In His Own Words: Dreams and Determination

Dec 30, 2019 | Football, Sports Extra

By Dalton Schoen

What exactly is a dream?

I’m not talking about what happens when you sleep. I’m talking about the long-shot fantasy you live out in your mind over and over again while daydreaming in class. Is this something you are born with? Or is it something that you realized along the way? And what is it about a dream that is so captivating that it causes you to stop at nothing in your vain attempt to make it a reality?

I don’t have the answer to any of these questions. I do know, however, that, for as long as I can remember, I had one dream. To play football at Kansas State University.

At times it felt like I grew up in Manhattan, at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, watching the ‘Cats take the field on Saturdays in the fall. I remember playing football in the parking lot with my brother, Mason. We would set some arbitrary boundaries throughout the pavement for our game and then proceed to run all over place with absolutely no regard for anyone else’s tailgate. We didn’t care. We were lost in our game, pretending to be the very people we were about to go inside to watch.

So, you could say the dream has always been there.

But on December 6, 2003, my dream really began to grow. I looked curiously down from the top row of Arrowhead Stadium as the Wildcats dominated the undefeated, untouchable Oklahoma Sooners, 35-7, in the Big 12 Championship. It was a blistering cold night in Kansas City, and I was only 7 years old, but the euphoria I felt from watching that game is something I will never forget.

It was in that moment I knew I would give absolutely anything to wear the Purple and Silver someday.

Eleven years later I was going into my senior year at Blue Valley Northwest High School, and it appeared my dream was not going to work out. It wasn’t surprising. I didn’t have many great stats at receiver my junior year. I certainly wasn’t blowing anyone away with my combine measurables. In fact, as Coach Snyder will attest to, according to my 40 time, I was quite slow. Not to mention less than 3% of high school football players actually go on to play at the Division I level.

So, it made sense when the only people to call me were coaches at Division III schools. But then came a glimmer of hope. The first game of my senior year, I finished with 380 receiving yards and four touchdowns.

The thought clawed at the back of my mind: Maybe I do belong at the Division I level.

The next day, I eagerly clipped together the film of the first game and sent it off to the K-State coaching staff, hoping for a positive response. I knew there was no way anyone else had a better one-game highlight tape than me. After all, I had broken the state record for receiving yards in a game. The coaches would be gushing over the film. They had to be.

I was wrong.

The K-State coaches politely informed me that they were already full at receiver spots. I quickly responded that I simply wanted to be a walk-on member of the program, to which they again responded: “No. They didn’t need me.”

Enter Goal #12: No Self-Limitations – Never let someone else tell you what you are capable of.

This is something I’ve held on to ever since I first heard of Coach Snyder’s 16 Goals for Success. It’s something I looked at every day when I glanced at the mirror in my bathroom growing up, where I had the 16 Goals taped. It is what I grabbed onto when I needed hope the most.

I kept bombarding the K-State coaches, at least once every other week, with emails throughout my senior year. I stressed the qualities I had to offer and expressed my desire to be a part of their program. I told them about my state record and that I was a Kansas 6A All-State selection at wide receiver. I sent all my highlight clips that I could find. When that didn’t work, I emphasized non-football aspects, like being one of six national finalists for the Wendy’s High School Heisman, chosen for showing strength in athletics, academics, and community service.

Finally, after all this effort, I got into contact with Coach Andre Coleman, K-State’s wide receivers coach at the time.

Still the process was painfully slow.

It drug into the spring of my senior year. I constantly heard the question, “So where you going to school next year?” Friends, classmates, teachers, everyone wanted to know. Even I wanted to know.

At this point, I was seriously considering three options: K-State, if they ever considered me; a preferred walk-on spot at Oklahoma State; and RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), a Division III school in New York. But I was on the hook, waiting for the news I felt would never come. While less than 3% of high school football players go to the Division I level, I venture to guess that 99.9% of them knew where they were going by signing day in February.

But not me, I was still in the dark.

When we took a senior class picture that spring, we were supposed to wear a shirt representing the college we were going to attend. I still had no idea what I was going to do. But, naturally, I wore a K-State shirt in the picture, holding out hope that things would eventually come together.

At the final hour, in late April, I got the call that would change my life. My heart raced as my phone rang. It was Coach Del Miller, K-State’s co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at the time, and the recruiter of the Kansas City area. It was do-or-die time. I was either going to hear the words that would make my dream come true, or this dream would finally be put to rest.

