MSU-N Game Day Feature: Northern's Mountain of a Man

Clint Willis missed a lot of time last season due to an injury, and he didn't like it one bit. No the Lights' mountain of a man who plays left tackle isn't happy sitting on the sidelines.

However, missing football is part of the incredible story about how the massive 6-7, 300-pound senior from Gardiner, Montana came to be a Light in the first place.

Willis, who said he's always been tall, is now a four-year starter for the Lights, but, his path to Northern wasn't the traditional one, not by a long shot.

"I only played football through my sophomore year," Willis said ahead of Saturday's huge game with Rocky Mountain College. "Because that year, I got in a really bad car accident and I broke me leg. It was a pretty severe injury, and I wasn't able to play the rest of high school."

Upon graduation, Willis, at that time thought his football career was over, and he moved on. He said he worked construction jobs in Wyoming after high school, before eventually ending up working construction in Bozeman, where he met Dick Anderson.

"At that point, when I was working in Bozeman, I had pretty much decided I wanted to go to Northern to do diesel technology," Willis said. "So I got up here, and I started working a handful of construction jobs while I was going to school, and that's when I started meeting a lot of guys on the football team, and getting to know some of them, and I was realizing how much I missed playing."

By that point, it had been almost four years since Willis had played a competitive football game, and that was 8-man Class C football. But, with Willis' size and strength, there was no way new Northern head football coach Aaron Christenson was going to turn a way somebody like Willis, who was essentially looking to just walk on and try out at that time.

"I kind of just showed up," Willis said. "It was spring ball of Aaron's first year, and at that time, I wasn't sure if they'd put me on the OL or DL, but, Coach Cody O'Neil gave me a crash course on playing the offensive line, and that's where I ended up."

That was the spring of 2015, and Willis realized quickly, how much he had to learn about college football.

"That spring and into fall camp, I was backing up Pete Morales and Dylan Murphy, two really good players," Willis said. Those guys were showing me the ropes, but yeah, it was a tough transition. The defense had guys like Tyler Craig and Jordan Brusio and Pat Barnett, and those guys were kicking my ass in practice every single day. And it was pissing me off. So I knew I had to work hard, and that's what I did. I learned everything I could from those guys and coach O'Neil, and I just busted my ass to get as good as I could."

It worked, and it needed to work because Willis would be called into duty much sooner than he ever thought.

"Well my freshman year, I had to end up starting because Dylan Murphy got ruled ineligible by the NAIA for already having played too many years. So I got thrown into the fire. I was playing next to Matt McKeen and he helped me out a lot, but that first year, that was tough. But I learned a lot and I think I got a lot better because of playing that year, and playing with that offensive line, and going up against our really good D-Line every day in practice."

It stands to reason why starting as a freshman would always be tough. But, when you're a freshman who hadn't played football in five years, that's another kind of difficult altogether.

And yet, Willis overcame it. By his junior season he had blossomed into a dominant left tackle, and, had helped pave the way for Zach McKinley's record-setting rushing career, among other milestones.

However, Willis wasn't done having to deal with missing football. No, he'd have to go through that one more time because shortly into the 2017 season, he found out he had torn his achilles tendon, a devastating injury that forced him to miss much of last season, and also face the possibility that his football career might be done.

"It was the third series of our third game against Carroll last year," Willis said. "I thought I had just injured my calf actually so I dealt with it at first and I played in two more games. I didn't know then that my achilles had completely detached from my heel, so I kept trying to play on it. Then at the Eastern Oregon game, I pretty much couldn't walk at all after that game was over. My whole leg was swollen and it had been swollen pretty much that whole week. So I went back into the trainers, we did all the testing and everything, and at that point, I realized I was done for the season. I was pretty frustrated about it."

Frustrated enough that Willis didn't know if playing again was in the cards. After all, he'd already had to overcome one bad leg injury in his life. But, during Willis' recovery from the torn achilles, Northern's football program was going through a dramatic change with the arrival of new head coach Andrew Rolin, and Willis' mind-set started to change too.

"I was pretty upset about the injury," Willis said. "I didn't know if I could recover enough to play. But listening to Coach Rolin's perspective on life and football and everything, how positive he is and how much energy he has, that changed things for me. He really took care of me, we had a great spring, and things just got a lot better."

Better indeed. Fast forward to last Saturday, and there was Willis, Northern's giant left tackle, and the young Lights' most experienced player, a captain, leading the Lights onto the field, in brand spanking new uniforms, and in front of a capacity crowd at Blue Pony Stadium, for a game that would eventually turn into a 49-20 season-opening win over Mayville State. It was one of those perfect days for the Lights, the kind that have been so rare during Willis' tenure at Northern.

"It was a great day, a great win for us," Willis said after the victory over the Comets.

A great day for certain. And one that was nearly nine years in the making for Willis, who, after not playing football for five years, after walking on at Northern, after battling through last season's devastating injury, and after overcoming some long odds to even play college football, is now one of the best left tackles in the Frontier Conference.

"I am pretty proud of what I've done," Willis said. "It was never easy. A lot of ups and downs for sure. Just playing left tackle at this level was hard. I came from Gardiner, and 8-man football. Didn't know anything about pass-pro or any of that stuff. And the injuries I've had, it was difficult at times. But I've had a lot of great guys help me along the way, coaches who have helped me. It's been a lot of fun, and quite the journey for sure."

And the journey isn't over. No, even though it's Willis' last year of football, with what he and the Lights did last Saturday against Mayville, this last journey for Clint Willis has only just begun.