Chris Welde was only 5′ 7″ and 155 pounds when he played for Council Rock High School North’s football team. He wasn’t a freshman vying for a spot on the JV team, he was an electrifying, first-team All-Conference running back from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who had the speed and agility that matched that of several top NFL prospects.

His 4.43-second 40-yard dash and 4.11-second 20-yard shuttle times not only would have placed him in the top three for running backs at the 2018 NFL combine for both drills, according to NFL.com, but also gave him a leg up when he tried out for Penn State’s football team as a sophomore.

About 50 hopefuls showed up for the football tryouts in the fall of 2016. Welde was one of three players to make the team as a walk-on.

Now 15 pounds heavier, Welde has transitioned from running back to wide receiver and has been slowly working his way up from the bottom of the depth chart.

However, throughout his high school career, Division I scouts and coaches overlooked Welde, and his hopes of playing for a D1 football program began to fade.

Welde left high school thinking his football career was over and that he’d enroll at Penn State in the fall of 2015 as a mechanical engineering student. He never believed that one day he would find himself in Beaver Stadium for the Blue-White game, suited up as a wide receiver for the White team, surrounded by 71,000 cheering fans and knowing he was about to receive the ball.

The Recruiting Process

“I’m too small, too short,” Michelle Welde, Chris’s mother, recalls him saying about his potential to play running back for a D1 football team.

To a certain extent, Welde was right. He remembers that many recruiters would see that he was a 5-foot-7-inch, 155-pound kid and immediately write him off.

However, that didn’t stop Welde from showing up to several recruiting camps the summer before his senior year of high school. He thought his speed would be enough to gain the attention of scouts.

“You’re always out to prove your talent in yourself,” Welde said. He said his size gave him a chip on his shoulder and helped drive him to work even harder at these recruiting events.

Despite this, Welde’s speed wasn’t enough to attract the interest of D1 schools. Instead, he received lots of attention from smaller, Division III and D1AA schools.

He had offers on the table from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Decision

“He didn’t decide until 7 p.m. on decision day,” Erica Rummel, Chris’s girlfriend of four years, said.

However, that decision was between University of Pittsburgh and Penn State — two schools he never talked to about football.

Welde had decided about a month earlier that he was going to hang up his cleats for good, or so he thought.

“I felt like if I chose a school like that, like MIT,” Welde said, “it would just be straight work and I’d be killing myself but not really seeing a reward from it grade-wise.”

He wanted the big-school experience. He wanted a school with a good engineering program. He also said that Rummel choosing Penn State affected his decision.

Wanting a “well-rounded” education, Welde chose to go to Penn State to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.

The Freshman Experience

By Welde’s standards, he had a pretty typical freshman year.

Living in East Halls, he went out with friends on the weekends and watched Penn State football games from the student section.

He also managed to earn a 3.98 GPA and hit the gym for about two hours each day, six days a week, every week.

“That was me kind of putting my energy into academics, as well as other small things outside of just studying all the time,” Welde said. “It gave me a lot more time just to actually relax.”

He was doing well, exceptionally well, by all standards. But football always stayed in the back of his mind.

“I’d walk around and see the other athletes and think, ‘What if?’” Welde said. He couldn’t help but wonder where he’d be if he had chosen a different path.

But as he, his mother, his sister Brittany, and his girlfriend all put it, he’s so quiet, laid-back and serious about his work that he would never let himself vocalize these feelings.

Chris’s mother remembers a conversation the summer after his freshman year. She recalls her son saying he didn’t know why anyone would play college sports since there would be no time to focus on academics.

Michelle said she told Chris, “There’s more to life than straight As.”

The “Club” Meeting

Even after the summer had passed, Welde had entered his sophomore year thinking that he wouldn’t be playing football. That was until his roommate, Hussein Sbeitan, got involved.

Early that fall semester, Sbeitan, who is a junior studying energy business finance, went out to dinner with Welde and his parents. At dinner, Welde’s high school football career was brought up, and Sbeitan was eventually shown Welde’s highlight tape.

