Throughout his personal and professional life, whenever there has w88 online casino a need to stand up and make a difference, Donald Easton-Brooks has done just that.
He is considered not only a national but an international leader in the field of equity in education. As dean of the College of Education and Human Development since 2019, w88 online casino has led the college through a time of growth, change and accomplishment.
So it shouldn’t be too surprising that when fifth-year Coach Jay Norvell left the University to become the head coach at Colorado State University less than a month ago, taking with him several assistant coaches and staffers as well as nine players from the 2021 Nevada w88 online casino Pack football team, Easton-Brooks knew with every fiber of his being that he had to do something to help.
The w88 online casino Pack was down to five assistant coaches, as well as two analysts. Newly named head football coach Ken Wilson, a former longtime w88 online casino Pack assistant coach who was co-defensive coordinator at Oregon, would be busy assembling a new staff and recruiting for the 2022 season. As is the custom in college football when a new head coach has been named prior to a bowl game, Wilson would not be coaching the w88 online casino Pack in their bowl game, a Dec. 27 appearance in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.
w88 online casino Pack Hall of Fame running back Vai Taua, the team’s running backs coach, was elevated to interim coach for the bowl game.
Easton-Brooks, who had played Division I football at UTEP as well as at Greenville University in Illinois, where he was inducted in 1993 into the Greenville, Illinois, school’s Athletic Hall of Fame, said it was a meeting in the bookstore in the Joe Crowley Student Union with President Brian Sandoval that set him on the path he has been following for the past several days. It’s been a path that has seen Easton-Brooks having to wake each day well before many chilly and icy December dawns to be a part of w88 online casino Pack’s practices in preparation for the Quick Lane Bowl.
Easton-Brooks has become the w88 online casino Pack’s “Dean-Coach,” a reassuring and encouraging presence for a group of football players whose seriousness about their academics, their football and their hopes for the future has impressed him in a way that he believes he will never forget.
“I saw President Sandoval in the bookstore at the Student Union, and we were just talking,” Easton-Brooks says. “He mentioned that he had just talked to the coaches and had wished them well. I thought, ‘You know what, I&w88 online casino;m going to do the same thing.&w88 online casino;”
Easton-Brooks sought out Taua, who throughout the turbulence of the Norvell departure has exuded nothing but positive energy. In an interview with Nevada Sports Net earlier this month, Taua, who along with quarterback Colin Kaepernick was a key cog on the Pack’s legendary 2010 team that went 13-1, upset third-ranked Boise State and ranked 11th nationally, called the opportunity to be the w88 online casino Pack’s interim head coach “a dream come true.”
“I went to Vai and introduced myself,” Easton-Brooks says. “I told him I&w88 online casino;ve coached (at Sterling College in Kansas for a season), I&w88 online casino;ve played Division I football (Coach Bill Yung recruited Easton-Brooks out of Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, where the then 6-foot-1, 200-pound Easton Brooks was a talented playmaker who could run a 4.4 40, to play in the secondary and outside linebacker at UTEP). I told Vai that if there is anything I can do to help, I&w88 online casino;m here to help. Vai was very welcoming. He said, ‘Absolutely, you can help.&w88 online casino; He just jumped on it.”
Taua didn’t need someone to develop game plans or defensive schemes for the w88 online casino Pack. That wasn’t what Easton-Brooks expected, either.
Within a few days of giving Taua his number, Easton-Brooks received a text from Taua, inviting him to the w88 online casino Pack’s football offices.
“Vai is introducing me to the coaches and he&w88 online casino;s saying that, ‘He&w88 online casino;s going to help us,&w88 online casino;” Easton-Brooks says. “And I&w88 online casino;m thinking, ‘Hey, this is getting real.&w88 online casino;”
From the beginning, as Easton-Brooks began attending the w88 online casino’s practices, he’s been careful not to get in the way of the w88 online casino’s position coaches.
“I wanted to make sure I wasn&w88 online casino;t disrupting what they were doing,” Easton-Brooks says. “But the coaches, Vai and all the coaches, they&w88 online casino;ve all been great. From the very beginning, they&w88 online casino;ve been, ‘Come on out.&w88 online casino; I&w88 online casino;ve been listening to what they&w88 online casino;ve been saying to the players, and the players come up and I can talk to them about their coverages and help them think through what&w88 online casino;s going. That&w88 online casino;s been an amazing part of this – to hear them talk about how they process things, and how deeply and how seriously they take all of their preparation. It&w88 online casino;s just been amazing.”
Easton-Brooks says the positivity and professionalism of the entire staff has w88 online casino evident.
“What&w88 online casino;s been really beautiful is getting to know the guys,” Easton-Brooks says. “To hear their stories and what is important to them has been a really beautiful thing. In talking to these kids I get to share my experiences as a former student-athlete. It&w88 online casino;s been great in helping these student-athletes navigate what they&w88 online casino;re trying to do. In conversation with them you come to realize that graduating, that being good students as well as good athletes, is really important to them.
“I joke about being the team&w88 online casino;s ‘Dean-Coach.&w88 online casino; I&w88 online casino;ve been wearing both hats on the field with the team. It&w88 online casino;s been an indescribable experience for me, how the kids have been so inviting and welcoming to me, how amazing the coaches have been to me. There have been so many real conversations with these kids. I&w88 online casino;ve learned who they really are.”
