Simoni Lawrence can’t wait.
Understandable, considering how much waiting he’s already done. The Minnesota Gophers’ junior linebacker will make his Big Ten debut Saturday at Ohio State, a game he’s spent two years preparing for.
His journey to Minnesota was a long one. His parents came to the United States from Liberia the year before he was born, pushed from their home by civil war. Lawrence committed to attend Penn State while at Upper Darby (Pa.) High School, but he failed to qualify academically. Then he was rebuked by his first junior college choice.
No wonder he can’t wait for Saturday.
“I expect a lot of people to be there,” Lawrence said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Lawrence is one of the major contributors from coach Tim Brewster’s first full recruiting class. He is the kind of linebacker Brewster and his staff want in the era of spread offenses: although just 6-1 and 215 pounds, he’s physical enough to play the run and fast enough to cover both tight ends and receivers.
“Athletically, he is what we want,” linebackers and special teams coach John Butler said. “He’s the prototype.”
For now, Lawrence is the guy. Through four games he is fourth on the team with 18 total tackles. He has broken up a pass, forced a fumble and has 1 1/2 sacks. He also returned an interception 50 yards for a touchdown last week against Florida Atlantic.
It is an inexperienced, young Gophers team that will be playing at Ohio State this week, but do not expect Lawrence to be stage-struck.
According to his high school coach, Rich Gentile, Lawrence always has wanted to be in the middle of the action. And he usually is.
Lawrence was a running back in Upper Darby’s one-back offense. He touched the ball maybe 80 percent of the time, scoring 32 touchdowns his senior year.
“Once a reporter asked me why I gave him the ball 38 times in a game,” Gentile said. “I told him it was because I couldn’t give it to him 39 times.”
Gentile still talks to Lawrence regularly. He texted his former star at 2:30 a.m. Sunday after watching a replay of the Gophers-Florida Atlantic game.
“He wanted to carry the team on his back,” Gentile continued. “But he was never stuck on himself. He took the blame for everything if we didn’t win a game. And I think we only lost three times in his career.”
Maybe the only time the two disagreed was in the title game his senior season. Upper Darby had fourth-and-goal from the 8, and Gentile called a pass that fell incomplete.
“He wanted the ball,” Gentile said. “He still calls me about that.”
So how did a record-setting running back get to Minnesota as a linebacker?
Academics prevented him from taking a Division I scholarship out of high school, so Gentile called perennial junior college powerhouse Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pa., to see if it would be interested.
It wasn’t.
“Simoni came in and said, ‘I’m average,'” Gentile recalled. “I said, ‘Simoni, you’re not average.’ I called Valley Forge Academy. I knew the coach, and they were glad to have him.”
Lawrence had dreams of the Big Ten and the spotlight at Penn State, but he faced reality.
“I knew I had to get focused and take care of business,” he said. “Both on the field and off.”
When Lawrence got to Valley Forge in Wayne, Pa., he found a logjam at running back behind Bryan Williams, who is now playing at Akron. Lawrence wanted to get on the field, and safety was the best option. It took only one or two good hits for him to know he’d made the right decision.
“I realized I liked doing the hitting better,” he said.
Lawrence had 107 tackles and 10 interceptions as a freshman. After being named conference player of the year twice, he surprised some folks when he chose the Gophers. The stiffest recruiting competition might have come from Brigham Young; Lawrence and his family are Mormons, and there was at least a little pressure to go there.
“I just told them no, that I felt at home in Minnesota,” he said. “And it’s been great.”
Gentile still has that rejection letter from Lackawanna.
“I was going to send it back to the guy and say, ‘Why don’t you check out Minnesota next time the Gophers are on television, and you tell me he’s an average player.’ But I guess I won’t do that.”