Most of the plays in the highlight reel matched the same description: Welde gets the ball. Welde darts through the hole, if there is one, created by his blockers. Welde weaves through an entire team’s defense untouched. Welde sprints through the goal-line with the closest defender about 10 yards behind him.

Even though Sbeitan never played football himself, he said he could tell that Welde was a special player and thought that Welde might even be good enough to play for Penn State.

Knowing Welde would need more than some gentle encouragement to go out for the team, Sbeitan devised a plan to trick Welde into going to the meeting for potential walk-ons.

Sbeitan told Welde there was a club sports meeting coming up and that he wanted Chris to accompany him.

“I thought he would’ve psyched himself out,” Sbeitan said.

Welde eventually figured out there were no club sport meetings that day and realized the meeting must’ve been for football walk-ons. But he figured there was no harm in going with his roommate.

He feels lucky that he did. Welde said the coaches at the meeting weren’t looking for hulking guys; they were searching for people with speed and agility.

“Based off what they were saying at that meeting, it kind of gave me hope at that point,” Welde said. “Hope that I didn’t have before when I was looking at D1 programs.”

The Tryout

With only two weeks before the actual tryout, Welde began to train. For one to two hours every day, Welde walked to the IM fields to work on various cone drills, sprints, and his conditioning.

“I wouldn’t have been disappointed if I didn’t make it,” Welde said. “I just would have been disappointed if I didn’t give it my all.”

So he did.

At the tryout, he nearly matched his record times for every speed and agility test he ran, he bench pressed 225 pounds for 13 repetitions, and he caught almost everything thrown his way during route-running drills.

Michelle remembers Chris calling after the tryout and saying that he thought he did great — an uncharacteristic move for him. Michelle said that she’s never heard him be so outwardly confident.

That confidence was earned, and the Penn State coaches agreed.

A week later, Welde was told to come to the football training facilities. He had made the team.

“He set very high expectations for himself and always did a great job at achieving them,” Adam Collachi, Chris’s high school football coach, said. “I knew he had the drive and desire to make it, so I wasn’t surprised at all.”

The Transition

Upon making the team, Chris had to re-arrange his class schedule so that it fit with the football practice schedule.

However, Welde was taking E-Mech 210, which included a two hour lab section on Fridays that overlapped with football. He couldn’t move the class and couldn’t skip football practice, so he just had to teach himself the material.

School suddenly stopped coming so easily for Welde. Outside of class, Welde estimates he spent about 30 hours a week studying and 25 hours a week at football-related activities.

Welde spends most of his nights in the Redifer Commons computer lab. He works with Rummel, who is also a mechanical engineering student, on various homework assignments, projects, and study guides.

For their ME 340 class, the two worked tirelessly for hours building a miniature wind turbine, with Welde only ever breaking his focus to take a sip from his Zero Ultra Monster Energy Drink. Welde’s bloodshot eyes darted back and forth between his iPad and laptop scavenging various PowerPoints and articles for information on wind turbines. Welde and Rummel were the last to leave the computer lab that night.

“Some nights he stays up studying until 3 a.m. and then wakes up around 6 a.m. for football,” Rummel said. “He just pushes right through.”

Welde said it’s a demanding schedule but, out of necessity, his day-to-day life has become extremely structured.

“One thing that Chris has consistently done is learn how to have a relentless work ethic,” Brittany Welde, Chris’s older sister, said.

Even then, Chris said he had questioned whether or not he’d be able to handle both his academic and football workload. After a few weeks on the team, Chris caught a break — just not the way he wanted to.

The Lion’s Den

Welde’s spell on the sidelines started the day he was introduced to the lion’s den.

The lion’s den is a Penn State practice special where a running back and three offensive linemen face off against three defensive linemen and a linebacker. The goal for the offense is to move the ball 10 yards in four plays.

It’s an intense drill. The whole team is watching, everyone is fired up and players are willing to give it their all to show what they’re made of.

It took a few weeks of being on the team, but Welde finally heard his name called for the drill.

“Everyone is obviously a lot bigger than I am,” Welde, now a 170-pound wide receiver, said. “I was never expecting them to necessarily call my name.”

A mix of nerves and and excitement came over Welde. He saw the six linemen, all of whom weighed nearly 300 pounds, and a 6-foot-3, 230-pound linebacker glaring down at him.

