Jeskey overcoming NIU shooting incident

By ANDREW SEIDLER - Chronicle News Group

DeKALB – Drew Jeskey wants to one day play professional soccer. It&'s been that way for a long time.

Maybe not since he began playing the game at age 6, but awhile – well before anything he saw Feb. 14 in Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall.

"I'm hoping," he says.

Three years ago, his dream nearly ended.

Jeskey, then a freshman, was making his first start for the NIU men's soccer team.

The 2005 St. Charles East graduate tallied an assist for his first collegiate point on what would be the game-winner in a 1-0 win at Eastern Illinois. But playing in sweltering heat and humidity, Jeskey began experiencing chest pains late in the game and took himself out.

After the scare, he couldn't play without first gaining medical clearance. Tests on his heart followed.

Then came a piece of stunning news: Jeskey had a hole in his heart. He needed surgery. His soccer career was over.

"It was devastating – for me, my family, my coaches," Jeskey said. "I can't remember not playing soccer. It's the only thing I've known. I've given up so much for it, so I couldn't imagine not having it."

A week later, a second opinion yielded better news: Jeskey's heart was fine, his career intact.

"Yeah, that was a good day," Drew said, smiling.

Jeskey enters his senior year with the Huskies, who open the season Aug. 29 in Evanston at the Northwestern Lakeside Classic, as a two-year starter and 6-foot-1, 180-pound defensive stalwart – tough yet skillful, says NIU men's head soccer coach Steve Simmons, and with a knack for breaking up plays in back and a willingness to play through pain.

He and his fellow seniors on the Northern roster need 13 wins to become part of the winningest class in program history.

Soccer, Jeskey freely admits, is his life.

He has another confession.

Seated in the back of Cole Hall on Feb. 14, Jeskey was a witness to the shootings that ravaged the Northern Illinois University community.

As he began to compute the scene unfolding in the front of the lecture hall, Jeskey crawled out of the room and dialed 911.

The shots that would leave six dead, including the shooter, continued to ring out.

"Someone asked me this the other day – 'How often do you think about it?,'" Jeskey said. "To be brutally honest, every day or every other day something comes up where it reminds me."

Soccer as therapy

With classes and activities canceled in the wake of the shootings, Jeskey spent the next week away from soccer, bouncing between DeKalb and St. Charles.

"When he first came home, he wasn't talking much and he kind of had a blank stare," said his mother, Lynn, who has attended every one of Drew's college games, including trips to Oregon State and the University of Washington the past two seasons.

"It was a tough situation because you didn't want to talk about it too much. And then with all the athletics stopped for a while, that was very hard. Soccer is so much a part of his routine, his life. It's his thing. I think at that time he needed it."

The NIU squad as well as Jeskey's longtime year-round club team, Sockers FC Chicago, proved a second family – and the game, a much-needed outlet.

"Especially back home, people through Sockers, people I haven't heard from since I was 12, were calling me, e-mailing me – parents, coaches, players, everybody I've ever done anything with," Jeskey said. "I was just like, 'Wow. And the team they were right there for me, taking me in when I needed that.

"No matter how I'm feeling, it's always different when I get to soccer. People always say you can let your emotions out – everything around you, you forget about. What happened on that day, everything stops for a little bit when I'm playing. I feel that a little more now."

Jeskey met Waubonsie Valley graduate Bryan Abdallah at the beginning of his freshman year at Northern. The teammates became roommates their sophomore year and say they probably haven't been apart for more than five days since, including competing together this summer in Holland for an elite club team organized by the Sockers.

Abdallah was on his way to pick up Jeskey after class the day of the shootings.

"I kept calling him, but he wasn't picking up," Abdallah said. "Finally he called me and he said there was a shooting and I was just freaking out. I think the one thing that kept him and us going after that was soccer."

Moving forward

Steve Simmons makes this statement, difficult and awkward as it is, with certainty.

"Drew, more than anybody, is the guy on the team I'd want to be in that situation that day," the NIU coach said. "And I told him that, that he's the one. Part of what makes Drew such a good soccer player and such a good person is he's level-headed, he's smart, he's strong. You don't want anybody to go through that situation, ever. But Drew would be my pick."

After a banner 2006 season in which the Huskies posted a 15-6-1 record, won the Mid-American Conference championship and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, 2007 was a struggle for the team at 7-9-4.

To get back to the winning ways that have helped the program rise to national prominence in recent years, Jeskey knew throughout the offseason that he'd be counted on as a team leader in 2008, a process accelerated by tragedy.

"When we started up again [in spring]," Jeskey said, "I remember the coaches asking me if I was OK to go, and I said I was because it wasn't just for me to feel better. I felt like I needed to be a leader for the team and be there for the other guys."

Jeskey names another MAC Tournament title and NCAA Tournament appearance as the top goals for his final season, during which time Northern will face five teams ranked in the NSCAA Division I preseason top-25 poll.

He's looking forward to a high-profile invitational at Tulsa and a game at Duke, and he wants badly to beat rival Akron, the team that ended the Huskies' season last fall in heartbreaking fashion, 2-1 in double overtime, at the MAC Tournament.

"We all feel like we have a better team this year and we want to make up for what happened last year," Jeskey said.

Next summer, Jeskey is planning a return trip to Europe, where he hopes to catch on professionally.

"I think it would be great if he pursued that," said Drew's father, Dave. "He's always been pretty serious about soccer, since he was really young. It's always been very important to him."

Dave Jeskey, like his wife, Lynn, is an NIU graduate, and remains close to the university. A college friend of his, Gary Parmenter, lost his son, Dan, during the shootings.

Drew, his parents, his three siblings – they all live with that day.

"I try not to think about it too much. I guess sometimes soccer helps with that," Drew said. "But it's also something I need to remember, something I can't forget. In the back of my mind, it'll always be there.

"I just can't think about it too much where it affects the way I'm trying to live my life and reach my goals.?