USD Football 1995

DIVISION II SCENE

I

I

BY JACK CLARY

he first panof this story really began three decades ago, when Chuck Roseberry fin- ished playing football for Washington High School (now Warren Hills Regional High School) in New Jersey,

and it reached a crescendo in I994 whe n he played as a defe nsive lineman for Kutztown University, a Division II school in Pennsylvania. 1965 ... 1994? You did the arithmetic and you're right. That's 30 seasons . it's age 46, older than manyofthe head football coaches in the country. It's also two wars, in Viet- nam and Kuwait, four marriages that have produced three children and two step- children, and even five grandchildren, for goodness sake. Records indicate that Roseberry was the oldest player in college football his- tory, though there have been players at the Division III level who played in their early 40s. But Roseberry did it the hard way. Life is far from easy on the defensive line, where he became a pinball target for players younger than his own chil- dren- players with more energy, stre ngth, speed and quickness, vitality and endurance, but not with as much motivation to reinvent themselves.

"Age didn't mean anything to me.Ifelt for the first time I

AFTER SERVING HIS COUNTRY IN OPERATION DESERT STORM ROSEBERRY WAGED WAR IN THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL TRENCHES

really had achance to do somethingwith my life,and going to school and playing football would make up for some of the times I had missed so manyyears ago." CHUCK ROSEBERRY

oddity- a 43-yearold GI called to active duty with the 402nd Military Police Company of the Pennsylvania National Guard, seemingly out of place in the nearly handpicked Army of the '90s, where very few troops were over 25 because war, even a 100-hour war, is a young man's game. The sounds and sights of the impending 100-hour offensive had just CO NTINUED

That's where the second partof the story begins, in the desert in Saudi Arabia in February 1991,just as the 100- hour offensive that ultimately produced victory in Operation Desert Storm was about to begin. Even then , he was an