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Leaving His Mark
Created: 11/21/2003 12:00:02 PM
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By Melissa Perlman
Brown fullback Brent Grinna doesn't care what you think. He doesn't worry about what strangers say about him or think about him. He doesn't do anything for show. He does what he knows is right.
Grinna is a varsity football player. He's the team captain as well. He has a 3.7 grade point average, majoring in International Relations. He speaks four languages. He was president of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. He started a soccer league for immigrants in Iowa and has been volunteering his time and language skills for the past four years.
But passing him on the street, you would never know.
"It's not something that I really advertise," Grinna said. "I'm sure that when I walk around campus, people assume the same things about me that they assume about a lot of athletes. And like they are untrue for me, they are untrue about every athlete. I don't get caught up worrying about negative stereotypes because I know what I've done and the people that are important to me know. Day-to-day people don’t know what I do, but that isn't why I do it."
Grinna grew up in Postville, Iowa, a town of about 2,000 people. His parents, Gary and Nancy, raised Grinna and his two younger brothers, Brad and Blaine, on a 160-acre farm – small for Iowa standards, according to Grinna. Growing up in Postville, a community Grinna describes as "a friendly environment where every one knows your name," he attended public school with a class consisting of about 60 kids; the same 60 kids, kindergarten through twelfth.
Grinna and his classmates grew up playing on the playground and participating in after-school sports. The 6-foot-2, 240-pound senior played football, basketball and baseball and ran track all through high school, but it was football that he stuck with.
"Growing up, we didn't have a lot of other things to do besides sports," he said. "It was something we always did and I loved it and pursued it. It was football that I excelled at more than the others and I knew during my sophomore year of high school that I wanted to play football at the next level."
Playing for an Ivy League school, however, didn't come into the picture until after his senior football season. Grinna was contacted by Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, but heading east of Illinois for the first time, aside from time spent in Florida, to an Ivy League university was intimidating.
"I never thought about going to an Ivy League school," Grinna said. "Nobody from my high school had ever gone to Brown, and I'm not sure if anyone had even gone to an Ivy League. I didn’t have a lot of guidance as far as people I could talk to about Brown or the East Coast."
Grinna, however, with the support of his family took the 1,031-mile trip east to visit Brown. Once arriving, he immediately knew Providence was the type of city he wanted to live in and Brown was the program he wanted to be a part of.
"I knew as soon as I came out here that there was so much more that a lot of people where I'm from haven't been exposed to," Grinna said. "I realized it would be a great opportunity to get out and see the world, play good football and have some great experiences and all of that has proven to be true."
While the City of Providence was definitely a change for Grinna – Postville spreads over 2.1 miles and has no stoplights – Grinna was coming from the Midwest with more exposure to diversity than many of his peers.
Postville, located 155 miles southeast of Minneapolis, is home to a large community of immigrants, who came to Postville in the 1990s in search of employment with the town's meat-packing plants. As a result, Postville has become a melting pot for Latin American and Eastern European immigrants.
Grinna, who first enrolled in Spanish classes at his high school in the ninth grade, saw the opportunity to use his language skills and began translating for the school nurse. Grinna helped the nurse communicate with parents of Mexican students that were sick. He later started translating parent-teacher conferences and teaching English as a Second Language through his high school’s summer program. Because of Grinna’s positive experience, the Spanish teacher at Postville High School has since started requiring students to participate in service activities involving Spanish.
"A lot of people would take Spanish because it was the only language offered," Grinna said. "But I was the first person to take what we were learning in the classroom and apply it to a service environment or practical situation. I guess I left my mark in that way."
When Grinna arrived on the Brown campus for his freshman year, he put his community service activities on hold. Facing an entirely different culture, a new time commitment to football on top of classes, Grinna had a tough transition to make. After he spent a year getting accustomed to college life, Grinna was able to get re-involved in his service activities. He started volunteering at a South Providence Library and taught ESL through the Brown summer school program.
"It's a really great feeling to positively influence somebody else," Grinna said. "It is hard with the time commitment, but any chance I have I definitely try and take advantage of it. I think it's great for whoever I can help and it's great for me. It keeps you grounded to see some of the experiences other people have had and it puts everything in perspective."
