“They were like, ‘Really? Are you serious? How old are you?’ “said Ruschel.
Ruschel, a business management student at the two-year college in Wahpeton, is 49.
It’s not every day that a night shift worker in his late 40s decides to go to college, Ruschel acknowledged. It’s even rarer for someone his age to try out for a team against athletes three decades his junior, especially in a sport involving brute force contact and a high risk of injury.
“When I decided to get an associate’s degree and found out there was a football team, I started thinking about it,” said Ruschel, a defensive lineman who wears number 94. “And I decided, ‘Why not?’ ”
Ruschel knew he would stand out, he said, but he also knew he wouldn’t be the first athlete to step onto the court when others his age were content to cheer from the stands.
Tom Brady is the NFL’s oldest player at 45, Udonis Haslem is still shooting for the Miami Heat at 42, and Zdeno Chara completed his 24th NHL season last year with the New York Islanders in 44 years.
In college sports, Dan Stoddard, a 38-year-old bus driver from Ottawa, was drafted in 2017 to play basketball for the Algonquin Thunder. And until Ruschel arrived, the nation’s oldest college football player was thought to be Tom Gore, who adapted last year to play for Methodist University of North Carolina at 45. .
Ruschel said he didn’t think he was breaking a record when he called Wildcats head coach Eric Issendorf and asked him to give him a chance. Ruschel had trained and was in good physical condition.
“I love football and just wanted to play,” he said. “I thought to myself that this was my chance. If I had tried and failed, I would have at least tried.
The biggest regret would be to do nothing, he decided.
The last time Ruschel played on a football team, he was a senior at Trinity High School in Washington, Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1992, he said, he joined the US Army, then the Army National Guard and ended up in Wahpeton, about an hour’s drive from Fargo, in 2018.
Ruschel is the father of two adult children and has been single since 2012, he said. He works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift as a mechanic at Minn-Dak Farmer’s Cooperative, a major sugar beet processor in the heart of the Red River Valley.
He enrolled in online classes at the North Dakota State College of Science earlier this year, he said, with the goal of earning a degree in business management and becoming a supervisor of his job. The school has approximately 3,000 students.
“When a friend of mine told me the university had a football program, I looked it up and did my research, and found that as a student I could play football. soccer,” Ruschel said. “So I called Coach Issendorf.”
Issendorf, 48, said he was shocked to learn that a 49-year-old Army veteran wanted to play on his team, which is part of the National Junior College Athletic Association.
“He’s a year and a month older than me,” he said. “I said to him, ‘Wow, I’m really going to have to think about it. This is uncharted territory. ”
Several months later, when Ruschel stopped by his office to introduce himself and ask about football again, Issendorf said they had discussed the pros and cons of having a player in the team who had almost 50 years.
“One of the things I had to weigh was Ray’s safety and the safety of our players,” he said. “Football is a young man’s game.”
“If a guy is constantly being knocked down or falling into other guys’ legs, he probably shouldn’t be on the team,” Issendorf said. “But Ray looked like he was in good shape and he really wanted to play, so we decided to assess him.
Ruschel was invited to Wildcats football camp in July to see if he could hold his own as a defensive lineman with players who were 30 years younger than him – most of whom were actually younger than his own children.
“Was I nervous? Of course,” he said. “I was wondering if the guys would accept me. They are young and very talented, and here is this old man.
It turned out he didn’t need to worry.
“The first day of camp we thought he was a new coach, so yeah, we were really surprised when he said, ‘No, I’m actually playing,'” 20-year-old Preston Yohnke said.
“But when we saw what he could do, we were impressed,” he added. “Being 49 and competing pretty well on the defensive line? It’s crazy. Ray has earned our respect.
The players welcomed him as one of their own, 19-year-old Will Katchmark said.
“Ray is a hard worker – he plays his heart out,” he said. “He asks us how he can do better and he is ready to learn. He wants to be treated the same as any other guy on the team.
Issendorf said Ruschel has been great for the team on and off the pitch.
“He’s good for our program and he’s good for our kids,” he said. “He’s able to step in and talk to the younger guys in the team about what a loss means. He teaches them that there is more to life than winning. It’s about giving the best of yourself.
Ruschel played in the Wildcats’ first three games (they won two), and he said he now looks forward to his first away game on Sept. 24 when his team takes on Vermilion Community College in Ely, Minnesota. .
“I guess I’ll be taking the bus with the team, so it should be fun,” he said.
More than anything, however, he looks forward to the reaction of the opposing team when they see him on the defensive line.
“I know I’m going to get a lot of weird looks, and somebody’s going to be like, ‘Man, look at this – they’ve got an old dude on the team,'” Ruschel said.
“It always makes me laugh,” he said. “And then, I play harder.”
