Jeremy Sellers had three years of frustration bottled up.

The daily visits to the training room. The patience with his broken foot. The patience with being low on the team’s depth chart. It has taken a toll on the Syracuse football senior running back.

With two yards and a fist pump, justice was served.

In the third quarter against Illinois on Sept. 15, Sellers took a handoff at the 2-yard line, bulled through initial contact at the line of scrimmage and crossed the goalline. With a celebratory haymaker, the modest Sellers uncorked his anger.

‘For a kid that is more introverted, to see him show emotion in that moment is exciting,’ Orange running backs coach Randy Trivers said.

The ‘moment’ has eluded Sellers for most of his career at SU.

Three weeks into his sophomore season, Sellers turned to make a block during a special teams drill at practice when a teammate crashed into his backside. Sellers’ foot curled up and snapped. Season over. The absence didn’t just test his patience. It tortured it. Extensive foot treatment forced Sellers out of bed between 7-7:30 a.m. every day. His team lost 10 of 11 games, and there was absolutely nothing Sellers could do about it.

‘It was terrible,’ Sellers said. ‘I would be treated twice a day sometimes. It absolutely killed me at first because you work all offseason in training and then have something like that happen to you. It was one of the worst times since I’ve been here.’

Sellers’ commitment never wavered during that forgettable 2005 season and a carry-less junior season. Now karma is slowly spinning in Sellers’ favor. As a senior, he is finally seeing tangible results for his perseverance. While he’s only totaled 80 yards in five games this season, his first career touchdown and a win against then-No. 18 Louisville two weeks ago were greatly satisfying.

Yet the ultimate reward Sellers received was internal. His appreciation for football changed.

‘A lot of people don’t realize how much work is involved,’ Sellers said. ‘And then something like that happens, and it’s like all that work I just did was for nothing. You learn to appreciate it, absolutely.’

Appreciation is synonymous with hunger, Trivers said.

‘Whenever you go through adversity as a person, or in this case as a football player, it can make you hungrier to be successful,’ Trivers said. ‘It makes you appreciate what you missed. When you miss that much time and have an opportunity to come back with a second chance, it motivates you to do well. I see that in Jeremy.’

This type of motivation was foreign to Sellers. A punishing north-south running style is typically conducive to injuries. Not Sellers. The bruising 6-foot, 211-pound Rawlings, Md., native dished contact. He never absorbed it.

‘The foot injury was a whole new experience,’ Sellers said. ‘It was the first major injury of any kind I ever had. I was lucky for so long to have never had an injury, so missing games was a new thing for me.’

This is a difficult reality for any player to handle. But for Sellers, a throwback runner to his core, being relegated to street clothes was nothing short of devastating.

‘It was totally different,’ he said. ‘You go from being in the season, practicing every day and watching film every day, going to class and lifting weights, to still going to class and watching film but then your day is pretty much done for. You can’t do anything.’

Off the field, Sellers did plenty. He worked directly with SU assistant trainer Denny Kellington in the painfully slow process of getting blood flow to his foot for new bone to replace the cracked bone. Unlike a muscle, ligament or tendon, bone growth cannot be accelerated. Instead of hopping on the highway to recovery, Sellers had to take a six- to eight-week detour. And that was just phase one.

‘Bone is bone,’ said Kellington, who has worked with the Orange for three years. ‘We allowed the body to provide blood flow and for new bone to fill in like cement. Once we saw the fracture at the site, basically the process was rest, bone stimulator, walking boot and natural healing time. When we know a guy is done for the year, natural healing time will assist big time. We didn’t do anything spectacular. We just allowed the body to heal.’

Patience did not trigger dormancy. Sellers was back in summer mode – and then some.

Once Sellers’ new bone filled in, Kellington focused above and below the injured joint. Thirty-three joints hold 26 bones together in the human foot. To regain a full range of motion in such an intricately designed body part, Sellers performed a variety of therapeutic leg exercises. Manual resistance and Thera-Band treatment among other exercises helped establish balance throughout the entire leg.

‘All of the exercises we did are also used for ankle and knee injuries,’ Kellington said. ‘They all coincide with each other. Just because he had a foot injury doesn’t mean he wasn’t working other parts of his body, too.’

Sellers didn’t compensate hours in the weight room, either. He maintained his cardiovascular stamina and upper body strength while repairing his broken foot. The competitive nature of Division-I football often leaves wounded players in the dust. In a crowded backfield, this easily could have happened to Sellers, who rushed for 31 yards on 14 attempts as a freshman. His focus was clear: get one more chance.

‘I just felt that if I could get back, there would be another opportunity,’ Sellers said. ‘Missing the season was heartbreaking. That’s what you work for. So I had to keep my focus on getting another shot.’

Sellers is in the midst of the best shot he’s had in four years at SU. He’s still the only player on the team to have scored a rushing touchdown. For a team in soul-searching mode, Sellers’ touchdown run against Illinois provided prime inspiration.

‘Any long-term injury a student-athlete sustains is an eye-opening experience,’ Kellington said. ‘They say, ‘Man! This is not fun without football.’ I enjoy working with all of the student-athletes here. Jeremy definitely stands out because of the hard work and dedication he puts in. You can see his passion for football any time you talk to him.

‘He is a silent, blue collar-type of leader. If you had to take a poll of who is the toughest man on the team, Jeremy Sellers is in the top percent.’

Published on October 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm