Thursday, September 11, 2014
Shafer: Let us Never Forget
Head coach Scott Shafer held his weekly press conference on Thursday morning, where the coach stepped outside of normal football discussion to take time to reflect on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, on the 13th anniversary of the attacks.
"Let us never forget what happened" Shafer said. "It was horrible; my two children were younger then. For me I was sitting there watching tape and with the facilities we didn't have [at Northern Illinois] we were still using videotape, so every time you clicked the tape out the screen would come on and we had a television channel in the backdrop and there it was. About 45 minutes later the tower dropped and coach [Joe] Novak came in and said 'call your families and make sure everyone is ok.'
"I took off and saw Missy, she went and grabbed Wolf and Elsa who was very young at the time. My brother-in-law was working downtown [in New York] at the time and he was one of those people who had to make the long walk out of the city.
"It was just crazy. Ever since then we've looked at life in the United States so differently, every one of us. So we can never forget and we have to make sure that when we make the decision to vote, we vote for the guy or gal who is going to protect our country. It's just profound. We look at life differently now. As parents and as you get older you look at how everything changed as we well know. So let's be on the defense and make sure that every opportunity we get we give a hug to a troop member or say a small prayer for a member of the military."
In addition to reflecting on the day, Shafer looked ahead to this weekend's matchup with the Chippewas, a team that enters Saturday's contest 2-0 after topping Purdue 38-17 last week.
We'll have a great challenge in front of us, with a very potent run game," Shafer said. "It's a veteran offensive crew with the addition of [Thomas] Rawls running the ball has proven to be potent. Coach [Dan] Enos has done a great job on both sides of the ball of getting his kids prepared to win, and they've done a great job as was the case last weekend when they annihilated Purdue."
"I took off and saw Missy, she went and grabbed Wolf and Elsa who was very young at the time. My brother-in-law was working downtown [in New York] at the time and he was one of those people who had to make the long walk out of the city.
"It was just crazy. Ever since then we've looked at life in the United States so differently, every one of us. So we can never forget and we have to make sure that when we make the decision to vote, we vote for the guy or gal who is going to protect our country. It's just profound. We look at life differently now. As parents and as you get older you look at how everything changed as we well know. So let's be on the defense and make sure that every opportunity we get we give a hug to a troop member or say a small prayer for a member of the military."
In addition to reflecting on the day, Shafer looked ahead to this weekend's matchup with the Chippewas, a team that enters Saturday's contest 2-0 after topping Purdue 38-17 last week.
We'll have a great challenge in front of us, with a very potent run game," Shafer said. "It's a veteran offensive crew with the addition of [Thomas] Rawls running the ball has proven to be potent. Coach [Dan] Enos has done a great job on both sides of the ball of getting his kids prepared to win, and they've done a great job as was the case last weekend when they annihilated Purdue."
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