Making Some Noise

Shakir Bell clutched the football he’d been holding all evening. One side displayed a picture of renowned running back Walter Payton and the opposite side a picture of Bell. He cradled it in his arms as he sat waiting through the videos and speakers. He listened as former San Francisco 49er Jerry Rice offered advice that he proved true, “Just because you’re from a smaller school doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.”  Then Gary Reasons, former linebacker for the New York Giants and master of ceremonies for the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) awards, stepped up to the podium holding a sealed envelope.

Bell waited for the announcement as one of three finalists invited to the 25^th annual Walter Payton Award as did senior quarterbacks Chris Lum of Lehigh University and Bo Levi Mitchell of Eastern Washington University. Indiana State University football Coach Trent Miles (’87) likened the Payton award to the Heisman Trophy for the FCS of which the Missouri Valley Football Conference is a part.

“It speaks volumes from where this program has come,” Miles said about Bell and the national recognition.

That Miles sat with Bell in Frisco, Texas, awaiting the announcement showed that others had noticed changes in the Sycamore football program. A national panel of 131 sports information and media relations directors, broadcasters and writers  voted on the award. That the 5-foot 8-inch, 185-pound running back who pulls on the number 22 jersey sat for the prestigious award gave proof that a different Sycamore team took to the football field each week than the one that lost 30 games in a row.

As Reasons opened the envelope’s flap, Bell sat waiting to hear who would win the award named for the great Chicago Bears running back.

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Shakir Bell runs away from a Youngstown State

Bell first took the field as a lineman.  Though he may seem small to take part of a human wall, at 6 years old the other players weren’t much bigger. His mother, Kimberly Smith, signed up her son for football in the Indianapolis city youth league.

“I didn’t know how it would go,” Smith said. “Shakir’s always been really small.”

But after that first season, Bell wanted to keep playing and his mom signed him up. The next year, at the age of 7, Bell moved to running back. He has never looked back from that position, which he enjoys because of its versatility.

“Anything can change at any point in the game. You gotta know what the linemen are doing. You have to know what the defense is doing. You have to be interchangeable with your quarterback and then you also get to go out there and play wide receiver too,” Bell said. “Running back is just a great position to play.”

Smith watched her son thrive in football.

“He became very determined, very disciplined. He was an over achiever. He always had perseverance and wanted to excel,” she said. “Shakir believes in loyalty. He wants what’s best for the team at all times.”

As a senior at Warren Central High School in Indianapolis, Bell helped lead the Warriors to the state championship. For his work running in the team’s black and gold, Bell was named a 2010 Parade All-American and as first-team, all-state by the Associated Press and the Indiana Football Coaches Association. That same year he set an Indiana Class 5A record and was the second leading rusher in the nation with 3,105 rushing yards.

With such accomplishments, he didn’t doubt he would play football for a university.

In Terre Haute, Miles had started recruiting to help turn around a Sycamore team that had lost 30 games in a row before breaking the streak with one win that season.  As he watched film on Bell, Miles liked what he saw on the field as well as what he heard about Bell off the field.

“He was a good player, quick and durable,” Miles said. “He was hard to bring down and very explosive in a box.”

Off the field, Miles described Bell as a good person. “He’s tough minded. He’s a leader.”

“Coach Miles was really the only guy I actually talked to and formed a relationship with recruiting –wise,” Bell said.

And he listened as the coach spoke about the Sycamores football program and the efforts to change it into a winning team.

“He told me that if you look on paper, Indiana State isn’t the greatest football team in the world and that he had to weed out a lot of bad character and negative character that were here,” Bell said.

Miles informed Bell that by choosing Indiana State, he would be part of history in changing the program.

“I couldn’t say no to that,” Bell said. “I like going places to where I can go and I can make a difference.”

He decided to try to do just that at ISU.

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Shakir Bell assists in leading the singing of "March On."

In his freshman year, Bell played behind senior Darius Gates. With 95 rushes for 649 yards and two touchdowns along with three games of more than 100 yards rushing, Bell played his way onto the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s All-Newcomer Team.

