Trojan Legacy

The best leg in the country has kicked in horse manure, kicked to his girlfriend, kicked himself for having no scholarship, no money, no chance.

The best leg in the country kicks footballs twice as far as some other college punters, which surprises everyone but himself.

Because Jim Wren has a secret.

“Sometimes when I’m out there,” he says, “it feels like two on one.”

Assistance arrives shortly before every USC game, when Wren runs to an empty spot on the field, looks around at the noisy stadium, feels the impending challenge.

The best leg in the country then drops to one knee.

And prays.

“Mom, I could use a little help here,” he prayed before last year’s opener.

“Mom, thanks,” he said before last year’s finale.

Four years ago, his mother, Joan, died in his arms.

Now he is soaring in hers.

You should watch him today against Florida State--No. 17, a thick-hipped, ruddy-faced kid buffeted by death and failure, yet solid with inspiration from a woman who convinced her youngest son he could succeed at anything.

“You were right, Mom,” he prayed last year. “I really can do this.”

You should watch him, the best leg in the country. It’s as if his feet never touch the ground.

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This is what it is like when one day you are bagging groceries, and two years later you are rated by experts as the best college punter in the nation.

This is what happens when, in your first major-college season, you kick a third of your 66 punts more than 50 yards.

“Just the other day I’m in a bookstore looking at preseason magazines, and I come across my picture,” Jim Wren says, giggling. “I turn to my girlfriend and together we’re like, ‘You got to be kidding me!’ ”

Spend a few minutes with this unassuming 22-year-old senior and you’ll discover that his life is filled with wondrous “Just the other days. . . .”

What happens to stars is happening to him, only he is not a star. He is us, and he is laughing uproariously.

Just the other day, an NFL scout from his favorite team spent the entire afternoon at a USC practice--watching Wren.

“I had a great practice, and he’s walking away, and I’m like, ‘What in the heck is going on! Can you believe this?’ ” he said.

Just the other day, he was in Phoenix with the best players in the country as part of Playboy’s preseason college All-American team.

“I met Peyton Manning,” he said proudly, then sighed. “But there were no bunnies. Flat out, no bunnies.”

Just the other day, research revealed Wren listed this as his most thrilling moment in sports: the time he defeated older brother Pat for the first time in frontyard Wiffle ball.

“True story,” said Pat, an assistant football coach at Anaheim Esperanza High. “Took him until he was 12 years old to do it. Mom wanted me to let him win sooner. But I couldn’t.”

His mother wanted many things for her youngest, none of which seemed within reach on a March night in 1993.

He had finished a high school football career as a punter on an Esperanza team with several big-time scholarship players--none of whom was he.

He was finishing a high school academic career he admitted was only average.

He had no college scholarship offers, no money to attend anything other than a junior college, an idea that maybe he wanted to become a cop.

His older brothers were better athletes. His friends were stars.

He was just Jimmy.

“Always one step away,” Jim said.

It was his good fortune to come home every afternoon to a mother who believed he could be more.

“I can’t tell you how many times I would walk in and they would be talking, just the two of them, for hours about anything and everything,” Pat said. “They had something special, those two.”

Jim would be berating himself over a mistake, his mom would hug him.

Jim would complain that he would never be as smart or strong as his friends, his mom would scold him.

“My mom would challenge me,” he said. “If I thought I couldn’t do something, she would say, ‘Yes, you can. I know you can.’ ”

On that March night, walking to the car after a dinner with her husband and youngest son at a Yorba Linda restaurant, Joan Wren became dizzy.

Jim helped her into the front seat, climbed in behind her, figured it was something temporary.

But on the short drive home, the dizziness got worse, her head began hurting, she began blacking out.

While his father sped into his driveway to find a phone and call paramedics, Jim instinctively pulled back his mother’s seat and cradled her in his arms.

She never regained consciousness, dying two days later of a stroke.

“I believe she died in my hands, and I’ll always be thankful for that,” he said. “The whole thing is something I never want to forget.”

The healing and learning began a few days later, when his mother’s words about the values of quiet hard work became astoundingly real.

Joan Wren had worked in an office at Cal State Fullerton, had worked in her Catholic church taking communion to the sick, had joined Jim Sr. in rearing four sons and a daughter without cause or celebrity.

Yet, more than 1,000 people attended her funeral.

At that point, Jim Wren made a decision.

“I could have cashed it in,” he said. “But I decided to strap it on.”

He signed up to play for Fullerton College, even though Coach Gene Murphy could offer him nothing but a uniform and the prospect of playing two years in front of mostly empty bleachers.

He made his money by bagging groceries--”Always put heavy stuff on the bottom, never squish anything”--and waiting tables at a country club.

He strengthened his right leg by sneaking up to “the rich people’s houses” in Yorba Linda and punting in their horse pastures.

“You learn to avoid the land mines,” he said, but manure wasn’t his only problem.

“There was this time I shanked one into a stall.”

When his girlfriend was around, he would punt to her--or, at least, at her.

“I never want her to actually catch the punts. I’m worried she’ll take one in the dome,” said the romantic fool.

He ate tacos bought with money he scraped from the ashtray of his truck. He became not only good, but committed.

“You can talk about coaching, but he did an awful lot of it himself,” Murphy said. “He can push his own buttons a heck of a lot better than anybody else.”

After two years at Fullerton, he was offered a scholarship to USC, but even then it seemed he was one step away.

The Trojans already had a punter and wanted Wren to hang out at home for a season until John Stonehouse graduated.

No problem, Wren said. The horse fields were still open. Servite High in Anaheim needed a running back coach.

Endurance for the sake of something greater? His mother would have approved. He spent the fall of 1995 out of uniform, hungry, but finally with hope.

When he began at USC in the spring of 1996, there was one more problem.

This newspaper ran a story with this prediction:

“Jim Wren is no John Stonehouse.”

Is it any wonder that when he first stepped onto the Giants Stadium field in New Jersey last fall for his major-college debut against Penn State, he dropped to one knee and summoned his mom?

“It wasn’t planned, it just happened,” he said. “I looked around, saw 80,000 people, felt like talking to her.

“Part of me wanted to ask her for help. Another part just wanted to say thanks.”

His seven punts that day included kicks of 66, 56 and 53 yards.

In the stands, several relatives sat stunned.

“I nearly hyperventilated,” Pat said. “I can’t even put into words what it means for our family to see this happen.”

By the end of the season, he had broken a 43-year-old USC record for punting average--45.6 yards--while becoming a player who could make a living doing this for a long time.

But first there is today, the opener against Florida State, with its pomp and pageantry.

And prayer.

“I never hear anything but I can, like, feel her,” he said. “It’s, like, pretty cool.”

But two on one?

Those odds, though deeply felt, may be greatly underestimated.