<p>Adam Ballard: As Good As I Once Was
By Bob Socci</p>
<p>A lousy three yards.</p>
<p>All that time - the cold, dark months in recovery and the long, hot days in rehabilitation. All that effort -whether pumping iron or running into the wind dragging an old tire behind him.</p>
<p>All of that - in the hopes of adding reps and shaving seconds - for all of this? What, when measured by a different means, amounted to merely nine feet?</p>
<p>Sure, it was once true that "three yards and a cloud of dust" could pave the way from Columbus to Pasadena, from the Ohio State of Woody Hayes all the way to the Rose Bowl.</p>
<p>Those days are all but forgotten. These days, three yards is the equivalent of an era the game left behind long ago. It is less than a third of a first down on the football field. Barely enough to create second-and-long.</p>
<p>Unless, as in Adam Ballard's case, when the dust settles, these three yards are covered by the first of however many steps he needs to become - with apologies to one of his favorite musicians - as good as he once was.</p>
<p>And, darn, was he good. Right here, on this very spot, at the corner of Philadelphia's Pattison Avenue and South 11th Street. Back when, in December of 2005, this was a patch of frozen grass and dirt and a platform for him and his team.</p>
<p>For it, a 42-23 win over arch rival Army. For him, the grand sum of 192 yards on just 18 carries, two of which resulted in break-away touchdown runs.</p>
<p>If the first, a 28-yarder early in the second half, wasn't a dagger that cut through the heart of Black Knight hopes, the second certainly was. Sixty-seven yards on the opening play of the fourth quarter. Together, they were reason to celebrate Ballard as the most valuable player of the most important game of his life.</p>
<p>He'd continue high-stepping his way to the finish line, helping his Navy Midshipmen defeat Colorado State in the inaugural Poinsettia Bowl and averaging 163 yards rushing the last three contests of his sophomore season.</p>
<p>And before long - if they weren't already - internet bloggers would begin touting "Adam Ballard 4 Heisman" and waxing on-line about "The Adam Ballard Effect."</p>
<p>But what neither they nor anyone else could foresee at the time was how such solid footing in South Philly would crumble beneath his feet.</p>
<p>Already in the late fall of 2006, Ballard had taken some uneasy steps. He injured his left ankle at Eastern Michigan and was severely limited a week later against Temple.</p>
<p>Overall, he handled the football just 11 times in those two November encounters before returning to Lincoln Financial Field, the site of his remarkable exploits almost exactly a year earlier.</p>
<p>Then, on the fourth play from scrimmage, with his second attempt of the day, Ballard rushed for six yards. And by the time he reached the Black Knights' 41-yard line, his junior season reached its end.</p>
<p>The diagnosis was a broken right fibula. The prognosis season-ending surgery and an off-season consumed by a personal road to recovery.</p>
<p>"Army-Navy was the first time I had my whole family there watching me play," Ballard said. "I really wanted to come out and have a big game for them."</p>
<p>With a college-age sister, gathering the entire family and traveling from home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was an accomplishment unto itself. Ballard wanted in the worst way to reward them by being at his best.</p>
<p>"Breaking my ankle really (devastated) me," he recently remembered. "Just thinking they came all that way only to see me play a couple of plays."</p>
<p>Less than a month later, that disappointment for those who'd traveled so far on his behalf was accompanied by the emptiness he experienced as the one cast in the roles of spectator and cheerleader.</p>
<p>Able only to root for his teammates in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, he was left to helplessly anguish over the heartbreaking, last-second field goal that gave Boston College a 25-24 win over Navy.</p>
<p>"That was one of the toughest things I had to do," Ballard says. "You've been with your teammates the whole season and you know you'd be able to help out. To see them lose the way they did, that was (tough), especially for our seniors. They really deserved to win that game."</p>
<p>Unhappy with both what he saw and how he viewed it - from a sideline vantage point - Ballard soon set out to ensure a return to his customary spot, up close to the action in the Mids' backfield.</p>
