“And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain.”Alpha. Jackhammer. Workhorse. Heartbreaker. Philanthropist. All these words with the possible exception of the last one are synonymous with Keith Bohrer according to thesaurus.net (if I meant com I would’ve written it) and screw you who knows? He could’ve been going straight from pod workouts to the soup kitchen and none of us would have batted an eye. I digress.
Second-year captain and Sports Illustrated Body Issue cover snub Keith Bohrer entered his senior year with a point to prove, but with the sheep’s clothing pulled over our eyes we were blind to what the wolf had planned. What was that? The hardest pivot since Kanye said he was going to make a gospel album and actually did it: D-line Keith was back with a vengeance. If it weren’t enough that this addition singlehandedly turbocharged D1’s offensive firepower (as if Raul didn’t hate this bio enough already), it put discussions of most attractive NUT line in a medically-induced coma. Golden locks flying, limbs flailing, blue eyes piercing the souls of any opposing o-line still holding out hope, Keith returned to his roots with lockdown defense, obscene bids and torching speed, not to mention the occasional reeling in of a misguided cross-field goal-line hammer from a handler(?) who shall remain nameless.
People like to remember moments when they recall past players. They’ll remember Keith’s 6 goals to sink Notre Dame and send NUT to its first ever nationals appearance, skies he had no business getting and killer quickness. They may not recall the work ethic, the mentality of getting faster by the centimeter and stronger by the ounce. The grind-down doctrine that he embodied on and off the field. Keith entered Northwestern a soccer player and left a frisbee legend.“But more, much more than this,” he did it his way.
Written by Eric Hochberger