GRAND ISLAND - It isn't quite Memorial Stadium, but considering the circumstances it's almost perfect.
Thirty yards of green grass, half-shaded by a towering tree, bordered by concrete sidewalks and a small sign: Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church.
Four boys in red shirts engage in a sweaty game of two-hand touch on Friday afternoon of a long week.
"I guess we could play in there," says a 7-year-old, "but we might get hurt."
"Running post routes into the flowers," his older cousin says.
Behind them, red Nebraska flags blow gently southward. License plates numbered 8, 36 and 62 pack the parking lot and border the street. Strangers, some in sport coats, some in hunting jackets, enter the glass doors beneath the cross.
Inside, a line curls down the hallway and into the sanctuary - two hours from start to finish - ending at Gerald and Jill Foltz. By 8:30 p.m., they will have stood longer than a Husker game, accepting hugs from hundreds of people who knew their youngest son - and some who didn't.
The kids outside pay no attention.
"Yes!"
"You're out at the 1-yard line!"
Out walks a 6-foot-7, 300-pound Husker in a plaid shirt, jeans and boots. He wants to play, so the 7-year-old fires a football at him.
"Easy! I have lineman hands."
The 7-year-old's name is Lane Foltz. He wears blond hair like his uncle, sunglasses over his eyes and the front of his T-shirt says, "Punters are people 2." The back displays No. 27.
He's the kid who sent "good luck" messages to Nebraska's standout punter. Sam Foltz loved getting videos of Lane kicking footballs on the farm.
"Sam told me how to punt a spiral," Lane says. "It's pretty easy."
Soon he's standing on the church sidewalk, five yards behind his snapper, Husker defensive back Tanner Zlab. The big lineman, Sam Hahn, is deep to receive.
"You guys might want to back up a little bit," Lane says.
He leans forward, rubbing his hands together as he prepares to take the snap.
"Hut."
The first snap is too low, the second too high. One more time. Lane receives the ball, takes three steps like his uncle - left, right, left - and punts his youth football over the returner's head.
"That was a spiral." Hahn says.
***
Ryker Fyfe thought he was the fastest kid in his class. Then one day, his dad hosted a track clinic in Grand Island.
"Here's this kid who's about as pale as me and had long hair. We were running 10-yard dashes and he was beating me off the line so fast. I got mad. I thought he was cheating.
"I'm like, where you from? Greeley? Where's that?"
For the next 12 years, Fyfe and Sam Foltz saw each other almost every day, from Grand Island to NU, where they walked on together.
Early on, they occasionally butted heads as they battled for alpha status. They teamed up in baseball, basketball, track. Sam was good at everything - he broke 49 seconds in the 400 meters. But football was their best connection.
Sometimes they broke the huddle and Foltz scrapped his route - "Hey, watch me deep here." Fyfe rolled out and threw it as far as he could.
"It was that easy. Pitch and catch."
One game against Kearney, Foltz cramped up and the quarterback had to punt. The ball went straight up … and came straight down.
"He's like, nice job, man," Fyfe says. "I could probably punt better cramped."
Foltz had a lot more practice. Farm life is kinda lonely when dad is in the fields and mom is working and older siblings are busy. Even after he transferred to Grand Island, Sam often returned to the farm, watching sunsets as he punted balls over the house.
In high school, Fyfe and his friends swore Foltz could go to the NFL. Even if the punt returner beat the coverage unit, Foltz would run him down.
The skinny Fyfe was finally getting bigger this summer, he joked, because Foltz was his workout partner. Last Tuesday in the weight room, they were doing extra curls when Fyfe said he needed to visit the equipment manager. My shirt doesn't fit anymore.
"Nice try, Rykee."
"I'm just trying to be like you, Foltzy."
***
Back in the church yard in Grand Island, the kids in red shirts have a problem. See up there in the branches, maybe 30 feet high? That's a Nike football.
Hmmm…
Sam Hahn and six boys put their heads together and figure the best solution is firing the other ball up there. Once. Twice. Three times…
"Oh, I see it now," Lane says. "I can probably punt it up there, but I don't think I can throw it."
He learned from "Uncle Sam." Every time Lane came to Lincoln, or Sam returned to Greeley, they played catch and traded punts.
"I like when he gave me the big oompher," Lane says. "That's when he punts it really hard. And I caught it."
This spring Lane participated in a punt, pass and kick competition. Only after mom and dad filmed him practicing, though. He sent the videos to Sam, who gave him pointers.
Lane isn't much of a passer or a kicker, he says. But his best skill was enough to claim victory. His longest punt?
27 yards.
***
He went to Foltzy's apartment and packed up his letter jacket and awards.
He drove Foltzy's truck back to Grand Island to meet his family.
He sat at Foltzy's kitchen table for three or four hours and told stories.
But five days after the car accident, big Sam Hahn wonders if it's sunk in yet.
"It's been bothering me a little bit that I haven't really broke down yet," he says. "I don't know. I just keep telling him he's got a game going on with me. He's waiting for me to break down. He's gonna start laughing at me when I do.
"I'm just not doing it yet."
When they met in agronomy class at Nebraska, Hahn gave Foltz a strange look. Aren't you a "city kid" from Grand Island? No, no.
To prove it, Foltz could've told him about his Family and Consumer Science teacher in middle school. When Mrs. B said she grew up on a farm, Sam quizzed her. What kind of tractors did you have? What kind of chores did you do? He was only impressed when he found out she castrated pigs.
"That is so cool, Mrs. B. That is just so cool."
At Nebraska, Foltz and Hahn became best friends, teasing each other about rainfall. Down there in DeWitt, Foltzy said, it's always raining. We don't get nothing in Greeley. We just plant it in the sand.
