Wolves’ QB Rummell Beats Adversity
Alex Painter
Sunday April 6, 2008
Every player in arena football has a unique and often intriguing story. Highly-touted Division I athletes who couldn’t quite make the cut to NFL, as well as Division II and III athletes who, well, just want to make the cut somewhere formulate the teams’ rosters. It is particularly difficult for a Division III athlete to garner much attention; those who do must be dominant.
The Manchester Wolves newly-acquired quarterback Justin Rummell has faced an uphill battle against adversity since he was in high school. “I broke my hand during my junior baseball season,” Rummell said, “You go to all of your college camps the summer before your senior season. When I went to all of my camps, my hand was broken, my throwing hand at that. So I wasn’t able to showcase all of my skills.”
So, despite being worthy of going to a much bigger school with a more reputable football program, Rummell settled on Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.
“I really clicked with Coach Keesling (Earlham’s Head Coach), and I felt like I could go to Earlham and change a school’s football tradition.”
While at Earlham, Rummell had an illustrious career and rewrote the school’s record book, finishing his career with 789 completions, 9,390yards, and 76 touchdown passes.
During Rummell’s redshirt senior year, he was injured the second game the year before, enabling him to play one more year, NFL scouts began to show up at practice.
“A total of 25 teams came to Earlham to scout. It was a dream come true. Before the 2007 draft, only the New York Giants and Detroit Lions called my cell phone telling me I had a shot as a free agent.”
Rummell took a shot at the Detroit Lions rookie camp, but was released. A day before being released, the New York Giants called, extending an invite to their rookie camp. Not realizing he would be released the following day, Rummell respectfully declined.
“When I got released I tried calling New York back, but they had already picked someone else up,” Rummell said. Adversity calls once again.
So, about midway through the 2007 season, Rummell was picked up by the Spokane Shock of the af2. Rummell served primarily as a backup, but made good use of his time in, completing 69% of his passes for 13 touchdowns and only one interception.
“It took me a couple plays to get into the flow, but once I felt comfortable, I fell in love with the arena game,” Rummell said, “arena football is any quarterback’s dream. What quarterback wouldn’t want to only hand the ball off 5 to 6 times a game?”
After the 2007 season Rummell resigned with the Shock for the 2008 season, with the understanding he would be the number one quarterback this year, but it was not meant to be. On March 25th, Rummell was traded to the Manchester Wolves just days before the Wolves first game on April 5th.
"I'm looking for who is consistent enough to lead this team," said Wolves’ Head Coach Danton Barto in a press conference regarding the trade, "right now, (the current QBs) haven't been consistent enough. That position is so important, I don't want it to be a huge learning curve for us where we're doing well everywhere else and struggling there. I think Manchester went through that last year."
Problem solved. In the Wolves’ first game on April 5th, Rummell completed 22 of 33 passes for 305 yards, five touchdowns and an interception in Manchester’s 45-39 win over the Mahoning Valley Thunder.
The popular saying is “adversity breeds character”, and in this case, it couldn’t ring anymore true.
