Next game
Who: Drake (6-3, 5-1 PFL) at Dayton (8-1, 6-0)
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
Where: Welcome Stadium
Radio: WHIO-AM (1290), WHIO-FM (95.7)
Tonight in the University of Dayton’s Student Ghetto, there will be a considerable number of folks who have set aside their school books and career thoughts for a sudsy brew or two.
But it’s safe to say you’ll find no one else who will be imbibing quite like Steve Valentino and Justin Watkins.
On the eve of their football game with Drake, the two Flyers — Valentino, the star quarterback, and Watkins, UD’s all-time career leader in receiving yards — will sit in their Keifaber Street house and get pickled.
In the sports world, you find athletes try all different kinds of unexpected — and legal — things to prevent injuries and be able to compete at their peak.
Elite triathletes often fill their water bottles with baby food to give themselves nourishment during their grueling competition. In Brazil, marathoners drink the water in coconuts because it contains such high levels of potassium.
I’ve heard of athletes slurping yellow mustard and eating handsful of garlic. At the Beijing Olympics, I met a Chinese runner who claimed to regularly eat scorpions and dung beetles while training.
The most bizarre regimens right now may be those of UFC light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida and boxer Juan Manuel Marquez, who has won eight world titles at three different weights.
Both drink their own urine because they say it is “cleansing.”
Watkins’ eyes widened when he heard that: “Whooa — I’m not sure I could EVER do something like that.” Then again, people might say the same about what he and Valentino do before every Flyers’ game. One gulps pickle juice, the other chows down on the pickles themselves.
“I’d never heard of it before,” UD coach Rick Chamberlin said. “But I’ve got to say they showed it sure works for them.”
Pregame pickle ritual
Both of them will agree, when it comes to one aspect of their college football — their Friday night gulp-and-crunch ritual — one of them is far more versatile than the other.
“I’m strictly a dill pickle guy,” said Dayton Flyers wide receiver Justin Watkins. “I just can’t do sweet pickles.
Quarterback Steve Valentino, on the other hand, has no problem with bread ’n butters, gherkins, even sweet hots:
“I like ’em all, but Justin is the picky one. One time on the road, Steve Foster (UD’s trainer) got him sweet pickle juice and he just couldn’t do it. Steve had to go back and get him his regular pickles.”
Saturday afternoon, when Dayton hosts Drake at Welcome Stadium, the team’s 31 seniors will be honored with Senior Day. Valentino and Watkins — both playing the last home game of their careers — will be remembered as one of the most formidable pass-and-catch combos the Flyers have ever had.
Last season, Valentino threw 14 touchdown passes, half of which were caught by Watkins. Through the first nine games this season, Watkins again is Valentino’s top target and leads the team in catches (41) and receiving yards (643).
Off the field, they’ve been friends since coming to UD five seasons ago, Valentino from Solon, Watkins from Northmont High School. For three years they’ve not only been housemates, but proponents of a pregame practice that might make some pucker.
The night before games, Valentino eats pickles and Watkins drinks the briny juice they come in. Although they do it primarily to ward off muscle cramps during games, they admit the practice has morphed into something like Linus with his security blanket.
“Actually I saw it my first year of high school, maybe even before that,” said Watkins. “The Dallas Cowboys were playing the Eagles and it must have been 120 degrees (in Texas Stadium.) The Eagles were drinking pickle juice on the sideline and that stuck in my mind.”
In fact, to this day, Philadelphia trainer Rick Burkholder credits pickle juice for the Eagles’ victory in that 2000 season opener. While the Cowboys continually cramped, the Eagles did not.
Today, the power of pickle juice has won converts like Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Max Starks and college teams like Brigham Young, whose players, it’s reported, drink up to four gallons of the stuff during every game.
It’s been found that the average pickle spear contains twice as much sodium as eight ounces of Gatorade, so it’s thought the salts and electrolytes in the juice restore balance to a dehydrated body.
While Dr. Kevin Miller, a North Dakota State professor who has done extensive pickle juice studies, believes the body’s response is more neurological, his research did find that pickle juice relieves cramps 45 percent faster than water.
Watkins started drinking pickle juice before games in high school and then revived the practice at UD as he was on the way to becoming the Flyers’ all-time career leader in receiving yards.
When Valentino was playing receiver, he also was having trouble with cramps, so he decided on some pre-emptive pickling, too. While the pair are the only guys on the team to embrace the practice, Watkins swears by it: “It works. I haven’t cramped up in a long time.”
Before the season started, he and Valentino went to Sam’s Club and bought a big jar of Kosher dills that they keep in the refrigerator of their Keifaber Street house.
“We don’t use those pickles for anything else,” Valentino said with a laugh. “They’re reserved for football.”
Road games present more of a challenge, Watkins said: “Especially when we fly, we can’t bring liquids so our trainer either talks to the hotel we’re staying at or when we get there, he runs to a nearby grocery store and gets a jar of pickles for us.
“It’s like a tradition for us now. Even when it’s cold and I know I’m not going to cramp, I’ve got to have them anyway — just in case.”
Valentino feels the same: “We started to win with them, so we kinda rolled with it. I don’t even know if they work, but it’s got us this far and we’re not gonna change it now.”
About the Author