Walter Rouse shuffles his feet and mimics game-like hand movements as the sun starts to set over OU’s practice field.
The offensive tackle who transferred from Stanford before the spring is the last player to leave practice nearly every night, so he can fit in his training as he’s not a full-participant while rehabbing from labrum surgery performed in December.
An injury won’t stop the fifth-year senior who’s expected to start on Oklahoma’s offensive line next season, because, in his final season of eligibility he’s aiming for one thing:
Making the NFL.
Last few practices and availabilities open to the media, Stanford transfer OT Walter Rouse has been the last player to leave the #Sooners field. pic.twitter.com/PQ8TL0YgV3
— Colton Sulley (@colton_sulley) April 6, 2023
Entering his fourth year at Stanford, Rouse planned to declare for the draft in 2023, while simultaneously graduating with a degree in biomechanical engineering. After tearing his labrum in the Cardinal’s third game of the 2022 season against Washington, Rouse’s strategy was altered.
Rouse played 10 games with an injured shoulder and witnessed a disappointing season in which Stanford finished 3-9 and 12th-year head coach David Shaw resigned. After surveying his options in the offseason, Rouse decided to forgo the NFL draft, where he was a projected late-round pick, for one more collegiate season and enter the transfer portal, later committing to Nebraska on Jan. 11 before making a last-minute switch to the Sooners on Jan. 14.
His decision also meant giving up his dream degree for his short window of making it to the pros, a plan he never envisioned when he entered college. Still, he wants to go back and get his diploma at Stanford in the future.
“I was focused on academics at Stanford, it's not so much here at Oklahoma,” Rouse told the OU Daily. “That’s something I'm okay with. My mindset has shifted. … I think right now I have a small window of opportunity. I might have a unique situation and some people may not understand it, but I want to go to the league in the best way possible for me to do it.”
For the first time, Rouse is putting athletics over academics.
He was a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy in 2022 — awarded to the most outstanding player with the best combination for academics, football and community service — and attended Stanford solely for academics with football as a secondary love.
But, through 40 games at Stanford, he discovered he wanted to go pro and chase his football dream as long as he can. While both are still important to Rouse, his window to make it to the NFL ends after this season.
“I want to be the best,” Rouse said “Just coming from high school, when I got to Stanford, I was more focused on academics than football. And then I realized that I was pretty good at this game of football, and my love for the game just grew and grew each year. … I think (this year) I want to be the best left tackle in college football.”
As for his degree plan in Norman, Rouse has opted to focus solely on football. The left tackle chose to major in multidisciplinary studies, a far shout from his major at Stanford.
Rouse is dead set on his newfound dream, and is putting his academic success at the back-burner, at least for now.
“I know I'm gonna get my degree,” Rouse said. “Maybe some of the people who might leave are gonna leave, they don't come back and get it. That's them, but that piece of paper is very important to me, no matter how long it takes. Whether it's five years, even if it's 10 years, I'm gonna get that piece of paper.”
Redshirt senior offensive lineman Walter Rouse during spring practice on March 27.
‘He wasn’t just some big, dumb football player’
Hillary Lucas remembers her son writing his future dreams on three pages of yellow lined paper as a fifth grader.
Some of these dreams included Rouse’s goals of becoming a Taekwondo master, a surgeon and learning multiple languages. He listed Stanford as his dream school with the desire to become an engineer.
He never, however, wrote down making the NFL as a goal.
“I remember my mom said, ‘OK, you can do all of those things, but just remember, you are going to be in school for a very long time,’” Hillary told the Daily. “His exposure of just seeing all the things that could be just led to him saying, ‘I gotta find out about this. I gotta find out about that.’”
Throughout elementary school, Rouse compiled straight A's on his report card. He eventually attended Sidwell Friends, a private school in Washington D.C., one of the best in the area.
His coach, John Simon, was on the admissions board and remembered how rigorous the process was.
“It's really high level,” Simon told the Daily of the school that former President Barack Obama’s daughters attended. “I was on the admissions committee there, and we would have 300 kids apply, and they would only take maybe 25 or 30 kids in. That's why it was hard for anybody to recruit football players, and Walter was kind of recruited as a student. Not so much for football, but just as a good student. That's what got him in there.”
Rouse’s academic background helped him learn football, which he didn’t start playing until seventh grade.
Hillary remembers her son waking her up at 4 a.m. every morning so he could focus on football without neglecting his studies.
“He was able to pick everything up,” Simon said. “Some kids that have never played until they get in middle school don't understand the game that well, but he did. He realized that if he didn't block, the quarterback was gonna get killed. That's what really helped me most is how smart he was knowing that once he learned the ins and outs of the offensive line.”
As Rouse’s love for football grew under Simon’s coaching, he participated in other endeavors throughout high school. Before changing his major to biomechanical engineering at Stanford, he wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon who specializes in pediatrics.
With a goal of being a doctor, Rouse attended some of the top school camps in the summer, like Harvard, to help enrich his knowledge about medicine.
