard in the weight room and add to his pass rush repertoire, he has a good shot at a career in the NFL.

“He’s the type of person I know that those teams look for,” Surace said. “They look for the quality athletic guy, and he’s a big guy who can run. It’s a rare commodity. Big, strong, hardworking defensive linemen are hard to find.”