Former Navy Seal living a dream on Northwestern football team

By Joe Frollo | Posted 9/22/2015

The word “heroic” is too often used to describe the action on a football field.

A long touchdown run. A game-saving tackle or interception. Returning to play after twisting an ankle.

None of those things are heroic. They are part of the game, things done every day by ordinary human beings playing an extraordinary sport.

Heroes are men and women, boys and girls who transcend conventional achievement and give service to fellow humans.

It’s a term that deserves to be reserved for the most special among us.

Northwestern linebacker Tom Hruby is a hero.

A 31-year-old junior, Hruby came to Big Ten football after serving his country in the Navy Seals. Now just another face on campus, Hruby served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as an explosives expert.

“It was something I always wanted to do,” Hruby told NUsports.com. “I always wanted to come to Northwestern, and I always wanted to play college ball. I always thought I could, but it just wasn’t in the cards.
 
“It all just worked out. That’s part of the reason I just think this is meant to be.”

The son of a single mom growing up in the Northwest Indiana suburbs of Chicago, Hruby had a typical high school experience, playing football and hanging out with friends. He graduated but found college life difficult, dropping out after less than two years to come back home.

He worked in landscaping but never found himself until enlisting in the U.S. Navy and working toward the Seals.

“There’s everything you can think of. It’s meant to find the weaknesses in somebody and challenge them,” Hruby said. “Diving. Shooting. Sky diving. And the list goes on. Driving cars. Explosives. And be proficient in all that. To me, I couldn’t think of anything that was more exciting than that.
 
“I love challenges … (and) I’m glad I did it. It was an important chapter, an important part of shaping who I am.”

His Seal training included a something innocently termed “Basic Underwater Demolition.”  This 24-week stretch included a five-day span where candidates run 200 miles and spend countless hours under water. There is training in water competency, teamwork, weapons, navigation, rappelling, marksmanship and tactics.

Two-a-days? Please.

Hruby’s current schedule includes rising at 4 a.m. to get to football practice by 6. He lives with his wife, mother and four children in Crown Point, Ind., 63 miles from the Evanston, Ill., campus.

After practice, he drives to the Great Lakes Naval Station 40 miles away to finish out his commitment as an instructor. Then it’s back to Northwestern for a class schedule that doesn’t end until 8:30 p.m.

Home. Sleep. Rise. Do it again.

“He’s an inspiration to all of us, the sacrifices he made to put himself in the position to earn being a Seal,” Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald told NUsports.com. “There are few people in this world who can do that.”

And when the Navy released Hruby to play for Northwestern last November, he led his teammates onto Ryan Field against Michigan – a 10-9 loss to the Wolverines but a lifetime memory not only for Hruby but for the nearly 100 20-year-olds and coaches who followed him.  

“He’s not a pound-his-chest guy. He doesn’t talk a lot about what he did and what he had to go through,” Fitzgerald said. “But from a standpoint of respect, when guys ask him, he shares really good nuggets.

“We’ve asked him to do I don’t know how many roles. Linebacker. Defensive line. Fullback. Tight end. He’s just, ‘Whatever I can do.’ To know that he’s willing to do that, to be a father, to be a husband, to be a student and to be doing it as a Seal, there are very few people who could do what he does. Anytime you feel you’re having a hard day, you just look at Tom and go, ‘I’ve got it pretty good.’ ”  

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