Chicago, IL - ESPN 2 Fight Night came into Chicago and brought with it Antonio Escalante vs Gary Starks Jr. These two feather-weights battled it out and in the 3rd round Escalante dropped Starks to the mat, thus possibly ending Starks' career as a boxer.
Written by Chicago Sporting
Thursday, 31 July 2008 09:20
Garrett Wolfe grew up in Chicago and attended Northern Illinois University and was one of the NCAA's most electric running backs earning 1,928 yards rushing his senior year. That's more than even another common name, Reggie Bush. However his size (5'7" and 177 lbs) took away some of the steam he had going into the 2007 Draft, but as this Chicago product got the call from the Bears, he knew he had finally arrived. This is the Chicago Bears' Garrett Wolfe. This is his Purpose...
Deborah Martinez: What have you done do give back to the community? Garrett Wolfe: Overall, that I taken this past year. I've taken part of staples and also bears care and think it donated $60,000 to know my part but to the other 14 Chicago Park District involved in children's Bears football and also I helped my part with the staples park challenge where we won $25,000. I also paid for their uniforms and equipment. What is the staples journey park challenge? The staples journey park challenge was a challenge sponsored by staples. And what each part district has to do it and they had to get votes and the part that I grew up in and played football and on the west side of Chicago. I think they want up getting 75,000 votes. What they do would do is drive around to the different Staples locations and do the voting themselves and try to solicit people to get votes. The coaches and players really took it to an extreme. So whoever won at their park renovated? They receive 25,000 is towards renovation.
DM: What athlete was your biggest influence going up? GW: I would say Barry Sanders. I imagine you want to know as far as a humanitarian standpoint? No. However, they influenced you. Will I said PHN is because he was a very quiet guy and a not quiet, but there is a quiet guy. One thing that poured out of him was that he was a hard worker. He excelled at his craft, and he did it while and he always impressed me.
DM: Does family play a part in your success? GW: Very much. It's very important. I come from a large family. My mother's oldest of 15, the youngest really out of my brothers and sisters are two older brothers 71 first cousins. I come from a very, very large family, and I'm at the younger half so, I grew up with all my family members. I got a chance to be around all of them a lot. And I think that helped make me the young man than I am today. It kept me with a positive outlook on things I always thought that I could accomplish whatever I wanted because my family constantly reinforced those visions.
DM: How do you manage to stay out of the negative headlines? GW: (laughs) I just try to continue doing the things I've always done. I don’t go looking for trouble sometimes trouble can find you have to ground yourself in the current time in current place and remind yourself who you are where you come from and what you have to lose. I've run into a situation goes far in my life that is worth risking what I have and the possibility of what I have to gain just for something stupid just about grounding yourself not thinking a bigger is better than a situation and realizing that anything can happen to anyone including myself since about staying in the current time.
DM: What do you think is the hardest part about being a professional athlete? GW: Really I think it's its couple things being in Chicago, especially being from Chicago, it's something I've struggled with. You know worrying about whether or not if I do well here I am to live here this is where I grew up and swore I was born and raised. For me I’m not going to go live in Florida in 20 years I'm going to live in Chicago because I've worked hard throughout my entire life and I've built great relationships with people and I think from the relationships and the situations I've been in hell be able to do well for myself after football here in Chicago and not worry about people associating me with failure at some point granted with professional football sometimes it about right place right time and it may not matter how good or how talented you are money can influence a lot of things it can influence where you may play and how often you may play depending on if you're that guy or not my biggest concern is that some point people may say well he could've been this or he could have been that, he was so good. My biggest fear is failure because I've always worked hard for everything and I continue to work hard but the one thing about professional sports that you can work as hard as you want but if the opportunity never presents itself you may never get that opportunity to show you can do this at this level and people will always have question marks about you because you've never shown it, all in all in all you could've been able to do it the whole time it's just that the opportunity never presented itself and people may assume he was never good enough or he was a failure and he never really blossomed into everyone imagined he could have been.
DM: Out of all of the levels that you've played at which coach was your biggest influence and why? GW: Certainly my grammar school football coach, Robert Williams, because a lot of the stuff I learned from him in seventh and eighth grade or basic fundamentals and those are the things they carried me throughout high school and carry me throughout college and when I got to college a lot of the guys that play college ball with didn't know some of the things I learned in seventh grade he also taught me it was OK to cuss on the football field. I learned at an early age that it's a man's sport any sign of weakness can be trouble for you or me, (laughs- at my facial expression) not to say that women can play, but women couldn't play with men at a professional level. It's a tough sport and you don’t want to be considered soft or weak.
DM: You just finished your first year, still if you could tell the first your pro's one thing coming in this year, what would it be? GW: Relax your going to make mistakes all the coaches know and understand that sometimes they may yell you that the nature of the game you're probably going to get yelled at your whole life w to go hen you make mistakes, so just relax and make mistakes there since six-year vets that make mistakes but just learn from those mistakes don't make the same mistakes twice.
DM: When did you first fall in love with football? GW: I would have to say when I was probably nine years old, I couldn't play than, actually I had to sneak and start playing football and my mom was a little scared of the whole idea so I had to lie for a while when I started, and watching on TV, too, and seeing how much fun it appeared to be.
DM: What is your most memorable moment as an athlete? GW: To date would be the day I got drafted and when I got that call. I still never exactly what I was doing that whole day whose draft day I was trying to a lot of different things it's so long the longest day of your life for real because you never know when you're going to go or where you are going to go. (Were you extra happy to go to Chicago?) Oh no doubt I was really excited and they had just come back from the Super Bowl from Chicago and I've never really left and prior to the last two years I've never been away from Chicago for longer than three days. Being on the road I didn't like it at first.
DM: Should athletes more involved in their church and community and if they were do you think that would quell some of the negative stereotypes that surround them? GW: I'm involved in my community and I do as much as I can on my big churchgoer but I was raised in a church it was forced upon me. But athletes should definitely be involved in their communities some people left their communities and don't want to come back and I feel like my community taught me a lot of things like life lessons and a lot of things you can't get from somewhere else I learned that at a young age and I feel that my community was a blessing to me. As far as the negative stereotypes I don't think there's anything that athletes can do that can ever change that (I have been waiting for someone to say that, because I completely agree). There's nothing we can do whether it’s about the women or about us acting wild, there's nothing we can do.
DM: Do you think that it's good for you staying in Chicago because you have all your old friends and family here and sometimes that can be distracting? GW: No question it's distracting, but being 50 miles north of Chicago helps a lot. Last summer right after I got drafted, around this time, right after OTAs, we had off that whole month and I was hanging out with my friends and I think I was practicing bad habits and I was just thinking I was enjoying the fruits of my labor. Why not enjoy it? But I learned from that and I don't hang out as much like that.
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