Jeff Woody positioned himself in the backfield at Johnny Majors Field during a fall camp scrimmage in August 2010 and took the handoff. He bulled his way forward, past linebacker A.J. Klein, deep behind the line, and lowered his shoulder for three more yards on fourth-and-1.

“Hey Woody, that’s a good job! That’s what we pay you for,” yelled assistant head coach Bill Bleil from behind, in reference to a scholarship.

There was just one problem.

“Uh, coach Bleil,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads, jumping in on the conversation. “We don’t pay that one.”

Woody had walked onto the football team the fall prior, choosing Iowa State instead of other schools mostly because of the honesty from Rhoads. Other schools told Woody he was good — just not good enough for a scholarship. Or that he was good on offense, but defense might suit him better.

The 6-foot-1-inch, 242-pound back from Southeast Polk felt disrespected. He wanted someone to be truthful with him.

“We were up front and honest and saw a hard-nosed, physical player,” Rhoads said. “We presented to him, ‘If you continue to do the things you’ve done and find the same successes at the next level, you’ll have the opportunity to earn a scholarship.’”

So Woody walked on. He watched film and worked harder. The hard work didn’t go unnoticed, and he was named scout team player of the year as he sat out while redshirting his freshman season.

Woody had set his goals to do more. He had told ISU running backs coach Kenith Pope as much when the two first met after Woody arrived in August 2009.

“What are your goals?” Pope asked Woody the first time they sat down together.

“Coach,” Woody said, “I put my goals on the back of my bedroom door, and every time I walk out, I look at those goals, because that’s what I’m trying to strive for.”

On the back of Woody’s bedroom door in his Ames apartment, his goals were listed one-by-one. He had started doing this in high school after hearing from a sports psychologist, and it seemed to work.

The initial goals on Woody’s board when he arrived at Iowa State were to move into the two-deep at running back, start on at least three special teams plays and make the Dean’s List. He really wanted to earn that scholarship, too.

As he left his room, Woody looked right at his list. There was plenty of motivation.

When Woody lowered his shoulder on that unassuming play during fall camp four years ago, there wasn’t much to it. That’s how Woody always played.

The next day Rhoads retold the story to the team. He looked to Woody.

“Well, Jeff,” Rhoads said, the team still gathered, “we’d like to pay you now.”

Woody teared up. He called his mom and his then-girlfriend Hannah Norris.

He had always told Hannah if he called after a fall camp practice to expect good news, otherwise he would text her. Time and time again he would call, and apparently forgetful of his promise, his reasoning was a casual conversation. Hannah would get her hopes up, only to be disappointed.

On this day, Hannah answered, but told Jeff he needed to wait a second. She was packing a semi-truck headed to Waterloo, where she was attending nursing school. Finally, she was done, and asked what was up.

“So, I called you,” Woody told her, hinting at the scholarship.

“I just started crying,” Hannah said. “I was so excited for him, because I knew how hard he had worked for it.”

Welcome to Jeff Woody’s world, one of hard work and lowering his shoulder.

“He’s the type of young man that he knows what he wants to do and he understands how to get there,” Pope said. “It’s been by hard work, it hasn’t been given to him. Iowa State didn’t give him a scholarship; he earned a scholarship.”

A night to remember

The team huddled on the sideline, 52,027 yellow rally towels waving in the crowd.

“Look at me now,” Pope told Woody before the offense headed to the field. “I want you to go two-hand lock the whole time. Those guys have one choice to win the game, and that’s to create a turnover.”

The scoreboard at Jack Trice Stadium that Friday night in November 2011 read: CYCLONES 31, COWBOYS 31. In the second overtime, Iowa State had the chance to upset No. 2 Oklahoma State on national TV with any score.

Starting at the 25-yard line, they preferred a touchdown.

“I did not want to kick a field goal,” Rhoads said. “Even though that’s all we needed to win, we hadn’t been great throughout the year, and we had been low on the day, and I didn’t want to kick a field goal.”

The offense huddled on the field and awaited the call: Trey Up Left 40-Z.

Woody lined up just left and 1 yard back from quarterback Jared Barnett. He locked both hands on the ball, lowered his shoulders and fell through the hole for a 6-yard gain.

“He got on a pretty good roll, and we said, ‘Let’s just run it again,’” Pope said.

The offense huddled: Trey Up Left 40-Z.

Woody lined up just as he had before. He took the handoff, spun to break a tackle and kept pushing. He spun again, carrying defenders near the goal line for 15 more yards.