There was no time to be scared. He had to try to remember his high school instincts as a running back.

Welde said the drill did not go as he had hoped. He got stuffed at the line a few times and said he felt “roughed up” after the second or third play.

He didn’t realize something was actually wrong until he was running to the next drill and felt like the bone in his right forearm could “wobble it a little bit.” “It” turned out to be his snapped ulna.

It would take surgery, seven screws, and a plate to fix his forearm.

Welde was upset, but said he didn’t want to get down on himself. Looking back, he even sees this helped him with his transition to becoming a student athlete because it temporarily alleviated his workload.

The Comeback

“I never thought I was done,” Welde said. “I still saw it as an opportunity that I wanted to take a hold of and make the best out of.”

However, the next few weeks felt like an eternity to Welde. He’d go to practice, ice his arm at the trainer’s office, do some wrist exercises, and watch some film.

After two weeks of this, he was cleared for lower body workouts. A week later, he started lifting weights with the left side of his body.

At this point, Welde said he was getting “kind of antsy to get back out there.”  

The rest of the season came and went, and Welde stood on the sidelines for every home game wearing a sling instead of shoulder pads.

Standing there in that sling, he said he almost felt “stupid” or that he was just “going along for the ride.”

“I was motivated to get back and show what I can do,” Welde said. “I didn’t want to be viewed just as that kid who gets hurt.”

He had the rest of winter break to recover. The following spring, Welde said he was eased back into practice but was able to run some scout offense. Scout offense is composed of backups, and their goal is to replicate opposing teams’ offenses so Penn State’s defense can practice against it.

It wasn’t until later in the summer that he would get another chance to show what he could do.

The coaches blew their whistles. The entire team was rounded up. It was time for the lion’s den.

Welde’s name was called.

“This time I had the determination of proving to myself that I can do it,” Welde said. “You’re not just going to throw me out there and have me not do well in the drill.”

Welde said he just had to trust his experience and instincts as a runner. The first play came around and there was no hole to run through. He went for a few yards.

The second play came around. Welde thinks he might get jammed at the line again, but this time a hole opens up. Without hesitation, he spins through it untouched and sprints through the goal-line.

Everyone went nuts. Teammates and coaches were slapping Welde on his shoulder pads and helmet, ecstatically shouting their congratulations at him.

Welde said he had just proved to himself that he could hang with the best.

The Opportunity

Today, Welde’s hard work has begun to pay off.

He’s not a scholarship player, he still risks getting injured every time he plays, and balancing football and school hasn’t gotten any easier.

Welde had a few opportunities come his way at the 2018 Blue-White game. He missed the 2017 game due to his injury, but this year he was chosen as a wide receiver for the White team.

He wasn’t sure how much playing time to expect going into the game, but he quickly realized that he was going to be a big part of the White squad’s gameplan.

His first action in the game came as a bubble screen to the outside. Welde caught the ball, sprinted toward the sideline, cut up the field, avoided two defenders, and was brought down right by the first down marker, just enough to move the chains.

Welde finished the day with 25 total yards, which was the second most on the White team.

When the game was finished, the team headed into the locker room, and head coach James Franklin gave his post-game speech and started looking for a player to “break it down” once he finished. Players started calling out Welde’s name. Franklin gave his approval.

Welde shuffled his way to the center of the group, with the team cheering and hollering as he did. He told the players that they’d done well through spring ball, but needed to finish the semester strong.

“Finish on three!” Welde shouted. “Three, two, one…” Then every Penn State player joined in and “FINISH!” echoed throughout the locker room.

It’s the little things that keep him going, Welde says. He’s loved football ever since he was a little kid cheering on the Steelers on Sundays. He can tell how proud his parents, girlfriend, and friends are of him, and it means the world to him to have earned the respect of his teammates.

“Football was his identity before,” Michelle said, and Chris isn’t willing to let the opportunity to play football again slip through his fingers.

“It kind of gives me a sense of confidence and pride even just walking around campus,” Welde said. “Coming in and giving up football, I would see those people walking around campus and feel like that could be me.

“It got rid of that what-if factor.”

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