<p>"It completely drove me," Ballard says. "After all the time you've invested and work that you've done, you don't want to stand on the sideline that last season." </p>
<p>He rehabbed enough to be in uniform for spring practice. But the back who again slipped into jersey number 22 wasn't exactly the same one who'd last worn it the previous December.</p>
<p>"There was (tentativeness), especially in the spring," says Ballard. "I had surgery December fifth. I really hadn't run or done anything on (my right leg). I just kind of jumped into spring practice.</p>
<p>"It was still really sore and I couldn't make some of the cuts. I wasn't as fast I was. I was really worried in spring ball, but I think that actually helped me because I worked a lot harder over the summer."</p>
<p>He did so by resurrecting an old regimen, borrowed from his younger years.</p>
<p>"Believe it or not I ran track in high school for a couple of years," said Ballard, smiling over the thought of his more lithely days as a sprinter for Marcus High School. "That was about 40 pounds ago.</p>
<p>"We had the top-ranked track and cross country team in Texas, so our coach had a pretty good idea of what it took. I figured if I was doing some of those things on my own in addition to my work with the team, it would get a lot better."</p>
<p>So, to complement summer workouts organized for the Midshipmen, Ballard ran sprints on his own, breaking wind with a parachute attached to his back. He burned rubber by lugging old tires around. And he did drills designed to make his 6-foot-1, 236-pound body more agile.</p>
<p>Much like when Ballard was one of the 4,000-or-so students enrolled at Marcus High, a Class 5-A school that fielded a struggling football program, while its track team flourished.</p>
<p>On the latter, Ballard not only set a school record as a district discus champion, he competed in the 100 meters and ran the 4 x 100 relay.</p>
<p>When asked how such a thought - that of his former self, he of less brawn, as more of a burner - might be received by teammates, Ballard offered a quip that revealed his brainier side.</p>
<p>"I like to tell Reggie (Campbell) and Shun (White), that I'm not fast on a stop watch, but I've got 'next-man' speed," Ballard cracked. "Faster than the next man!"</p>
<p>Such lines spoken in his Texan tongue are the norm for Ballard. Usually, accented by a smile and punctuated with a laugh.</p>
<p>"In life, you've got to have a good time," he advises. "They say, 'Don't take life too serious, you never make it out alive.'"</p>
<p>And don't take yourself too seriously, either. Especially when dealing with others.</p>
<p>"I just enjoy talking to people," says Ballard, an English major. "I don't have a problem striking up a conversation with a perfect stranger. That's how you learn things.</p>
<p>"Everyone's connected through what five (other) people? Is that what they say? I think that's true. You find out just how small the world is by just talking to people you don't know."</p>
<p>If everyone else in our universe is ultimately connected through six degrees of separation, Ballard's seems an even smaller world. Thanks to personality, as well as a gift for gab.</p>
<p>At least, that's how a kid once hidden in high school at wide receiver wound up in Annapolis, as a fullback in the national spotlight.</p>
<p>When he first met Navy assistant Todd Spencer, Ballard still entertained the idea of playing in a Bowl Championship Series conference. Feelers from places like Arkansas, Purdue and Texas A&M were enough to think "if I had a decent senior season, I could go to one of those schools."</p>
<p>Plus, what Ballard had seen of the recent-vintage Mids, wasn't exactly overwhelming. But, as others stopped dialing his number, Spencer continued to call. </p>
<p>"At first I was like, 'Navy? I don't know about this, I've seen them play a couple of times,'" says Ballard, thinking back to a time when the Mids struggled through a 3-30 stretch. "But (Todd) kept on calling me and calling me and calling me.</p>
<p>"He's a really great guy and has a really good personality. I think I just enjoyed talking to him more than I was interested in attending the school."</p>
<p>Eventually, Ballard succumbed to Spencer's power of persuasion and visited Annapolis. Once here, future teammates - and the Academy itself - did the rest.</p>
