Fox Sports profile on Big Dan: Inside Aussie’s ‘mind-boggling’ rise from worlds biggest water boy to NFL history

BleedGopher

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per Fox Sports:

Just over five years ago, Daniel Faalele had his first taste of American high school football.

By the time that game was over, the Australian had made that big an impression that it was called “the most unfair spring game in high school football history” by Saturday Down South — the leading voice in Southeastern Conference Football.

It had only been nine months since Faalele, then 16 years old, left Box Hill Senior Secondary College in Victoria, chasing a dream in a sport he barely knew anything about.

For his first year with the IMG Academy, an American boarding school with its own prestigious football program, Faalele simply soaked it all in.

He was “the world’s biggest water boy”, as the Academy’s football properties manager Don Zoloty put it.

But midway through 2017, Faalele was not running water anymore. Instead, he was running directly at East Ridge’s Josh Colston, who still remembers that game against Faalele and IMG.

Although, at that stage, he did not know Faalele by name. Rather, his coaches simply told him he would be lining up against “this Australian kid who is 6-foot-9, 400 pounds.”

“It was basically trying to get around a giant boulder,” Colston, who now works as a software engineer, told foxsports.com.au.


Go Gophers!!
 

Great story! Thanks for sharing! Definitely going to miss watching Big Dan out there. I think he will be a good NFL player if he can solidify his pass blocking and I think he’s athletic enough to do it.
 




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