Princeton’s Cade Odell eats, sleeps and drinks football

He eats, sleeps and drinks football.

When he wakes up, he’s ready to strap it on and hit somebody.

“I love it. It’s life,” said Odell, who got his first taste of Princeton Tiger football when he was little and his dad, Curtis, was on the coaching staff and later did radio.

Those talks with his dad, a former Tiger and Trinity International University football player, continue now well into the night on game days.

“Our talks go all the way to midnight after football games on the patio, eating hamburgers, talking about football and how the game went. Those are memorable,” Odell said.

Odell was pulled up to the varsity as a freshman for the Kewanee game and has never looked back. He started one game at nose guard on defense against Monmouth-Roseville and played throughout the playoffs as the Tigers reached the quarterfinals.

When you have a poster child for somebody you want to represent your program, Cade Odell is it.”

—  Ryan Pearson, Princeton coach

He went both ways as a sophomore playing guard and moved to left tackle last year.

Odell earned second-team Three Rivers Mississippi all-conference honors on both offense and defense.

Linemen typically don’t get much recognition, but Odell’s OK with that.

“A linemen’s like, ‘I won’t be noticed, but my job is so important that this team can not function without me.’ And anybody that knows football knows that,” he said. “People will come up to me and say, ‘Cade, what you did today really helped us win,’ and you feel that appreciation.

“Our defense is set up where linemen don’t get the glory. Which is pretty normal. My job is to occupy the offensive linemen so they don’t move up to touch our linebackers. Arthur (Burden) was thanking me at the scrimmage the other day (against Washington) for keeping the linemen off of him. That was nice to hear.”

Princeton all-stater Noah LaPorte, a Northwestern recruit, said it’s great having Odell on the team and fun at the same time.

“He sets the tone up front and it make everyone’s job easier if the big boys are doing theirs,” LaPorte said. “He’s a great role model and takes pride in doing the little things right, which is something everyone should see and do.”

Princeton coach Ryan Pearson said Odell represents all that is good about Princeton Tiger football.

“When you have a poster child for somebody you want to represent your program, Cade Odell is it,” Pearson said. “The pillars that we preach for our kids, he exemplifies all of them. He’s going to be a 4.0 kid. You don’t have to worry about discipline issues with him. He’s got great leadership. And then you take all those other intangibles and you throw in his talent, that just makes it better.

“We’re very, very blessed to have him for another year. A lot of programs are sitting their thinking that ‘Odell kid, what, he’s got to be 26 by now,’ because he’s been playing for us since he was a freshman. I think the first time we threw him into the fire, was his freshman year in the quarterfinals up at IC Catholic. He didn’t back down. We’re expecting big big things out of him this year.”

Being part of a winning program like Princeton, which has made three straight Class 3A quarterfinal appearances and won three straight Three Rivers Mississippi championships with a 34-5 record during his time, is icing on the cake for Odell.

“For me, someone that doesn’t like to lose, it’s very fun,” he said. “But it makes the losses, kind of you remember them. Makes you want to teach the younger kids that this is not a program that we lose at. You just want to help them realize that, ‘We don’t lose.’”

The winning aside, the best part of Tiger football is its family atmosphere, Odell said.

“We’re a tight knit group,” he said. “It’s so much to play on the field with the guys because we’re just hanging out together, hitting people. Can’t get much more fun that.”

Odell has helped recruit his brother, Joel, a freshman with a soccer background who has never played football before to come out for the team this fall.

“He plays a different position than me, but I’ve learned enough throughout my years playing here,” Odell said. “We watch film together, watch film together like try to memorize what we’re doing and stuff.”

While he would like to play Tiger football forever, Odell knows it will come to an end after this season. He is receiving interest from many NAIA and Division 3 schools, including the likes of Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, Wheaton College and Indiana Wesleyan University.

But he would like to come back to where it all started one day.

“I dream about coming back here one day and coach. We’ll see what happens,” he said.