Roth: Brotherly Love

DURHAM, N.C. ? There was no joy in K-ville last March when mighty Duke struck out against Virginia Commonwealth in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. But there was a consolation prize for at least one student on the Duke campus ? football player Fred Roland’s brother Calvin appeared in the game as a reserve center for the triumphant Rams.

“It was a bittersweet thing,” Roland recalled after a recent football practice. “I’m going for him because he’s my brother, but also he’s playing against my school. But I support him fully no matter who he plays.

“I didn’t hear the end of it. He called me right afterwards and kinda rubbed it in my face, but I was proud of him.”

It would take more than a sporting event to rattle the bond between these brothers. Only two years apart in age and always close during their formative years, the two were often separated for months at a time due to some adversity in their family during Fred’s junior and senior years of high school.

But Calvin’s words and deeds remained a source of motivation and encouragement to Fred as he labored to make the correct decisions in the face of uncommon stress.

“Personally I didn’t get as much of the adversity as he did,” said Fred, a fourth-year junior and second-year starter at right tackle for the Blue Devils. “I know he struggled. And honestly, that’s a big part of why I chose to do the things I did, because I saw what he was going through. We’re only two years apart, we’re brothers, but our lives are totally different.”

Their lives took an unfortunate turn during Fred’s high school years when their family fell on hard times financially. Their father’s health declined, forcing him to retire, and their mother’s job was the only source of income. Calvin was commuting from their home near Augusta, Ga., to a junior college 30 minutes away in Aiken, S.C., trying to play basketball and hold down a job. At one point, when their mother lost her job, the family lost their home base. Calvin would sometimes sleep in his school’s locker room or at the company where he worked. Fred and their younger brother, meanwhile, moved in with an aunt in Hephzibah, Ga., so they didn’t have to change schools.

“Money got really tight,” is how Fred describes that time. “It was almost like going from having everything to having nothing in a matter of weeks. It was pretty trying financially.” Fred, though, didn’t know all the details of his brother’s situation until later. “We went from seeing each other all the time, to never seeing each other,” he explained. “When we did see each other, we’d catch up on old times instead of burdening each other with the problems we were having.”

After a couple of years at junior college, the 6-foot-10 Calvin signed with VCU. He played during the 2005 season, missed the 2006 campaign with a back injury and returned last year for his final run, which culminated with the Rams’ inspiring performance in the postseason.

Calvin had actually graduated from VCU in ’06 but used his final year of athletic eligibility to get his master’s degree in ’07, when he was the recipient of VCU’s Charles Barkley Scholarship.

When Calvin was asked to speak at a banquet for Barkley’s celebrity golf tournament last summer, he said that he had tried to persevere through all the hardship to set the example for his two younger brothers that they could make it through anything.

Fred says that message came through to him while he was still in high school.

“When life throws you things like that, your first instinct is to stop where you are and try to find little temporary solutions to make your situation better,” Fred said of the stressful times. “I wanted to work instead of going to school, to get a little more financing in the household, but he really encouraged me to stay on track with school.

“When the college letters started coming in, we weren’t living together, but I would get certain letters and he would tell me to stay on track. When I told him about the different schools that were writing me, I think he would get more excited than I did.

“We both ended up signing with colleges in the same year. He was at junior college and signed with VCU in November and I signed with Duke in February. That was a big year for our family and kinda made all the other stuff we were going through seem as if it were necessary.”

Roland’s signing with Duke came just after Ted Roof was named the head coach. “I walked into his school, he walked into the room, and I knew that’s what (linemen) were supposed to look like,” Roof recalls of recruiting the player who is now his biggest starter at 6-8, 310. “He was a very bright kid, a young man with a lot of pride and one that I knew had a tremendous upside. He was raw, but when you’re recruiting you want to take chances on size and speed. But it really wasn’t taking a chance, because after getting to know him and how he worked and the pride he had, I knew he would develop into a good football player.”

Fred attributes part of his success to the influence and encouragement he always received from Calvin. In a family of six children ? five boys and a girl, current age range 33 to 19 ? Fred and Calvin were always competitive with each other growing up, even though they specialized in different sports.

“When he beat me ? and the majority of times he did no matter what we were playing ? instead of harping on that or making me feel bad about it, he would tell me things to make me get better. That would help me a lot even though he played basketball and I played football,” Fred said.

“He’d watch every game or look at the stats. He called after every game last year and would tell me little things. Sometimes he would pick on me, that’s what big brothers do, but he’s definitely been a big encouragement to me.

“It always seemed like he and I would never be on the same team. We were really competitive. I owe a lot of my success to him, because he deliberately wouldn’t play the good-guy card and take it easy on me if I was feeling bad at a particular time. He would continue to beat me until I deserved the right to win. That helps. He’s a big part of my life.”

The Roland siblings mourned the death of their father Johnny last December. Calvin is now playing basketball in Germany while Fred tackles his fourth season at Duke, a psychology major with an eye on law school. He played 842 snaps last year, the most of anyone on the offense, in his first year as a starter. His 2007 season got off to a slow start thanks to back surgery in July, but after sitting out the opener and seeing action on 17 plays at Virginia, he felt ready to resume a heavier load. Colleague Zach Maurides at left guard had the same surgery two weeks earlier and was able to play fulltime after missing the first couple of weeks of training camp.

Not surprisingly, Roland thinks the brotherhood that has developed between all of the returning offensive linemen this year will be a key ingredient to any success they enjoy.

“I feel like chemistry is a big part of playing on the offensive line, because you can’t do your job without the guy next to you,” said Roland. “The chemistry is important because if it’s not there, you’re not going to trust him to do his job, and honestly, I feel that’s one thing we do have on our offensive line. We trust each other and are willing to play that much harder for each other.

“We can’t trust everything to chemistry, but it’s definitely an aid. The skill and the ability are there, and all of that is like a culmination of making a good offensive line.”

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