Zach Potter

np_husker · November 21, 2008

From ice delivery to tormenting opponents

BY RICH KAIPUST

WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — Zach Potter can't say he fancied himself as Trev Alberts or Travis Hill or Grant Wistrom, or any of the other great Nebraska defensive players who might have been on that same field as Potter ran wild a few hours before home kickoffs in the early 1990s.

Potter was just out there. Maybe the kid knew he wanted to do something special someday, but there was no clarity as far as dreams or visions.

"We'd have a ball," Potter said. "Just basically run around and be a little kid out there. You were running around on the Nebraska Cornhuskers' football field. It was kind of a neat moment."

Potter these days is an NU defensive end whose every move is watched by 85,000. Back then, a successful appearance at Memorial Stadium involved an ice truck, a free hot dog and an afternoon with dad.

Dave Potter oversaw the delivery of ice for Husker home games and usually brought along Zach, who wasn't yet 10 but still helped. The crew arrived four hours before kickoff with two hours to get its work done.

"We'd get up here and we'd be pushing the ice carts around, throwing them into the concession stands and getting free hot dogs from the vendors," Zach Potter said. "Then you'd go and run around on the field. You'd see players walking around, or coaches, because we'd be getting out of there right before game time.

"We'd have to take the ice truck back over to the plant. We'd get dropped off back over here and go to the game."

That was Potter's first memory of Nebraska football. But then it blended into the background for a while.

From that time into high school at Omaha Creighton Prep, he says, "my whole life was basketball."

Potter makes his final Memorial Stadium delivery next Friday, running from the tunnel for his last home game when the Huskers host Colorado.

"I have a lot of weird thoughts that go through my mind when you have some free time out on the field," Potter said. "You look around and see 85,000 people, and definitely go back to those days when I was little and see how much I've grown up over the years."

Potter has been roaming the field with a purpose for most of his senior season.

The 6-foot-7, 280-pounder has at least one tackle for a loss in nine of 11 games. He shares the team lead for sacks with nose tackle Ndamukong Suh at 5½.

"I think he's had a great year from start to finish, but I will tell you that I think his confidence level has jumped in the last five or six weeks," NU defensive coordinator Carl Pelini said.

As Potter has tormented quarterbacks Todd Reesing and Josh Freeman the last two Saturdays, it's also evident that he has fully emerged from tall shadows cast by both Adam Carriker and the high expectations that followed him to NU.

Potter admits it was hard replacing Carriker, the No. 13 pick overall in the 2007 draft. Starting for the first time as a junior, Potter played OK on a Husker defense that had few bright spots.

"I had huge shoes to fill, and I think a lot of people doubted me," he said. "I think they tried comparing us a lot early there in my junior season, when really the comparisons weren't very realistic because we're two completely different players."

Potter came into this season more comfortable knowing he had a year as a starter behind him. He became a leader and an anchor on a defensive line that has flourished. He says he's definitely more of a complete player.

All the things people wanted from him but weren't always patient about getting — perhaps the curse of his size and some of the hype coming out of high school.

"You know, you hear the echoes," Potter said. "You read stuff. You hear people doubting you, and it makes you work that much harder. I just kind of turned all that negative attitude into reason for me to keep working hard and putting a good product out on the field."

The momentum Potter has built has him thinking about the NFL. Pelini said his size and length should intrigue teams, as well as a future ability to be a "hybrid" lineman who could play inside or out. It's a future Potter maybe didn't consider realistic all that long ago. Things change. Minds change.

Potter kept playing basketball at Prep but figured out football was his future. He visited Notre Dame but decided it was too far from home. He went to Kansas State and realized the Wildcats weren't even getting a sellout that day for Oklahoma.

He came to Nebraska, minus the ice truck.

"It's funny to think back," said Dave Potter, vice president of the Midwest operating division for Arctic Glacier Ice, which back then was Valley Ice. "He'd try to help, empty it into some of the coolers. Then go run around. Sometimes we would take my nephews.

"When we were done we'd get a hot dog and a pop. It was a fun way to bond."

That father-son relationship always included sports. Dave put Zach in leagues where he would be challenged — no matter the sport — and the two hit everything from Husker games to Creighton basketball to the College World Series to the golf course.

Dave Potter often is hanging around NU practices, waiting afterwards for his son, and Zach said Dad might have just as hard a time letting go next week.

"It's going to be tough for both my parents, I think, especially my dad, though," Zach Potter said. "He loves coming to these games. Hopefully I do make the next level, and I think he'd still be making the trip every Sunday then, instead of Saturday. He'd just adjust his schedule."