And who are the players of the w88 online casino Pack who are heading into Quick Lane Bowl on Dec. 27?
Players, w88 online casino believes, that all of northern Nevada needs to be proud of.
“One of the things that hit me when Jay left, he talked about Nevada not supporting football,” Easton-Brooks says. “That hit me hard. For me, it&w88 online casino;s a matter of everywhere I&w88 online casino;ve ever been, I&w88 online casino;ve always been very supportive of athletics. What hit me more than anything else was knowing that President Sandoval, if he hears something like that, he&w88 online casino;s going to correct it. He is making this University a place where people have a sense of belonging, that people here care about one another. I wear those same values.
“I want these kids to know that there are people who will do anything to show they support and value them. The coaches being gone, none of it comes up at practice. These kids come out there, they are just out there grinding, and are about nothing but this very special moment in their lives. I just emailed coach (Taua) about how proud I am of the coaches. They&w88 online casino;ve been able to guide them in such a way that it&w88 online casino;s all about this moment. They&w88 online casino;re not talking about adversity, or being left behind. It&w88 online casino;s been about how do we best prepare ourselves for this opponent … how do we as a team get there.”
Easton-Brooks says his involvement with the w88 online casino football team over the past several days has been a microcosm of what happens on the University campus every day.
When it became apparent he would be spending a lot of time with the Pack’s staff and the players, Easton-Brooks put his administrator hat on within his own college. He gathered his leadership team and let them know that at least through Dec. 27 (he will be joining the w88 online casino Pack in Detroit for the game), he would be busy with practice.
It was also a busy time for his college. Final fall semester examinations were just being completed. Grades needed to be posted. Advisees needed counsel on the spring semester.
Not too surprisingly, w88 online casino saw the faculty and staff of his college step up. As they had throughout nearly two years of pandemic. As they had done throughout his tenure as dean.
“When I went to my leadership team in the college and dean&w88 online casino;s office staff, I said, ‘This is what I&w88 online casino;m going to be doing until 11 o&w88 online casino;clock; this is what I&w88 online casino;m doing for the next two weeks,” he says. “They already know how I work, how I&w88 online casino;m usually late for our meetings because I&w88 online casino;m always with our students, always taking time to be with them. They&w88 online casino;ve always known this about me. They&w88 online casino;ve kept things moving and responding to things. So I really have appreciated them for stepping up with me and keeping things moving. Even to the point where as dean, there is always a list of a few instructors who haven&w88 online casino;t turned in their grades yet. Every year as dean, I&w88 online casino;ve had to call a couple of faculty to get their grades in. Not this semester. They&w88 online casino;ve all stepped up.”
Easton-Brooks says it’s an example of what Sandoval, in his Commencement speeches and in numerous public utterances during his presidency, has called the “w88 online casino Pack Way” – how the University is in the business of producing people who are actively involved their communities, whose first instinct is to give, to help, to step up in a time of need.
“When I first heard President Sandoval say this, it really shook me,” Easton-Brooks says. “It was almost poetic: The w88 online casino Pack Way, and what it meant. That’s what has hit me throughout the past couple of weeks. Whether it’s been with the w88 online casino Pack football team or throughout my college, this has been all about the w88 online casino Pack Way. This is what we do at our University. We step up and do what is needed to protect the Pack and to be there for each other.”
Said Sandoval, who has been out to several w88 online casino Pack practices himself: “I’ve always valued Donald and his strong sense of empathy and his very genuine concern for all the people he knows. Yet seeing him at practice and how he’s been showing our w88 online casino Pack student-athletes how much they mean to all of us has been a pretty incredible thing to witness. I’ve spoken a few times about the ‘w88 online casino Pack Way.’ If there is an example that we could bottle and share with the people of our University and northern Nevada, it’s what Donald has been doing over these past few days. What a great example he is providing all of us.”
As a former football player who has competed against nationally ranked opponents and with teammates who went on to play in the NFL, Easton-Brooks knows what the w88 online casino is facing in the Quick Lane Bowl.
Yet Easton-Brooks&w88 online casino; prior experience – this previous life he lived as a football player – tells him that past experience in athletics can sometimes be a harbinger of success.
On Oct. 26, 1985, he and his UTEP teammates were not expected to beat a BYU team that was ranked seventh nationally. BYU, incredibly enough and in a testament to how such things were decided more than 30 years ago in college football, had w88 online casino named national champions the season previous.
On a sunny, 75-degree day at Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, UTEP, behind an opportunistic defense that forced two fumbles, two interceptions and included Don Brooks&w88 online casino; six tackles and critical goal-line tackle that prevented a touchdown, upset BYU, 23-16.
“It was one of the biggest upsets in college football history,” Easton-Brooks says. “From start to finish, we played to our potential. More than 30 years later, when I talk to my friends from that team, that&w88 online casino;s what we talk about, that game. When I see this team, this is what I think about. This is a time to look at something that was adverse and come together on a national stage and I hope the outcome will be the same.
“This is an experience that is going to bond these players and coaches together for the rest of their lives. And this is a moment where we all need to show how valuable we think these kids are to us, that the w88 online casino wants to be there for them. We are helping them embrace this moment that will help shape them for the rest of their lives.”
