FIGHTING TRIM : National Guard Experience Helps CSUN’s Willie James Prepare for Football

Those five days of sweat, bruises and aching muscles that coaches fondly refer to as “Hell Week” are but two days away for members of the Cal State Northridge football team, but Willie James is not the least bit troubled by the prospect of twice-daily bakes in the scorching summer sun.

This, hell? Pardon my snicker, James says. Heck, this isn’t even Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

Ah, the memories of Ft. Sill. Reveille (a.k.a. a drill sergeant’s expletives) at 0500 hours. Line up, then begin P.T.--that’s physical training, beanpole--with a leisurely 10-mile run, singing every step of the way. Through heat, rain, snow, sleet and tornado watches. Every day. For more than five months.

James loved it. He was a good soldier, which, he believes, helped him become a better cornerback.

“The military helped me become strong mentally,” James says, “and because of that, I’m a much better football player. I’ve found that you can be the fastest guy in the world, but if you can’t think, if you can’t relax, you can’t do anything on the football field.”

James, 23, a starter in the CSUN secondary, has been a soldier in the National Guard since shortly after he graduated from Richmond (Calif.) High in 1985. A recruiter had visited the high school and slyly challenged James to pass the entrance test. “I can do that,” James said. And he proved it.

You’ve done well, the recruiter said. Sign up here.

“I thought it was, you know, a joke,” James says. So he signed on the dotted line, thereby unwittingly becoming the punch line.

A few months later, James got his orders in the mail. He was to report at a particular time to a particular place and be transported to his training base from there.

Were these guys serious? Yes, as James read on, it became quite apparent they were.

One sentence in particular brought an immediate halt to his amusement--something about how he would be tracked down and taken to Fort Sill should he try to ignore his commitment.

Fort Sill is located in Lawton, Okla., or, as James remembers it, “tornado heaven.”

“It was terrible,” James says during a break in CSUN’s summer conditioning drills this week. “When it was hot, it was hot . When it was cold, it snowed.”

Indeed, it was snowing when James, dressed in blue jeans and a tank top, first stepped off the plane and set foot on the airport runway in Lawton. His first thought: “Oh, no.”

His initial military experience got worse before it got better. James waited at the airport for more than an hour before a group of drill sergeants arrived to accompany the new recruits to the base.

James said they were driven to a supply center where they were outfitted, then loaded into a cattle car and transported to a training site.

“There was this drill sergeant . . . about 6-9, 250 pounds,” James recalls. “He didn’t say a thing the whole time. He rode in the back with us. Then, when we got to where we were going and the door opened up, he yelled at us, ‘OK you . . . , you got 10 seconds to get the hell off my cattle car and seven of them are already gone. Get your . . . out of here!’ You should have seen it. Guys running and falling and jumping all over each other, it was crazy.”

At first, James was part of a ragtag squad.

“Nobody knew how to dress yet, so we were out there lined up in some rinky-dink formation with our shoestrings hanging out,” he says. “So then the sergeant puts us in a push-up position and leaves us sitting like that for about 30 minutes.

“After that, then we started training.”

James progressed quickly, however, and established himself as the athletic leader of his class. He was his unit’s best when it came to physical-fitness training.

“I liked the training,” James says. “I liked the regimen. This stuff right here,” he says, pointing toward the CSUN practice field, “is a cakewalk by comparison.”

James attained the rank of sergeant and still belongs to the National Guard Reserve. He is classified as an E-4 specialist, serving as an artillery mechanic.

He credits the discipline he learned in the military for helping him on and off the football field.

“I used to be kind of wild. I’d do anything,” James says. “But now I’ve settled down and I’ve set my sights. I know what I want to do and I’m strong enough mentally to do it.”

The target James has scoped is a career in professional football. Bob Burt, CSUN’s coach, reports that the New York Giants have expressed interest in the 5-11, 180-pound senior, who scouts have timed in 4.55 seconds over a 40-yard grass course.

“The coaches, they’ve done all they can up to this point,” James says. “Now it’s up to me. It all depends on what I do this year.”

From his corner position, often one on one against a receiver, it will not be difficult to tell if James is having a good season. His mistakes will be painfully obvious to Matador fans. But that’s OK with James, who has grown to welcome such pressure.

“In high school they put me out there at corner and I just couldn’t do it,” James says. “It was a mental thing. But now I like standing out there by myself, me against whoever.”

James, who is on schedule to graduate from CSUN in the spring with a degree in criminology, tied for the team lead with three interceptions last season and was second in tackles with 60. He is most proud of his play against the run.

“When I come up to tackle you, I want to hurt you,” he says. “There’s a thin line between sane and insane, and sometimes, in a game, I cross it.”

The logic James uses in playing his position was perhaps born from his military experience.

“That guy in the different-colored jersey--he’s the enemy,” James says. “This is one of the only places in the world you can hurt someone and not go to prison.”

The military, of course, would be another.