Rouse found an interest in boy scouts, where he eventually became an eagle scout in 2017, a ranking 5 percent of scouts attain when they sign up. For his required eagle scout project he traveled to Africa and delivered care packages to children in need.
While Rouse slowly grew more impressive on the football field, Simon was enamored with Rouse’s character off of it.
“He was very smart and well liked by the teachers,” Simon said. “He studied, got all his work done and, and that's the thing that impressed him was the fact that he was such a great guy. And he wasn't, as the old saying goes, he wasn’t just some big, dumb football player.”
Rouse started taking football more seriously as he went through middle school and high school, but his parents were both hesitant of his growing passion at first.
During his junior year at Sidwell Friends, Rouse’s on-field talent became more evident, so Hillary hired Sudan Ellington, an off-field personal trainer who specializes in training high school offensive line recruits around the Washington, D.C., area.
Before his days as a trainer, Ellington played offensive line at Tennessee and James Madison. Ellington was surprised to learn Rouse, 6-foot-6, was receiving no offers at the time.
Rouse’s new personal trainer had collegiate coaching connections around the country, and knew once he connected them with Rouse, offers would start flowing in.
The next step was preparing Hillary, who was unaware of Rouse’s skyrocketing stock as an offensive tackle. The pair had to create a buffer system, where coaches reached Hillary, Ellington and Simon before they were able to contact Rouse, so he could solely focus on his studies and academic standing.
“I told her she needed to brace herself because every school in the country will be banging on your doors,” Ellington said. “She was like, ‘Coach, thank you, but I just think he's just exaggerating.’ … (The next challenge) was, ‘how do we keep him focused?' because he's not like he's at a public school, but he's at a high academic school. So, he can't fall straight to all his football attention.”
After numerous workouts with Ellington, Rouse finished high school as a 3-star prospect according to 247Sports, with offers from Notre Dame, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Ohio State, Harvard and Florida.
Rouse decided on Stanford, solely for academics first and football second.
After playing four years at Stanford, Rouse’s love for the sport became even more clear. He knew he wanted to go to the NFL by the beginning of his senior year at Stanford, a goal that he never officially wrote down on his stack of papers Hillary still has to this day.
“He was just an awesome young man, just academically wise,” Ellington said. “He was an all star in the classrooms and an all star in the community. And the more we worked like his comfort level on the field, his love for playing football kind of grew and grew as time went on.”
‘They live through him’
Rouse and his grandfather C. Payne Lucas enjoyed fly fishing at C. Payne's lake house in North Carolina, where the two bonded over nature and literature.
This was “Camp Lucas,” as Hillary described, a place where Rouse would visit for weeks during the summer and learn from his grandfather in between football camps and educational trips to Harvard.
There, Rouse was educated in a makeshift basement library filled with literature by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. He also caught different types of fish and the occasional turtle in the lake. But most importantly Rouse would carry the wealth of knowledge C. Payne taught with him.
C. Payne served in the National Peace Corps, a U.S. program that trains volunteers to help with foreign developmental assistance, and co-founded the world-famous non-profit named Africare in 1970, which funded money to help build African refugee camps.
Through these lessons, Rouse gained the intellect and passion he has today.
“He just instilled in him everything,” Hillary said. “He made my job a lot easier as a mom. He read to him. … He helped him learn just what it was going to take to be a young man and those expectations were. He wasn't just a disciplinarian, it's just how his delivery was. He was stern, but fun.”
Walter Rouse and his grandfather C. Payne.
During his senior year of high school, C. Payne passed away on Sept. 15, 2018, from Alzheimer’s.
“We had lots of fun,” Rouse told the Daily. “We would just joke around with one another. Looking back, I just appreciate the time, but I feel like I could have done more to appreciate it a lot more because I wish I had those times back. He just really meant the world to me.”
Almost a year later, after his first season at Stanford, Rouse faced another tragedy while in the hospital. His father, Victor, died of a heart attack during a surgical operation, shaking Rouse’s world once again on Dec. 16, 2019.
Victor, like his grandfather, played a pivotal part in his life. He inspired him to read Marvel comics, Stephen King novels and the Harry Potter series. When Rouse struggled to read, his father came up with the idea to let him divulge in comics in elementary school.
Unlike his grandfather’s passing, Victor’s death came unexpectedly.
“I was in disbelief because he went in for one thing, and then he had a heart attack,” Rouse said. “Even the day before he had passed, he was alright. We were just chilling watching some TV in the hospital room.”
The loss of both his grandfather and dad in two years left Rouse feeling numb and he struggled processing both of their deaths while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rouse also lost his aunt, Therese Lucas, who had Down syndrome, and uncle, C. Payne Lucas Jr., in 2013 and 2017, respectively. With four family deaths in six years, Rouse reached a breaking point.
“I just broke down,” Rouse said. “It was more than anything I could handle, and moving forward from that point out, it was a real low point in my life. I was trying to do a lot with school. And being at Stanford, trying to handle those academics, social life and (dealing with my dad’s death), I kind of shut people out.”
After mourning through the COVID-19 pandemic, Rouse learned to cope with his grief by channeling his family members' passions into his own life.
