Greg Menard remembers it well. It was on the second play during a third-down period in the first week of practice for the 2017 North Dakota State football team. The All-American defensive end entering his senior year was running when his right knee buckled.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. Going to the hospital. Being at the hospital. Getting told it was an ACL tear and his season was done. Menard’s biggest takeaway from that day more than a year later is there was a lot of uncertainty.
For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t playing football.
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“It was definitely a different experience,” Menard told HERO Sports. “I haven’t not played football in however long it’s been. Just sitting out there and seeing the guys you came in with fly around and have fun, that’s always good and then seeing them getting great opportunities out there. But it’s hard thinking ‘Man, I wish I could help out and be out there with them doing what I love.’”
Greg Menard registered his 30th career sack, ranked 5th all-time at NDSU. pic.twitter.com/maJZ1LZrUT
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) September 22, 2018
Menard was able to use a redshirt since he played as a true freshman in 2014.
Now that he’s back on the field for the No. 1-ranked Bison, it’s almost like the injury never happened. Menard says he doesn’t notice anything different from right now and his 2016 HERO Sports Second Team All-American season in which he racked up 62 tackles, 11 sacks and 15.5 tackles for loss.
In the first five games this year, Menard has 5.5 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks.
It’s a result of having more than a year to recover and not having to hurry back. Menard said he felt a little slower side to side during summer workouts. But that improved as his knee progressed. There was also no mental hurdle for the 6-foot-2, 240-pound Minnesota native.
“Not too much,” Menard said. “In the spring I didn’t do any team sessions or anything with contact. It was just individual drills. So it wasn’t really anything to be too afraid of there. Then in the summer and fall, I felt really good because it had been almost a year and I had a lot of time to recover.”
Captain Insano shows no mercy. pic.twitter.com/WUYaDx8Mvq
— NDSU Football (@NDSUfootball) September 29, 2018
Looking back, the ACL tear obviously wasn’t ideal. But Menard says he is thankful to get one more year with this program.
“It’s one of the things a lot of the guys who graduated last year told me,” Menard said. “Nate Tanguay and Nick DeLuca had dealt with some injuries and they said, ‘Hey, you get another year with the guys and you get to go out with the guys that you came in with. Just take advantage of it and enjoy it.’ I think it helped out with school as well. I was busy with a bunch of 18-credit semesters. Now I just have one class left and I can focus more on football.”
The civil engineering major who’s been named on the 2015 and 2016 CoSIDA Academic All-America First Team is hoping to add one more honor by the time his Bison career wraps up.
Menard currently has 33 career sacks, which is second all-time at NDSU. The school record is 41, held by Jerry Dahl, Buffalo Bills Hall of Famer and current NDSU football radio color commentator Phil Hansen and current Los Angeles Charger Kyle Emanuel.
“It’s definitely on my mind,” Menard said. “I think about it. But it’s one of those things, unless I have a ton of sacks in one game, it’s not going to happen in one game. So I have to take it one game at a time and focus on the next one.”
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