HUDSON — The state certification exam spanned four hours and 250 questions, most of them a paragraph in length. Tuesday night, Nate Toole, recent graduate of the Withlacoochee Technical Institute Criminal Justice Academy, learned he had passed.
"You can miss 50 questions altogether," Toole said Wednesday. "So I'm like, 'There's no way I missed 50 questions.' "
Now, Hudson's former two-way wrecking ball is certified to be a cop in Florida. But his next test, to be conducted over several Saturdays this autumn, won't have nearly as much room for error. The questions will center around his surgically repaired left knee, and whether he can perform as mightily on the field as he can in the weight room.
This time, Toole simply can't miss. Otherwise, the dream he already has resuscitated once may flatline forever.
"If I don't get injured," Toole said, "I know I'll have a good season."
Out of football nearly 21 months, Toole, far more chiseled (6-foot-2, 240 pounds) than he was as a Cobra, is making a final pursuit of his dream of playing professionally. This past winter, he returned to NAIA Quincy (Ill.) University, where he played parts of three seasons, the last two of which ended with knee injuries. At 22, he has one year of college eligibility remaining.
So far, he has made the most of it. In only one spring, he re-earned a starting job at linebacker, mesmerized teammates with his feats of strength (including a bench press of nearly 500 pounds) and was elected a team captain by his peers. Had coaches and not players chosen the captains, Hawks coach Bill Terlisner said he would've nominated Toole himself.
"It's his work ethic," Terlisner said. "He's not a yeller, not a hollerer or talker, but the kids respond to his work ethic."
Only 12 months before, Toole, a veritable poster child for Division I prospects who slip through the cracks, couldn't even bear to watch a football game.
The knee injuries — two torn ligaments and twice-torn meniscus — had prompted the 2005 Hudson graduate and one-time 1,000-yard rusher to walk away from the game after his second surgery Oct. 30, 2007. The following year, he enrolled at the WTI academy to pursue his other lifelong dream of becoming a law enforcement officer.
Passion rekindled
It was around the time of his enrollment the football spark flickered again. Toole and girlfriend Sarah Luke were watching a sporting event on television — the nature of which he can't remember — when she casually mentioned how cool it was athletes can follow their dreams of playing professionally.
"I just kind of stepped back and was like, 'Wow, I had that dream,' " Toole recalled. "That really sparked it."
He contacted Terlisner, who honored a previous promise that Toole would be welcomed back to Quincy if he got the desire to play again. Eligibility wasn't an issue; Toole even says as a criminal justice major, he earned college credits at WTI.
So after his final class at WTI, on the evening of Jan. 30, he popped a NoDoz caplet, hopped in his maroon 2004 PT Cruiser and headed for Illinois, arriving around 3 p.m. the next day. Since then, the knee has proved as durable as his retro-style vehicle.
"I don't even wear a brace," said Toole, who registered 41 tackles for Quincy as a freshman in 2005, the only season he completed. "To me, it's fine. I still have those days where I wake up and it's sore, but it's getting less and less."
If the knee holds up, Toole possesses the strength and fleetness to ultimately catch the eye of a scout at, say, an NFL combine or arena league tryout. Even Terlisner says so. But the final exam will be long and laborious.
"His thing is, he needs to have a good year," Terlisner said. "He's always going to have the workout numbers, but he needs to have the production on the field. … It just seems like he's always getting an injury here or there. But I think that's behind him, I really do."
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