Seniors Wistrom, Peter star
in solid defensive front four
By Antone Oseka
Senior Reporter
The Nebraska defense has a lot of
question marks this season. None of
them involve the front four.
Despite the loss of two seniors from
last season’s team, they should be
replaced with two reliable players.
The anchor of the NU defensive
front four will be right rush end Grant
Wistrom. Wistrom, a returning All
American will be the focus of many NU
opponents this season.
Wistrom loses tag-team partner
Jared Tomich on the left side, but will
benef t from the tandem of Chad Kelsay
and Mike Rucker, who will be taking
Tomich’s place.
Kelsay should start, but Rucker
should see significant playing time.
“Chad is a great football player,
Mike is a great football player. I don’t
see much of a dropoff coming,”
Wistrom said.
Jason Peter returns at defensive
tackle. Peter said he hopes he and
Wistrom see some double-team block
ing early in the season.
“There’s a chemistry between the
front four guys,” he said. “If they double
team us, they leave someone else open.”
Wistrom said that if he and Peter are
Heistaska PfBMiBffl Mike Rucker and Chad Kelsay should split
playing time at defensive left end.
Defensive Line
Name Ht. Wt Yr.
Jason Peter 6-5 285 Sr.
Grant Wistrom 6-5 255 Sr.
Chad Keisay 6-3 250 Jr.
Mike Rucker 6-6 250 Jr.
Jason Wiltz 6-3 310 Jr.
Steve Warren 6-1 295 So.
" Statistics are from the 1996season
getting double teamed, but not making
tackles, they will be doing their jobs.
“We’re supposed to keep the line
men off the linebackers,” Wistrom said.
“We’re not supposed to make tackles.”
Wistrom set a personal record with
15 tackles against Colorado last season.
Peter recorded 11 tackles against
Arizona State last year, his personal
best. Both also recorded touchdowns
during the 1996 season. Wistrom inter
cepted a pass against Michigan State
and ran it back nine yards for the score.
Peter recovered a fumble in the 1997
FedEx Orange Bowl and ran it back 31
yards for the score.
Kelsay, Rucker and Jason Wiltz,
who replaces Jeff Ogard in the middle of
the defensive line, all know the task they
have in replacing the players that left.
“With Chad, once you get the start
ing nod, it’s a little different,” Peter said.
This whole season is a little different
for the defensive line. As a unit, they
have one goal, to return to Miami and
the Orange Bowl to play for the national
championship. To get there, the defense
has to win the Big 12 North Division
and then win the Big 12 championship
game, a game in which the defense was
disappointing last season.
“The whole defense was pretty dis
gusted with ourselves,” Peter said. “One
game, we let it slip through our fingers.
We want a dominant defense and it all
starts up front.”
Cross country runners aim to win more than meet
By Sam McKewon
Staff Reporter
Mention a golf course to a golfer and
thoughts of birdies, bogeys, water hazards,
trees and sand will quickly come to mind.
But mention a golf course to a cross
country athlete and a totally different
picture will come to mind.
The majority of all cross country
meets run on golf courses. The national
championship this year will be run on the
University of South Carolina’s golf course.
Running on golf courses is just one
of the many aspects that makes cross
country a unique sport.
“We mostly run in the rough, not on
the fairways,” said Nebraska men’s and
women’s cross country coach Jay
Dirksen. “Sometimes we’ll run around
the greens, but not very much.”
Cross country is different from the
.
majority of typical sports because it opts
for a system that puts the emphasis on the
end of the season instead of winning each
meet Depending on the difficulty of the
meet, a team can be among the country’s
top five and not win a meet all year.
That is a possibility for the NU
men’s team this season. Last season, NU
had two runners, Jonah Kiptarus and
Cleophas Boor, finish in the top three at
the NCAA Championships, but the
Husker cross country team finished sev
enth overall. National champion
Stanford didn’t have any runners finish
within the top three, but all five of its
runners finished within the top 15.
Dirksen said another thing over
I
looked about cross country is the physi
cal punishment that an athlete must
endure throughout the race.
“You’re in so much pain toward the
end of the race, that it takes a lot of men
tal toughness to finish strong,” Dirksen
said. “Only the best runners are able to
hold up through that kind of difficulty.”
In the end, though, the goal for cross
country runners is the same as any other
athlete’s - to perform the best they can.
“It doesn’t always show up in head
to-head competition, like football,”
Johnson said, “but you want to go up
against the best to measure yourself.
That’s the only way to know how good
you really are.”
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