Helu a back with a purpose
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BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
In August last year — before his first carry as a Husker, before his commitment to Christ and before he had become a player clamored for by some fans — someone asked Roy Helu: What style of running back are you?
You know, a bruiser? A slasher? A burner? A thumper?
Rarely does such a question come with an interesting answer, but Helu had one ready.
It was a reply that told not just where Helu came from, but also let anyone who heard it know he’s not your typical I-back. He is a player guided by his heritage and, most important to him, his faith.
“When I get that question, I just say I’m a back,” Helu said. “I can’t really label myself. If I compared it, it would be a rugby player, Jonah Lomu. I don’t know if you guys know rugby. He’s from New Zealand.”
Lomu is of Tongan descent. So is Helu. Tongans are a tightly knit group, Helu says.
Tongan kids in Utah often stay in Utah. And Tongan kids in California often stay in California.
But Helu, a sophomore from California’s Bay Area, came to Nebraska and runs like a rugby player. Apparently, more running backs should try it.
Of Nebraska’s big three running backs — Marlon Lucky, Quentin Castille and Helu — no one is gaining more yards per carry than Helu.
He has 425 total yards — 288 of them on the ground — and he is averaging 6.0 yards a rush. Lucky’s average is 4.3 and Castille’s 3.9.
Jonah Lomu would be proud.
“It’s angles, rugby’s all about angles, if you’re going to break something. … I definitely learned open-field running,” said Helu, who played club rugby in high school. “I always loved rugby. In my culture, that’s our sport.”
People like to speak of I-backs who “run with a purpose,” and it’s most true in Helu’s case.
There’s a purpose, all right, and it’s not simply about scoring touchdowns — though that is certainly welcome.
With Helu, faith and football are entwined. His life changed last fall, and ever since, he hasn’t really been running for himself.
“Honestly, I’m just trying to impress God with repetitions and going all-out in practice,” Helu said in April.
And now, in the middle of the season, he thinks back to last year. That’s when he changed, one morning before the sun came up.
It was 6 a.m., the day after a game. Helu was restless.
“I was homesick,” he says. “There was some other stuff. It was in the middle of the season. It was after the Oklahoma State game.”
He called up team chaplain Matt Penland.
“It was still dark outside,” Helu says. “That’s when I first asked about what it’s like to be a Christian. I just felt I needed something. I don’t know, I felt empty. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Here’s a label Helu doesn’t mind: Christian. He’s a Christian.
It’s changed the way he’s played, he’s sure.
“But it’s hard to play for (Christ) because you have to re-evaluate yourself,” Helu says. “Sometimes I do stuff for myself. There’s a difference. I can see a difference in my play when I do (play for Christ).
“I’m pretty selfish by nature. Before I came here, and before I had my own faith, I was pretty selfish. When I found myself doing that, I found myself wanting more.”
Husker tight ends coach Ron Brown, a devout Christian, has seen the change in Helu. It’s examples like him, Brown says, that make his job so rewarding.
“One of the reasons I felt led me to come back into coaching is I really felt like it was a tender time (in guys’ lives),” Brown says. “I think these kids, particularly, when they come into a program like this, there’s so much stuff going on around them. And at some point, it just rips them wide-open and then the question is: What do they fill that with?”
It’s not always easy for Helu to be selfless, the I-back says.
Naturally, any back wants the ball, he wants to score, he wants to be the man on third-and-2.
“I’m just saying, being a Christian and wanting to play and wanting to contribute more, it’s difficult to put yourself in a selfless type of situation,” Helu says.
If that internal fight is sometimes not the easiest, he’s certain his life is better than where it was.
It came down to Nebraska and California when Helu was deciding where to go to school.
His family wanted him to stay close. Helu felt he had to get away.
One morning he woke up and, without telling his parents, committed to Nebraska.
“My life was a little different back then,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of family back home and a lot of friends that had different influences. I was a weaker person. So I kind of went with the crowd, you know? Looking back … just seeing if I would have stayed there, I don’t know what I’d be like.”
There is a laid-back confidence about Helu, the fourth of five children.
When asked when he knew he could play at this level, he says he knew after the first practice rep he ever took here.
He grew up in an OK neighborhood but saw the influences of gangs when visiting his grandma’s house.
His mom cleans houses and takes care of elderly people. His dad pours concrete.
“They’re both hard-working,” he says. He thinks he’s adopted their mentalities.
His goal coming into this season was to start — something he knew wouldn’t be easy and something he has yet to accomplish. But the competition between the backs has helped his play, he says.
“We still compete every day,” Helu says. “It’s a little more relaxed now. But throughout the week, (against) every team, we commit ourselves to try to compete for the starting job.”
Penland, the team chaplain, says he’s seen Helu become more of a leader since his commitment last fall.
“Leading on other people, serving other people, being a servant leader in that sense,” Penland says. “It’s a real transformation from being self-centered to (being about) others.”
Can faith translate to helping someone on the football field?
Helu, Brown and Penland all believe so.
“It makes a world of difference because the pressure’s off and you’re free to go out and play as hard as you can and you don’t have those worries about having to sustain things,” Penland says. “It’s not up to you anymore.”
So Helu’s going to keep running with a purpose, running like a rugby player.
And — as he said before this season — if that gives him an opportunity to evangelize, even better.
“I thought that’s what God has been telling me to do ever since I got here, or just recently, just to talk to kids about what God has done in my life and dreams that are coming true.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at bchristopherson@journalstar.com or 473-7439.
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