The battles Nick Malone endured to become a starter

The dream, we all imagine, is to eventually get a scholarship, and certain one driving factor, but there is something deeper and the one-time walk on from Morgantown High, Nick Malone, offered it up last season during an interview and expounded upon it this spring now that he owns a scholarship and is an important part of the offensive line rotation as it tries to find its own identity in the post-Zach Frazier era.

“I didn’t get an offer out of high school,” Malone related last season. “My goal when I got here was to eventually get a scholarship, but mostly I wanted a chance to play.”

Think about that for a moment. Even more than the scholarship, Malone wanted playing time. To see a walk-on put in the same time as scholarship players. He grunts and groans and sweats — and, yes, bleeds — the same way a scholarship player does, but come Saturday he slips quietly into the background.

And playing the game, that is what he wants. He doesn’t care whether it’s as a starter or reserve, as a special team player ... just “put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today” is what he wants, as the song “Centerfield” so aptly put it.

You have to earn it and it isn’t easy.

The players you compete with on a daily basis are bigger, stronger, faster and more experienced. It’s a huge turnaround because in high school you were that guy who was bigger, stronger and faster.

“When I first got here, I was 260 pounds and that doesn’t get you very far on the Division 1 level,” Malone, now 6-5 and 300 pounds, admitted. “It’s working in the weight room, gaining weight, gaining muscle. It was a big transition. In high school, I could move people around pretty easily, but here they are lifting, too.”

There would be good days and bad days, highs and lows. And there was pressure being a hometown kid trying to make good.

“I feel like there was always a lot of pressure per se, coming out of Morgantown High straight here. I felt there was pressure on me to perform well, but it was a positive, too, because I was able to play in front of my family and my friends from the city. I could put on for them and show them I could do it.”

Playing time was one driving force, proving yourself another. As a walk-on, he would have talks occasionally with Rich Braham, the ultimate Morgantown walk-on who made good and turned himself into a star offensive lineman who built a career of more than a decade with the NFL Cincinnati Bengals.

“He came every once in a while when Noah Braham was getting recruited and I’d talk to him every once in a while. It was kind of like the mindset thing, ‘You got to have that chip on your shoulder being from Morgantown. You kind of have to outdo everybody. You have to prove them wrong. They overlooked me.’

“Proving them wrong is the big kind of thing.”

And there were other talks with coaches and players.

“Coach Brown and Coach (Matt) Moore, we always had one-on-one meetings. Being a walk on, you’re not known yet and you have to work your way up. Starting with those meetings at the beginning, it was kind of like ‘Oh, you can keep going” and as time went on they changed to ‘You got a bigger role now and you have to step in’.

“Expectations kind of changed.”

Talking to other players helped.

“The big thing about here is you don’t get treated like walk-ons. Everybody from Zach, Dante, Yates, Ja’Quay ... we were in the room together. It was kind of all for all.”

There were high points and low points as he pushed forward, but one thing never entered into the equation.

“Every football player has that low point, but giving up was never an option,” he said. “It’s kind of you know where you’re at and that you can build on it.”

Now, about playing time. Special teams are taken seriously at WVU and Malone volunteered to be a “shield” on the punt team, one of the guys who no one thinks about but who stands in front of the punter as protection.

“It’s not a pretty position, but like I said, it’s what my role is. I wanted to play. It didn’t matter ... offensive line, field goal, it didn’t matter to me. Being on the field as much as possible, doing as much as I could do to help win games was my big thing,” he said.

Malone grew in size, grew in strength and grew in stature. Then last year, he got his first real extended action in an important game.

“My role was to stay ready. I never thought I’d go in second and third series at Penn State last year,” he said.

But there was, out there before more than 100,000 fans and a national television audience.

Five weeks later, at Houston, he made his first start.

“It was a surreal moment, getting my first real career start at tackle,” Malone said, replacing an injured Wyatt Milum. “It was something I’ve been working for the past few years, and all the hard work I put in paid off.”