Mount Vernon, S.D., is a small town. It’s so small that Chad Greenway’s high school didn’t field a full football team. Instead Mount Vernon High School was one of many South Dakota schools that participated in nine-man football.
“It’s what I grew up watching and playing,” Greenway said. “If you watched it, it wouldn’t look all that different. It’s mostly the same formations with one less wide out and one less back.”
Greenway played safety and quarterback on his nine-man team, but not linebacker, the position he’s played five years in Iowa, and the position that has him headed for NFL riches next year.
The NFL seems like a dream come true to Greenway. But with playing in a major city such as New York or Chicago a valid possibility, Greenway will have to make adjustments beyond those of a typical rookie. Playing in large markets is a new experience for someone who grew up in a town of 477 people.
“You have to have that moxie and that ability to adjust to different settings,” Greenway said. “That’s something that I knew was going to happen.”
Greenway’s ascent to success is a far cry from his roots, having spent his youth on his family’s hog farm.
“We didn’t just have hogs,” Greenway said. “We had some cattle, corn and beans, too, and we were always really busy.
“I think it taught me more than anything about how to have a work ethic.”
That work ethic has made Greenway a semifinalist for the Butkus Award, given to the nation’s top linebacker, and a selection by Sporting News as a preseason All-American. Greenway has racked up 109 tackles so far. Last year he had 113, and two years ago he made 132 stops.
Greenway’s success is all the more impressive having torn his ACL during spring practice in 2002, an injury that required reconstructive knee surgery and cost him the first four games of the following season.
Still, Greenway might not be where he is without Abdul Hodge, his partner in crime in the Hawkeyes’ linebacking corps. Hodge, a senior who led Iowa in tackles in 2003 and 2004, has helped Greenway grasp the nuances of what had been an unfamiliar position.
“Abdul makes me good,” Greenway told the Waterloo Courier last year. “I have played linebacker for two years, and he’s played all his life. I came here having everything to learn, and he taught me how to play the position, what kind of demeanor you should bring to the position. His demeanor has rubbed off on me.”
Under Hodge’s tutelage the two have formed one of the most dynamic linebacking tandems in the country. They have been a rare constant on a team that started the season with national championship aspirations, which have been derailed by inconsistent play and losses to instate rival Iowa State and Big Ten giants Ohio State and Michigan.
Greenway has grown from the 6’4″ 200-pound farm boy who saw Iowa upset then-No. 12 Northwestern in 2000 as a recruit, the first Division I football game he ever attended. Now at 244 pounds, he has watched the accolades roll in while he prepares for the draft in six months.
As he faces the Wildcats for his last time on Saturday, five years after he saw them fall to the Hawkeyes and signed with Iowa immediately afterwards in the locker room, he still remembers what the upset showed him.
“It was good to see that in the Big Ten you always have a chance,” he said.
Greenway has made the most of his chance in the Big Ten. This April the other 476 residents of Mount Vernon will be watching as he reaps the rewards.
Reach David Kalan at [email protected]