In the off season with Gates’ graduation, Bell spoke to Miles about his role on the team. He wanted to show Miles what he could really do.

“He understood that I really wanted that pressure on my shoulders as a sophomore so when we got into the season I couldn’t let the guys down,” Bell said.

When the 2011 season started, Bell said he thought senior fullback Brock Lough would be the team’s leading rusher. In fact, in the third game of the season against Western Kentucky, the Hilltoppers didn’t classify Bell as a threat. In that game, he ran for more than 200 yards and scored two touchdowns. Bell credits that game as beginning his season.

Bell, at 5-feet 7-inches and 185 pounds, gained 1,670 yards and scored 14 touchdowns on 230 carries during the season. He averaged 151.8 yards per game and 7.3 yards per carry. In four games he rushed for at least 200 yards and missed a fifth 200-yard game by one yard. With that season’s numbers, Bell became the number one rusher in the FCS during the regular season. After the Sycamores finished the season at 6-5, Bell began to rack up awards including being named the Missouri Valley Football Conference Offensive Player of the Year, First Team All Missouri Valley Football Conference, First Team All American by the Sports  Network, named to the American Football Coaches Association All-America Team and a finalist for the Walter Payton Award.

“It says a lot about him. It says a lot about the guys out front blocking for him and the guys on the perimeter blocking for him,” Miles said. “It all goes hand-in-hand. It means a lot of people are doing their jobs.”

“He’s grown up to be the young man I can be proud of,” Smith said. “He’s a down-to-earth guy. He’s a people person. His work ethic on the field has never wavered.”

Bell quickly points to the rest of the team as the reason for any success he has experienced. It takes a strong defense to quash an opposing team’s offense and it takes linemen to create holes for a running back to sprint through, he said.

“The individual awards, they’re great. It’s something I will always remember, but nobody will remember exactly when Casey Paswater would have made a block and sprung me to go to the end zone or when FN Lutz got around the corner against Youngstown State and all I had to do was run for a touchdown,” Bell said.

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Jerry Rice, former San Francisco 49er running back, and Shakir Bell met during the FCS award ceremony.

Through the years of playing football the sport grew to mean more to Bell than a constructive outlet for anger and frustration.

“It teaches you leadership. It teaches you teamwork. It teaches you how to control your anger,” he said. “It does more for me than I can say anything else other than family and my relationship with God.”

While Bell focuses on his education – recently switching his major from history to criminology – he can’t envision his life without football in the future either by playing or coaching.

“I really don’t think anyone could understand or describe how it feels, even when you’re losing, even when everything is bad, when everything’s not going your way,” he said.

For now though, Bell is preparing for next season, which will open Sept. 1 against Indiana University. He is working with Dave McManus, strength and conditioning coach, to gain weight and improve his running style. He wants to play at 190 pounds next season and he wants to improve his running style.

“I have a terrible form,” he said with a laugh. “He’s going to help me work on my running form, my speed and my cuts in and out of bracing. It’s kind of rewarding to know that I could have a good season and still notice a lot of bad things in my game that I need to improve on. So we have a lot of work to do and it’s going to be fun to achieve all those goals I have set for the off season.”

Two winning seasons have changed Sycamore football, according to Miles.

“We have a chance to win every game we play. It’s different now,” he said. “It’s been a great two years. We’re looking for even bigger and better things in the years to come.”

With that work, and off-season work by the entire team, Bell hopes the Sycamores will have their third winning season in a row.

“I definitely would not want to be anywhere other than Terre Haute playing football,” he said. “It’s like a close-knit family. It’s amazing just to be here and play for something every week.”

**

After a collective breath intake into silence awaiting the announcement for the Walter Payton Award, Reasons leaned into the microphone and with a smile uttered Mitchell’s name as the winner.

Bell, who tied for second in the voting, stood to applaud.

“I’m not disappointed at all. I lost to a great competitor. I lost to a great athlete,” Bell said, adding he planned to return to Terre Haute and start working toward the next season. “I’m proud of our team and I’m proud of our season.”

Jennifer Sicking, GR ’11, is editor of Indiana State University Magazine and associate director of media relations.