"Basically, we argued about who had it worse," Hahn says. "That's what farmers do."
Every semester, Hahn went to his advisor and requested the same schedule as Foltz. They studied together on the sixth floor of Memorial Stadium, looking down on the big red "N" at midfield. It wasn't all work.
Two summers ago, Hahn hosted his 21st birthday party at his farm. About 2 a.m., some buddies jokingly challenged Foltz to a punting contest, but all they could find was a half-inflated basketball. Foltz boomed it over the three-story barn and into the cattle lot.
"In his cowboy boots," Hahn says.
Take care of me when you're making millions in the NFL, Hahn told him. Make sure you buy me some land so I can farm.
Whatever, Foltz said.
Hahn knew his friend had big dreams, but the only one Foltz expressed was coming home to Greeley and helping his dad and brother. He wanted to learn to fly so he could dust crops.
"What hurts me the most is knowing everything he had in front of him," Hahn says.
In April, "the Sams," as they were known on East Campus, attended an Aaron Watson concert in Lincoln. Foltz's favorite song was "July in Cheyenne," about bull rider Lane Frost, who died in the rodeo ring.
Foltz was planning to see Watson again at the Gage County Fair on July 28. Hahn bought tickets a few days before the accident.
Last week Hahn got in touch with the tour manager and set up a meet-and-greet, where he asked Watson to dedicate "July in Cheyenne." That's what happened Thursday night.
Hahn and his ag-school buddies lined up in their jeans and boots, waiting for one lyric in the fourth verse: "Some miss their hero, some miss their friend."
"Everybody's bawling and I'm just belting out the song."
Hahn recorded the singer's tribute to Foltz. At home, he keeps his own.
An unused ticket.
***
It's past suppertime now, almost 8 p.m. and the line inside the church is finally winding down.
In the hallway, a video shuffles photos of Foltz's life. From the day he spit up all over his Husker bib to the day he flattened a UCLA Bruin on punt coverage.
Lane sits in front of the TV.
"I'm just gonna watch this. It's only three songs."
There's Sam with a medal around his neck and an arm around his dad. There's Sam talking about riding the combine with his grandpa at 7 years old, listening to Nebraska games on the radio. There's Sam hunting.
"That's from deer camp." Lane says.
To his left, Husker players are hugging in the foyer. Behind him, hundreds of flowers line the wall. There's a bouquet from the Illinois athletic director. Another from the Maywood volunteer fire department.
Lane doesn't take his eyes off the screen. Soon he makes his first appearance.
"I'm right there."
He doesn't get to watch the end. The priest comes and shuts off the TV. The prayer service is about to start.
***
His teammates never found many flaws in Sam Foltz. But they have stories to last all night.
Like the weekend getaway to the SEC championship game in 2013. Sam and roommate Spencer Lindsay lied to their strength coach and flew to Atlanta, where they watched Auburn beat Missouri.
They got off the subway at the wrong stop. Lost, two kids from rural Nebraska wandering downtown Atlanta at 11:30 p.m.
"Maybe the most frightful experience of my life," Lindsay says with a grin.
Or how 'bout the NCAA tournament weekend in Omaha when Foltz and Lindsay ended up on the same hotel floor as the Kansas basketball team.
Foltz got off the elevator and shouted down the hall, "Where the heck is Tyler Self?!?"
That's the coach's son, a Jayhawk walk-on.
"Where the heck is Tyler Self?!?"
The door opened across the hall and Foltz scurried into his room, leaving Lindsay alone to explain.
Or how 'bout the night back at their Lincoln apartment after a golf tournament. Foltz decided he had one more swing in him, so he pulled out his 5-iron, opened the sliding glass door and fired a line drive into the night.
"I'll be honest," Lindsay says. "it was probably his best shot of the day."
Spencer Lindsay and Sam Hahn were talking last week in the car about how many tuxedos Foltz would've rented in the next decade. He would've been Lindsay's best man. And Hahn's. And Drew Brown's. And maybe a few guys from Grand Island and Greeley, too.
"I know there may be some confusion on who Sam's best friend really was," Lindsay says. "But that is no mistake."
The last Husker to see Foltz alive walked to the pulpit next, a 20-year-old place-kicker with a teenage face.
Drew Brown, like his mentor, attended Kohl's Kicking Camp in Wisconsin last weekend. They spent nearly every minute together. They rode in the same cars. They slept in the same dorm room (with no air conditioning). Saturday night, they split up.
"I just couldn't stop thinking," Brown says, "why was I not in that car with him that night?"
Finally, he figured it out, Brown says. He has a job to do. He and Lindsay and Hahn and Fyfe and all the guys who knew Foltzy best. Take the quick smile and moppy hair and geeky laugh (when it sounded like he was gasping for air), take it all and carry it forward into next week … and next month … and next year … and longer.
Take Sam Foltz and share him.
***
The ball eventually came down from the tree. By sundown, Lane and his cousins had covered so much ground that most of the church grass lay sideways.
"He just punts and punts and punts and punts," Hahn says. "I was talking to his mom. I was like, you're gonna have to get on him to stop. She's like, I already do."
Hahn wasn't the only Husker who sought out the 7-year-old Friday. Before Lane went inside and planted himself in front of the TV in the hallway, Drew Brown introduced himself. Then came the quarterback.
"Are you Lane?"
"Yeah."
"Foltz is your uncle?"
"Um-hum"
"I just wanted to give you a hug. I'm Ryker. I'm best friends with your uncle. Sorry about everything, man."
"It's OK."
"I hope you stay strong, alright bud?"
"Alright.”
"You can go back and punt the football some more, alright?"
"Alright."
"Punt it far."