I ran to my room to answer the call, anxious to hear what was coming. I was offered a spot to join the program as a walk-on and, about two seconds after hearing it, I eagerly accepted, scared they might rescind the offer if I wasn’t quick on the draw.

The dream lived on. I was getting my shot. I was coming home to Manhattan

***

Being a walk-on is a special thing.

You pay your own way for school and sacrifice so much time just to be a part of the team, for the love of the game. For me, I came in to college with significant academic scholarships. I needed to maintain a 3.5 GPA in order to keep this scholarship, not an easy task in mechanical engineering.

So, playing football was a sacrifice for me, knowing I might be putting my grades in jeopardy to play football. Unlike most of my teammates, academics was my scholarship; football was my extra-curricular activity. I was giving up a traditional college experience to be a part of the team, with no assurances of receiving anything in return.

I took pride in it. I wore a chip on my shoulder because of it. I still do. I love to wear my “Walk On” hoodie, even though I’m now on scholarship. I still wear it to show people who I am and where I came from, to show everyone who told me I wasn’t good enough they were wrong and, maybe, give hope to those trying to follow in my footsteps that they can do it, too.

I’m not ashamed to be a walk-on. But the stereotypes are still there. Walk-ons aren’t good enough to actually play, to be leaders, or contribute on the field. So, how do you overcome those stereotypes and go from being a walk-on to actually getting on the field? A starter? A team captain?

Now, that’s the trick.

***

The transition from high school to college is an odd thing. You go from being the top dawg at your school to the bottom of the totem pole. Coming into a Power 5 program as a walk-on, you go to the bottom of the bottom. For a while I just had to accept that. Looking around the receivers room, there were some great players. I was clearly the worst one there. But I was just happy to be in the room.

I was content to just be a part of the program, at first.

Adjusting to college practices, workouts and the crazy schedule of being a college student-athlete is tough for everyone. Fortunately, I had been preparing for this my whole high school career.

I was used to waking up at 5:30 for a workout, spending all day in the classroom, all afternoon on the practice field, all night doing homework, and then repeating it all again the next day. It was exactly what I expected from a college program. I loved the grind of it.

I spent my first fall in Manhattan as a scout team guy. I was focused on doing the best job I could of emulating the opposing team’s offense each week in attempt to prepare our defense. This was a great experience, but I was really eager for spring ball that next March. I hoped to prove I was capable of being more than just a scout team player and work my way into the mix. However, at the conclusion of my first round of spring practice, Coach Coleman sat me down in his office and told me I was not good enough to be on the north end (the side of the field with the 1’s and 2’s).

This was tough for me, entering my second season, still a member of the scout team. This was a hard time in my career because people began to ask me why I wasn’t on the travel squad and why I wasn’t getting to play. I began to ask myself what I was doing here. I was working so hard in workouts and practice but gaining nothing – I thought, at the time – in return.

It was easier my first year when I was just a redshirt and obviously wasn’t expected to play. But now, as a second year, I had people around me telling me how it was cool that I was on the team but it wasn’t like I would ever “actually play.” Part of me believed them. Not many guys play two years of scout team and then go on to actually play. Why would I be any different?

But I always fell back on Goal #12: No Self-Limitations.

While no one was watching, I was working. I took scout team as an opportunity to get better every single day.

Luckily for me, I was not alone in that mindset. Skylar Thompson showed up and was the scout team quarterback for my second year. I’m not sure why but Sky and I clicked from the jump. It was probably because we approached scout team every day with the same mentality: Make the starting defense look bad. We wanted to prove ourselves. The best way to do it was by beating a Big 12 defense every day in practice.

I remember countless times catching the ball wide open across the middle of the field and hearing our defensive coordinator scream, “Reload!” So, we reset the play and ran it again. The defense knew what was coming this second time around, so I was blanketed by defenders, but somehow Skylar always managed to squeeze the ball between a sea of defensive backs and drop it right into my arms. Again, we heard, “Reload!” and we did it all over again. Sometimes we had to just move on to the next play, even though they hadn’t stopped us.

Skylar and I loved that. I smiled every time I heard that reload call, because I was doing my job, and I was getting better.

Going into my second round of spring ball, I felt like I was really hitting my stride. I had been grinding all off-season in workouts, desperate to separate myself in any way. I beat starters in sprints by multiple steps, trying to prove that I belonged. I wasn’t faster than anyone, but I was definitely going to outwork everyone. I improved a little bit every day and, after two years, all those little improvements were beginning to stack together. They started to really show.