<p>"All the players said they could feel the program was ready to turn around. They were really pumped and really excited, so that was encouraging," he recalls. "But, ultimately, I thought with the career opportunities afterwards, the education and what the players and coaches were saying, it was the best thing all around for me."</p>
<p>At the time, Ballard believed he was cut out for military life. Even if he was in the minority.</p>
<p>"I thought I could adapt (to the military)," he says. "(But) if you jumped into a time machine and talked to all my buddies and my family back in 2003, they'd tell you different."</p>
<p>Four years later, the proof is sitting on the second floor of Ricketts Hall, wearing the khaki uniform of a Midshipman First Class and cradling a Styrofoam cup of coffee early on a Wednesday morning.</p>
<p>Discussing the future, Ballard reiterates an intention to someday lead Marines. Whatever tour of duty awaits him.</p>
<p>"I decided to come here after September 11," Ballard said. "I know what (can) happen.</p>
<p>"I think the Marine Corps is the best fit for me, with the mentality of the guys. It's a close-knit group, like Navy football."</p>
<p>But as stoic as he may seem addressing immediate post-graduate plans, Ballard's tone lightens considerably when he moves on to the next chapter he hopes to write in life.</p>
<p>He'd like to be a stay-at-home dad - or so he says with a laugh - when not writing and performing country music. Rough-and-tumble leatherneck begets Mr. Mom with a guitar.</p>
<p>Why not? Ballard's already as comfortable in a cowboy hat as a football helmet - and, certainly, more so than in a midshipman's cover. He's carried a 'twangy' tune for a video feature streamed from the NBC Sports website before last year's Notre Dame game.</p>
<p>Most of all, he's a living contradiction to certain stereotypes. Like any that might suggest that one of Navy's most recognizable players would crave attention in high-society Annapolis.</p>
<p>"I like to go a little ways out of the radius where most of the midshipmen hang out," Ballard says, explaining how he discovered a favored hangout where he can tap his boots to honky-tonk and try his voice at country karaoke. "I get away from Academy life and people knowing that you go to the Academy. I do embrace all that the Academy has to offer during the week. But I think you've got to get away."</p>
<p>Ballard likens his weekend home away from his home away from home to a scene from a Toby Keith music video. It's where the "American Soldier" finds himself in the middle of "Love This Bar."</p>
<p>And where Ballard can "get recharged" on a weekend before resuming an Academy career that's had to give him more than a little fodder for a future country chart-topper.</p>
<p>He could sing of the football hero who once stood tall, got knocked down, pulled himself up and pushed himself harder. All in the effort to sing by this season's end the words included in the title of a tune by Keith, "As Good As I Once Was."</p>
<p>And, perhaps, better than ever.</p>
<p>"When (Adam) squares his pads up, he's hard to tackle," says Navy fullbacks coach Chris Culton. "When he's making the right reads and right cuts, he's a tough guy to bring down."</p>
<p>In Ballard, Culton works with a proud competitor willing to withstand whatever his position demands.</p>
<p>"Adam has a lot of pride in the way he does things," Culton said after a recent practice. "Any time you're coming back from any type of injury, there is that hint of uncertainty. On the other hand, it's football. I don't care who you are, you're going to hurt. That's the life of this game."</p>
<p>A life where progress is marked not necessarily in giant leaps, but sometimes in short strides.</p>
<p>Just like the last Friday this past August, the first night of a new Navy football season. When Adam Ballard returned to Philadelphia, pressed his fingertips into the Lincoln Financial Field turf and took his first steps against the Temple Owls.</p>
<p>They covered the three longest yards in Ballard's career. And in many ways, the three most important.</p>
<p>"It was really important to me to try to come out (vs. Temple) and play well at that same stadium," says Ballard, who followed that initial carry with a pair of touchdown runs in a 30-19 victory. "I hadn't played in a game since limping off (that) field. It was important to me to get out there and get the cobwebs out." </p>
<p>"(Adam) busted his tail. It's the first time he came back coming off a surgery," Culton says. "You hope to see him put an exclamation point at the end of his career when the time does come."</p>