Sam Foltz’ Presence Felt All The Way To The NFL
On Saturday, the Nebraska football team, as well as the rest of Sam Foltz’s friends and family honored the late young man at his funeral.
It’s easy to see that Foltz touched lives all over Nebraska. What many Husker fans may still not understand is that he touched lives all over the country as well. This is a man who apparently made friends easily and once people counted him as a friend, they considered him a good friend.
We’ve heard talk about how close he was to Mike Sadler, the former Michigan State punter who also passed away in the car crash that too Foltz’s life. We’ve also heard about the current Wisconsin punter who is going to wear number 27 this season in honor of the Husker player.
What you may not realize is there is one player who is trying to get ready for his first NFL season who feels the loss of both Foltz and Sadler particularly sharply. Peter Mortell, who punted for Minnesota in college, recently talked to ESPN about a group iMessage he can’t bring himself to delete.
In fact, the Packers’ rookie continues to post messages, and while he knows Sadler and Foltz aren’t going to respond, he told the website that he knows they’re reading the thread even from where they are now.
The iMessage thread includes Sadler, Foltz, Wisconsin kicker Drew Meyer and former Syracuse punter Riley Dixon. The conversation this month had centered on which of the guys were going to go to the camp that Foltz and Sadler were attending when they died.
Dixon had already said he wasn’t going to be able to go this year, and Mortell had finally decided he wouldn’t be able to go either because of NFL training camps starting up. This was a big deal, because the group didn’t get to see each other all that often.
“Even though we only saw each other face-to-face a couple times a year, when we’d play each other or at this camp,” Meyer told ESPN, “we had a special bond.”
While some people might think the Big Ten is such a competitive league that players from different schools in the conference wouldn’t have the desire or the ability to become friends. It turns out quite the opposite is true. Meyer told one story about how he was almost late for the opening of a game between Wisconsin and Nebraska because he spent too much time talking to Sam Foltz during the pregame.
That likely doesn’t surprise anyone who knows Foltz. There are likely stories quite similar when it comes to Mike Sadler. As the college football world continues to move forward (Nebraska will officially start their fall camp next Wednesday) And the NFL teams start evaluating who’s going to make their squads and who aren’t, it’s always interesting to stop and think about the people under those helmets.
Come Saturdays and Sundays this fall, these young men will be doing everything they can to help their teams win. These guys were opponents on the field, but they were friends off it. By all accounts, Sam Foltz was a friend the young men he left behind are going to remember for a very long time.