Draining season keeps going: 'It seems like we keep getting punched'
MADISON - It was business as usual for Wisconsin on Monday morning. The team was collecting itself just a couple days after suffering its fifth loss of the season.
Kicking off the week of prep, the younger group of players had been lifting, while veterans were just arriving in the building when news began to trickle through the locker room.
Former Wisconsin wide receiver Devin Chandler, who was part of the 2020 recruiting class and spent the previous two seasons with the program, was a victim in a senseless shooting in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Interim head coach Jim Leonhard and the staff had reached out “knowing Devin was there to make sure he was OK.” Tragically, he was one of the three young student athletes at Virginia involved in the incident.
“It just hit you straight in the heart,” Leonhard said. “There’s no other way around it… The thing that I’ll never forget about him (Chandler) is his smile. That kid lit up a room. He had it all the time.”
The shooting occurred approximately 900 miles away in Charlottesville but hit home for a group that was still close with Chandler. Recruited in the same class, James Thompson Jr. described him as a “brother” and thought back to the times in the dorms, going through two-a-days, fall camp and workouts.
“We all had an emotional connection with Devin,” Thompson Jr. said.
Speaking to a number of different players Tuesday morning, each had a different connection with Chandler. And yet, each player who spoke always pointed out the smile and joy Chandler displayed.
“Every day he always had a smile on his face,” Graham Mertz said. “No matter what the circumstance was or what was going on that day, he just had an infectious personality that everyone can cling to. Anytime in the locker room when guys were beat up - whether it was in camp or whatever - he was always that one guy that would be in there dancing, making jokes and making guys smile.
“Every day he had that infectious smile - a personality that was special.”
Asked if any memory of Chandler stuck out in his mind, Mertz couldn’t pinpoint one. He had “too many,” as the quarterback found himself running through them in his head repeatedly in the 24 hours since.
Standing in front of half a dozen reporters, Nick Herbig collected himself for a few moments before answering what his emotions had been like.
“It's tough, man,” he said. “I don’t even have words for you. That was my dog. Just makes you appreciate every day you have… it doesn’t make sense.”
Herbig was a part of the same class that entered the program in 2020. In the moments after news broke, Herbig, along with Skyler Bell and Curt Neal, posted touching moments together, which included dancing in the locker room, time spent living together as roommates and the day Chandler signed with Wisconsin.
“I never seen the guy not smiling,” Herbig said. “He was smiling all the time. Always dancing having a good time. That’s somebody that really enjoyed life.”
“Yesterday I shed some tears because, luckily, I was able to get close to Devin here," Rodas Johnson added. "The thing that struck me about the whole situation is the guy couldn’t have known Devin to do that to him because the guy that Devin was was just a great person.
“We understand that no matter how we feel today, the ball is going to get kicked off Saturday, so we have to hone in those emotions and put it to football. That’s what he would want us to do, so I’m just going to live through him.”
The emotional hit marks yet another toll in what has been a draining past few months for the program, dating back to the preseason in April when former running backs coach Gary Brown lost a battle to cancer. Sandwiched in between has been a coaching change and uneven results on the field.
“This has been the craziest year of my life probably, especially in football,” Herbig said.
“Losing (Gary Brown) was the first time I’d ever been up close and personal to death, so that was one of the lowest points that I’ve had and throughout the season having struggles, Braelon Allen added. "Coach gets fired, you lose a close friend and it just piles up one thing after another."
Unfortunately for the team the group has become accustomed to battling through adversity. That kind of hardship has stuck the group together and kept them going.
“We got 115 guys that are willing to pick each other up and hold each other up,” Mertz said. “That’s been my focus the last couple of days is how do you bring guys with you and keep each other up. No one here has to do it alone and everyone here knows that.”
The program will be asked to come together once more this season, something the group has had to do time and time again over the course of 11 weeks.
“When you come up short and adversity hits you learn a lot,” Leonhard said. “You learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about the people around you, the commitment of everyone involved, and unfortunately it seems like we keep getting punched.
“We’re going to get back up and that’s all we can do as a program, as players, as men. Just continue to grind through it and that was part of my message yesterday. I don’t know the answer. It’s hard to understand why certain things happen.
You just have to trust that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and just continue to push and stay together and support each other and you should find that reward at the end.”
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