Still, two weeks into spring ball and I hadn’t even scraped a rep with the 1’s and 2’s. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. As a walk-on, a scholarship guy is typically going to get at least 10 opportunities before you even get one. So, if you are lucky enough to get one, you better have put the work in and prepared yourself to make the most of it. It might be the last one you ever get.

For the first half of spring ball, I couldn’t even get a rep with the 2’s. Two weeks later, I started the spring game with the 1’s.

Morale of the story: You never know what’s going to happen.

The receiver room had suffered a couple of injuries, there was a scrimmage in which I played extraordinarily well, and all of the sudden I was on the map. I took one opportunity and turned it into two. And then three, and so on, until the point where I was actually getting snaps with the starters.

I tried to carry all this momentum into fall camp, entering my third year (redshirt sophomore season). I was playing well, clearly a changed player from when I had first showed up on campus. But, with the receiver room back to full strength, I was still probably the eighth or ninth guy on the depth chart. My main focus was just getting a spot on the bus. Getting on the field on special teams, making the travel roster, those were my goals. Playing actual snaps at receiver was just a pipe dream.

Again, you never know when your opportunity is coming, so you better come to work every day like you are the starter.

While I was not really in the game plan much at receiver going into the first game of the 2017 season, I did manage to win a starting job on all four special teams units. That alone meant the world to me. It was my opportunity to contribute to the team, and since the day I showed up, that’s all I wanted to do.

However, a few opportunities at receiver also started to show up throughout that first game. Basically, every other series when we went to a four wide receiver set, which didn’t happen often in our offense, I got to go in. It wasn’t a bunch of snaps, but I was out there, trying to contribute, to make the most of each snap.

At one point, Byron Pringle caught a comeback route and I made a block downfield to spring him for a touchdown. As we celebrated on the sideline, Jesse Ertz, our quarterback at the time, asked all the receivers how our routes went on the play. I told him what I saw from the defense. Then told him how I ran my route and, not to sound greedy or anything, that I would’ve been wide open down the middle of the field. But he threw it to Byron and we scored, so I didn’t think much of it.

Late in the first half, with the ball at our own 30-yard line, I found myself out there again. We got the same play call we scored on earlier and, I quickly realized, the defense was in the same look. My heart rate quickened a little as I looked at Jesse, anticipating he remembered what we had talked about earlier on the sideline.

I ran my route the exact same as the first time, stemming at the safety on the opposite hash like I was running an over route then sticking my foot in the ground while adding a head fake at the top and pushing straight vertical. I knew I had separation but I kept my head down and dug for five hard steps. Then I looked back in time to see the ball fly out from behind the linemen and float in the sky above me.

Time stopped for me as I saw the ball hanging overhead. Was this really going to happen? Fifty-thousand sets of eyes followed the ball as it drifted down to me with nothing but green grass around.

I can still feel that moment. I was so shocked when I crossed the goal line that I didn’t even know what to do. Only in my dreams did I ever think of actually catching a pass in Bill Snyder Family Stadium. I had never dreamed this big, a 70-yard touchdown.

That first touchdown created some trust and led to more opportunities. I turned those into even more and, eventually, everyone begins to forget that you were a slow walk-on, who wasn’t good enough to play at the D-I level. Now, I’m writing to you as a scholarship player, a 3-year starter, a team captain, and an Honorable Mention All-Big 12 wide receiver ranked sixth in program history in career yards per catch average and 15th in career receiving yards, who’s set to complete a master’s degree in data analytics in May of 2020.

For me, it falls back to one big thing, Goal #12: No Self-Limitations.

It started with Coach Snyder’s Goals, but the message was continued by Coach Klieman and our new coaching staff. Coach Klieman talks about winning the day, and then stacking those days together one after the next. Coach Ben Newman provided me the resources to create my “Prizefighter Day,” a basis for maximizing my potential every single day.

All of those, amongst other things, are pieces in my foundation, working together to help me walk this path, and never letting someone put a cap on what I can achieve.

They apply well beyond the white lines of the football field, too.

So, whether you are an aspiring high school athlete, someone with lofty career aspirations, or in some other walk of life, the message is the same. If you can block out the outside noise and stick to the process, you will achieve so much more than you ever thought possible. But there is no easy way. There are a lot of sacrifices along the way. It’s a never ending-campaign of hard work and discipline, but I promise you can get where you want to go.

Just don’t ever let someone else tell you what you are capable of. I know I never will.