“The next thing we know he’s inside the 10-yard line,” Pope said. “We said, ‘Why not, let’s run it again.’”

The offense huddled: Trey Up Left 40-Z.

Fans slowly crept down the aisles, the offense now set at the 4-yard-line. Woody set up, for a third-straight time, just left and 1 yard back from Barnett. He cut right, then back left before getting hit, crossing into the end zone.

“I threw my hands up, and I’m celebrating, and I turn around and the entire field is just getting swarmed like somebody just broke a bathtub and the water is just running out onto the field,” Woody said.

Woody was stuck. Suddenly, Pope appeared while attempting to cross the field to see former colleagues. The two sang “Sweet Caroline” with the crowd and wondered how they were going to get to the locker room.

“Woody, we’ve got to find our way out of here,” Pope told him. “I’m just going to use you as a fullback, and we’re just going to push our way through it.”

Pope took his shoulder, and just as Woody had always done, he bulled forward.

“You can put up with anything at that particular time,” Pope said. “It’s one of those moments that, in time, you’ll never forget that time and that feeling.”

The two finally reached the gates to the locker room. The scoreboard read: CYCLONES 37, COWBOYS 31.

“Whenever an Oklahoma State clip comes on you get a little bit of goose bumps,” Woody said. “The atmosphere that night was huge.”

‘I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’

Back in high school, Hannah and Jeff would avoid each other.

“I kind of thought he was this big-headed sports guy,” Hannah said. “He admits he was a little bit big-headed when he was in high school.”

The two knew each other when they were little, but were never friends. 

When they were 17, between their junior and senior years of high school at Southeast Polk, near Des Moines, the two started dating.

When Jeff knew he wanted to propose, he thought up an idea. He would do it following the 2012 Spring Game at midfield of Jack Trice Stadium. At 4:30 p.m. that day, whether Jeff and Hannah were on the field or not, the scoreboard would light up and the music would play.

The spring game got over at 4:07 p.m. It would be a time crunch. Jeff had 20 minutes to shower, retrieve the ring from his lockbox and find Hannah.

“Which is a tremendous difficulty,” Woody said, “because I’m always last out of the locker room.”

He found her, but time was running thin.

“I’m going to show you something on the field really quick,’” Woody told her, his hands shaking and palms sweating.

Hannah wasn’t sure what Jeff was doing, but she followed him to the field. They got to the 10-yard line. “What are you doing Jeff?” she asked. They moved to the 20-yard line, “Seriously, Jeff, what is going on?” They moved to the 30. “Oh my God, Jeff, what are you doing?”

He turned, the scoreboard lit up, reading, ‘Hannah Jean Norris, Will You Marry Me?’ Her favorite song, ‘I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,’ rang from the speakers.

“In my head it was going to go something like it would come out of a book,” Woody said. “It ended up probably just sounding like an elephant.”

She said “yes.”

The next step in life 

As long as Hannah can remember, Jeff was always writing down his goals. She always thought it was kind of dumb.

“Why do you make goals?” she would ask him.

She soon realized how important they really were.

“He sees that goal; he remembers it; he accomplishes it,” Hannah said. “That’s just how he’s always been.”

When Woody’s uncle Dana was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer near the spinal cord, he soon became a quadriplegic. Dana was told he was never going to walk, never going to lift his arms, never going to move anything again.

He underwent surgery and physical therapy and within five years he was back working, moving, as a computer programmer. Jeff had a new goal: He wanted to pursue a career in medicine.

“The way he did that, and the way the family felt after he was recovered and the way that he got to look at life again, is the reason I wanted to get into medicine,” Woody said. “I wanted to give that story to other people.”

Woody could have been done with school by now — he jokes he could have taken Drawing 101 — but he instead elected to become a graduate student. His fall workload that balances with football and other actives includes classes like physiology and anatomy.

On a Monday morning, before Woody meets with the media and begins another week of football, he starts his day in a lab room at the Vet Med building, dissecting a canine. It’s all part of a goal to become an orthopedic neurologist.

That goal, to get into medical school, which will take another four years of schooling and seven years of residency, has found its way to the back door of Woody’s room on his goal board.

Just as he has always done, Woody plans to bull forward, and nobody doubts that  that goal, too, will one day be crossed off.

“He will be successful in whatever he does because he puts in a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of effort,” Pope said. “He’s that kind of individual, if he says he’s going to do something, you’ve got a good idea it’s going to get done in a way.”