After switching to a biomechanical engineering major, Rouse welded a weight stand in the shape of the Stanford logo last season, following the love for building Lego sets both he and his uncle had before his death.
Walter Rouse.
Like his grandfather who helped people in need, he wants to channel this passion to weld and 3D print prosthetics for people with physical disabilities.
Walter Rouse's invention.
“They're not here in the physical, but they live through him,” Hillary said. “When he’s walking or doing things at different times, or says something. I see my father in him. When Walter tells me that he met someone, or he went to a hospital and spoke with someone or any of those things. I see my sister in him.”
As he rehabs from shoulder surgery and prepares to take the field in the fall, Rouse, living in the spirit of his family members on and off of the field, is not taking this final opportunity for granted.
“Walter has experienced a lot of stuff,” Hillary said. “He lost his dad. He lost his grandfather. He lost his uncle. He lost his aunt, all within a span of five to seven years. You see what I'm saying? So, he knows that tomorrow is not guaranteed. He knows that he only has one life, and he has to live it to the best of his ability to do whatever that's going to make him as successful as possible.
“You have to be able to value the life that they had, and realize everything that they had given you. Then you can take that and incorporate that into your daily life in your actions, and let your life speak with knowledge of what they instilled in you, whatever it may be. Because of the exposure that he's had those experiences it allows him to carry on those legacies.”
‘He’s dedicated, not motivated’
Pat Fields sent a text to Hillary after Rouse initially committed to transfer to Nebraska.
Fields grew close to Rouse in his one season at Stanford after he transferred and graduated from Oklahoma.
The former Sooners safety knew something was off once he learned of Rouse’s destination.
“I had texted her before he committed to Nebraska, and she was kind of unsure about it,” Fields told the Daily. “But, you could tell, whenever he committed to Nebraska, you could kind of tell he wasn't all the way there with it, and, I don't want to speak for him, but definitely after he flipped to Oklahoma (there) was just way more energy. They were super positive about stuff.”
Hillary and Rouse welcomed Fields, a fellow standout in the classroom and the gridiron, with open arms once he transferred out to the West Coast to pursue his master’s degree.
“Whenever I was the first guy out there to Stanford he was super open arms towards me,” Fields said. “He doesn't really talk too much. But, if you're one of his guys, he's definitely going to look out for you."
Rouse leaned on Fields to help his decision process while in the portal. Rouse, who officially visited Norman in January, called and texted him about Oklahoma throughout the entire process.
“So the funny thing was, (Rouse) was texting me and was like, ‘hey, I'm gonna go visit OU, and I want to call you and ask you for your thoughts,’” Fields said. “I'm thinking he's talking maybe like a week in advance. The same night, coach Venables texted me and was like, ‘I'm with your guy, Walter.’”
After texting with Rouse, OU coach Brent Venables and offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh called the former OU safety and asked him, “How do we get your guy Walter here?”
Rouse eventually fell in love with the program and Bedenbaugh’s vision for his future, especially his chances of improving his draft stock.
Fields served as a prominent factor in Rouse’s recruitment, but he never told him to commit to OU. He just warned him about the level of excellence required at Oklahoma.
“I never told him to go to OU,” Fields said. “The first thing I told him about my experience (there) was that it'll be the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. It'll be challenging. A lot of days you'll wonder, ‘is it worth putting in all this work?’
“You’ll question if you love the game enough, because the amount of work that we put into the game of football is why we win championships the way we do. I told him that because I wanted to be very honest with him, you're about to go through the hardest 12 months of your life, but on the other hand, it'll be every single dream that you had as a kid.”
With Fields’ help, Rouse eventually landed in Oklahoma as his home.
‘Think about yourself first’
Since arriving in Norman, Rouse has already gone fishing with teammate Jacob Sexton. Fields, at some point during the 2023 season, plans on taking Rouse hunting in Oklahoma and getting dinner.
When his mother traveled from Silver Springs to Norman for Rouse’s birthday, she gifted him a camo vest and bucket hat for his future endeavor with Fields.
In all, Rouse is at peace with the decision he made and his mother, the person who knows him best, knows he’s going to forge his path into the NFL when he finally steps onto Owen Field for the 2023 season, even if he ruffled some feathers along the way.
Hillary knows her son will be able to get his degree, even if it means giving it up for a short while. Rouse is following his heart, which is shaped by tragedy and the love he developed for football in high school.
“I know he's always going to put his best foot forward,” Hillary said. “He’s dedicated, not motivated, he's dedicated. And, so when it came to this, he had to make that decision. Now, are people gonna like it? No. Yeah, people aren't gonna like it. Some people are gonna love it, because you're going to end up somewhere where they're like, ‘oh my gosh, this is great,’ and other places they're gonna be like, ‘No, we don't want you to go.’
“You can't do things for other people because other people are going to doubt you. Other people are going to want other things out of you. But I have told Walter as a parent, you always have to think about yourself first.”
This story was edited by Austin Curtright and Colton Sulley. Ansley Chambers copy edited this story.
