Local trainer pulling for former teammate Drew Brees
Among the many reasons that local resident Da’Shann Austin will be rooting for the New Orleans Saints today, there’s one that’s pretty rare to come by.
How many people at a Super Bowl party can say they’ve intercepted a world champion?
Austin, 32, played defensive back at Purdue University in 1998 and was a teammate of current Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who will try to lead New Orleans to its first championship today against the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.
“That’s another reason that I’d love for him to win the Super Bowl is that I can always say I picked off the Super Bowl champion,” Austin said smiling recently after finishing a youth session of Parisi Speed School at The Summit Medical Fitness Center in Kalispell. “And it’s likely if he does win the Super Bowl, quarterbacks get MVP of the game. So that’s always something that I can say, that was my quarterback and I gave him fits at practice.”
Austin, who moved to Whitefish last fall with his fiancee Nicole, is a personal trainer in Kalispell. He spent six years in the Canadian Football League and won a Grey Cup (league championship) with the Calgary Stampeders in 2001. Austin also spent time alongside another well-known quarterback, at least around these parts — Griz legend Dave Dickenson, who led UM to a national title in 1995. Dickenson and Austin played together for the B.C. Lions and went to the Grey Cup in 2004 but came up short.
Both Brees and Dickenson have the same supposed shortcoming — height — but Austin remembers them having one particular quality that seemed to make up for it.
“They’re both kind of undersized, but the will to win is unmeasurable between those two guys. They’re great competitors and they find a way to win and that’s one of the things that I think put Drew on the map,” Austin said.
“(Drew) used to always compete, even guys that didn’t play quarterback would get in and compete with Drew,” Austin added. “He’d set up a trash can and they’d throw balls in the trash can forever. At that level, everybody is a competitor.”
Seeing the television clips of the four-time Pro Bowler gathering teammates in a pre-game huddle and erupting in that one-of-a-kind chant, Austin thinks of the team camaraderie that a teammate like Brees builds so well.
“He’s both vocal and he leads by action. It’s one thing to be vocal and then you get out there and you don’t do what you’re supposed to do,” Austin said. “If you’ve got your quarterback getting hyped like that and getting involved and getting excited, that’s going to fire everybody up. I used to love it when my defensive linemen would get fired up because those guys were like my big brothers on the team. So when you see those guys like your quarterback or your defensive linemen getting excited and getting hyped up, it doesn’t do anything but have a ripple effect on the rest of the team.”
Having playing in a championship game, Austin has an idea what it’s like for players on both sides as the game approaches.
“If I know every player like I think I do, it’s visualization. You want to visualize yourself making the perfect catch, the perfect block, the perfect throw, the perfect interception. You have to visualize yourself doing these things day in and day out,” he said. “I would visualize so much that I would dream about my perfect game and to me it works. If you don’t see yourself doing good, you won’t do good.”
It’s pretty easy to root for someone like Brees. As the story goes, he was only offered one Division 1 scholarship in college but made the best of it and left with nearly every Big Ten passing record. And then there’s New Orleans and everything its residents have been through.
“He’s a cool guy and I’m so happy for him right now,” Austin said about Brees. “I hope he has a chance to bring it home, and especially to Louisiana where they’ve had those problems with (Hurricane) Katrina and what not. That would be a big boost for that city. Even if he doesn’t bring it home it’s already been a big boost for the city to get their minds off the bad past and what’s happened. I’m proud of him for that.”
Austin doesn’t watch much professional football anymore, except on days like today. It reminds him of his playing days, which he still thinks about often. But even if it’s hard to see those days fade in the distance, Austin is making the best of it, and trying to lead someone else in that direction.
“It’s a blessing, and that’s why I’m using what I’ve learned on that road,” Austin said of his opportunity to play professional football. “I’ve had a lot of people who were instrumental in my life telling me the positive things to do, how to work out, how to live my life and be right. That’s what I want to give back to the community here where I’m going to end up raising a family.”
Reporter Dillon Tabish can be reached at 758-4463, or by e-mail at dtabish@dailyinterlake.com