Central Michigan University Athletics
Smalltown Kid, Big-Time Impact
10/16/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - Jesse Kroll is blessed with size, hands, talent, intelligence and work ethic.
And memory. The kid from a small town in Wisconsin has never forgotten where he came from.
Today, he is a senior and the leading receiver on the Central Michigan football team that takes on Buffalo on Saturday (1 p.m.) in a Mid-American Conference game at Kelly/Shorts Stadium.
Kroll will wear the No. 21 jersey this week, an honor bestowed on a different Chippewa each week in memory of late teammate Derrick Nash, who in June succumbed to cancer.
"I would take 100 Jesse Krolls every day of the week if I could have them," says Mose Rison, CMU's assistant head football/wide receivers coach. "He's that good."
Kroll was the best athlete in his relatively small high school in Algoma, Wis. The best athlete any time he stepped on the football field, the basketball court or the baseball diamond. On either team.
He was a three-sport high school star right out of the Gil Thorp comic strip. Algoma High School, with an enrollment around 300, had not seen the likes of Jesse Kroll in a generation. A standout, naturally, as a pitcher-shortstop, he eschewed baseball for track and field during his senior year in 2011.
He won the state long jump title, beating the runner-up by more than 6 inches. The long jump, he says with characteristic sheepishness whenever talk turns to his athletic prowess, was something he wanted to try before he graduated.
Two months later, he was at Central Michigan, a wide receiver on the football team. He was a member of a freshman class that included Titus Davis, one of the best receivers ever to play at CMU and who now is a rookie with the New York Jets.
Kroll was no longer the best athlete on the field. Or on his team. Or at his position. The big fish in the small pond had crossed Lake Michigan from Wisconsin to Michigan, and he was homesick.
But he looked forward, not back.
"I got here, first thing when coach Rison and I met, I told him, 'Coach you really have to help me. I really want to learn how to run a route,'" Kroll says.
He'd long ago learned to work, the result of being raised on the family dairy farm in northern Wisconsin, toiling through the bitter Midwestern winters and blistering hot summers, working alongside his brother, cousins, aunts and uncles.
The farm included some 400 cows. And a kid named Jesse Kroll who knew his place.
"Everyone pitches in a bit," Kroll says. "You can't quit until the job is done. I don't mind getting my hands dirty."
Kroll's dad, Charlie, runs the farm, and he owns a bar, The Bullpen, in nearby Forestville. Whenever Central Michigan is playing a football game, the bar's televisions are tuned to it.
On Saturday, a group of 40-some family members and friends from Algoma and Forestville will board a charter bus and make the seven-hour drive to watch Kroll and the Chippewas (2-4 overall, 1-1 in the Mid-American Conference) take on Buffalo (2-3, 0-1).
At 6-foot-3, 214 pounds, Kroll - who, by the way, carries a 3.7 grade point average and hopes to be a physical therapist -
leads a receiving corps that has grown up with quarterback Cooper Rush in an offense that averages more than 300 passing yards per game.
How good might that group eventually be? How good might Kroll eventually be, particularly if he is granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA on a medical redshirt from an injury he suffered two years ago?
Kroll has mastered route-running and leads the Chippewas in receptions (32), receiving yards (389) and receiving yards per game (64.8). He had six catches for 75 yards last week in a 41-39 loss at Western Michigan, marking his eighth consecutive multi-catch game.
He's far from a finished product, and he's the first to admit that. Every morning for him is daybreak on the farm. Back to work. His brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts have been replaced by his Chippewa teammates, the dairy farm by the locker room and the turf at Kelly/Shorts.
"I still think I have a lot of improvement to make every day," he says. "Every day we watch film together, and I learn a lot from the young guys, guys like Mark Chapman, Corey Willis, Anthony Rice, who are all really good on their releases and foot work. Coach Rison always has points to make, so it's definitely a continuous process."
One that began from the moment he set foot on campus.
"Honestly, at first I realized that this was going to be a lot different because I'm actually going to have to really work on my technique," Kroll says, recalling his introduction to CMU football as a redshirt in 2011. "But I loved it. The competition was awesome. Even just coming here for OTAs (organized team activities) in the summer, when no coaches were here, just doing one-on-one. It was like playing a pickup basketball game with your friends, and it gets real competitive.
"Every rep you are trying to win, and the guy across from you is just as good as you are."
Despite Kroll's high school prowess, he got no scholarship offers from Division I schools. Algoma, because of its size and off-the-beaten-path locale, isn't on the radar of Division I college recruiters.
While he was in high school, Kroll attended a football camp at the University of Wisconsin, but barely drew a sniff from the Badgers.
His break came, ironically, on the basketball court during his senior year at Algoma. His team was playing a basketball game at Sturgeon Bay High School, and a man in the stands took note of the ultra-athletic do-everything kid from Algoma. That man happened to be a father of then-CMU offensive line coach Butch Barry.
A phone call was made, and within a week, Kroll visited Mount Pleasant and accepted the Chippewas' scholarship offer.
The door was open for Kroll, and in walked an athlete with hands steeled from bailing hay, a back rippling with muscles from having carried teams and hopes over the years, and an innate humility, a byproduct of an upbringing in which, as special as he may have been off the farm, he was just another hand on it.
"When I talk about Jesse Kroll, I'm talking about a first-class, outstanding young man," Rison says. "He's an extremely hard worker, he does everything you ask of him.
"With our group (of wide receivers), we couldn't be who we are and play at the level we play at without Jesse Kroll. He's a tremendous person, with great leadership skills. He's the leader in our group, make no bones about it.
"I'm proud just to say that I'm his coach because I respect him and love him so much for what he's accomplished and the things he does on the football field and off the football field."