Grinna spent the summer after his freshman year in Iowa, where he started an immigrant soccer league. The male league was made up of 120 players, who were assigned to 20-person roster teams. The teams represented various countries including Russia, Ukraine, Mexico, Khuzestan, Guatemala and El Salvador. Grinna created the league after watching the men play soccer on Saturdays and sometimes joined in himself.
"I realized that there were guys from all over and they all had separate teams divided kind of along country lines," he said. "They had great rivalries so I thought it would be cool if we could get a league together."
Grinna, who had never played soccer before, designated six captains, and from there, took care of all the administrative duties including maintaining the playing-field, buying supplies, hiring officials and bringing attention to the league by writing weekly newspaper articles. By the end of the first season, at the championship game, the stands were filled with hundreds of fans and community members cheering for the teams and their players.
"It was difficult for the members of my community to see immigrants in a positive light when they only saw them as workers in meat packing plants," Grinna said. "But because of the soccer league, people eventually got really curious and starting coming out to watch. It was an opportunity for them to see these people as more than just workers in the meat packing plant. It really allowed them to see the immigrants in a more positive light."
While sitting at a meeting with the team captains discussing concerns and ways to improve the league, Grinna realized what an amazing thing he had created.
"To live in a town of 2,000 people and be sitting at a table with a guy from Russia, a guy from the Ukraine, a Mexican, a Guatemalan and a guy from El Salvador all at the same time and be communicating with them was amazing," he said. "Not only did they accept me, but they learned to appreciate each other and each other’s skills. Prior to the league there may have been a little animosity between the Latin group and the Eastern European group, but playing sports together unites."
Grinna realized that language unites as well and started taking both Portuguese and Italian at Brown. While most people would accept that correspondence with international friends is difficult and often impossible, Grinna chose to learn his pen pals' language. As a result, Grinna has been able to keep in touch with old friends from high school and the Brown summer program in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
"They came here so I could teach them English and in return I learned their language," he said. "Spanish was easy for me because I was able to use it in a practical sense and everyday I was trying to learn more so I could be more effective in my service activities. And after learning one language you kind of learn how to learn a language and how to perfect it."
And perfect it, he did. Grinna used his knowledge of Portuguese and Spanish to work as a translator for an immigration lawyer in Providence last year. He translated three-way phone conversations between the lawyer and his clients and wrote weekly articles for both Spanish and Portuguese newspapers.
"So, I'm fluent in four languages even though I only left the country for one week to go to Mexico and one week to go to the Bahamas," Grinna said. "Everybody gets a kick out of that."
Grinna hopes to travel to Europe after graduation and possibly work overseas for a few years. Committing himself to football and refusing to sacrifice spring workouts and training with the team to study abroad, Grinna has not had the chance to do so yet. It is that dedication and leadership that has gained him praise by his advisor, teammates and coach.
"Brent has a quiet confidence that he can make a difference," said Professor Al Dahlberg, who has advised Grinna since his first visit to the Brown campus. "His focus is not on himself but instead on how he can be of service to others. His teammates saw this quality in him, as well as his skills as an athlete and leader, and elected him captain."
Bears' football coach Phil Estes agreed: "Brent is always trying to give back. He is a natural leader. He looks at an adverse situation and jumps in and says he will make a difference. Brent is one of the most caring people I’ve met in a long while."
Grinna will graduate in the spring with a degree in International Relations. He has already met the concentration requirements for two languages – Spanish and Portuguese. Grinna is interested in a career in business and eventually hopes to incorporate his languages into the business setting. He is, however, planning on staying on the East Coast.
"It is much easier for someone from the Midwest to come east and adapt and be successful," he said. "I think that coming from Iowa makes it easier to adapt to any environment. But I'd also like to think that I've maintained some of my Midwestern values that I came here with."
Grinna says his parents, who have attended almost every football game here at Brown, are okay with the move as well.
"My parents know how great an opportunity I've had here," he said. "They’ve met my friends, my teammates and my teammates' parents and they’ve had as great an experience as I've had, just from visiting. They realize how valuable it has been for me."
Grinna's future, however, will have to wait until after Saturday's game with Columbia that could be for second place if Yale loses to Harvard.
"Football has been a part of my life for so long and I already know how much I am going to miss it. I just want to play better than ever and leave my mark."
And leaving his mark is something Grinna has perfected.
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Related Schools: Brown
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Related Sports: Football
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*This Article has been archived.*
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