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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Ruiz Still Learning
September 15, 2006 | Football
Sept. 14, 2006
By JACK CARLE, Sentinel Sports Editor - To say Ruben Ruiz is a work in progress is an understatement.
The senior wide receiver for the Bowling Green Falcons didn't start playing football until his final year of high school. He went on to Arizona Western Community College where he was redshirted for one year and played two years as a tight end in an option offense. He was also a junior college academic All-American at Arizona Western.
Bowling Green, a team known for throwing the ball, recruited the 6-feet-4, 240 pound Ruiz as a tight end, but moved him to wide receiver during the 2005 season.
He's still learning the position, but he's already made seven receptions in two games this season. Ruiz had two big touchdown catches last Saturday -- a reception in the final two minutes of regulation to help tie the game against Buffalo and the eventual game-winner against the Bulls in the third overtime.
"About the time he'll start really getting good is when he'll graduate," BG head coach Gregg Brandon said. "He filled a need that we had with the loss of Steve Navarro. When he got here we saw how well he moved in space and caught the ball with his big body and ended up putting him out there (at wide receiver).
"If we would have found him as a freshman ...," Brandon added.
Although his two touchdown catches were game changers against Buffalo, just as important were 13 knockdown blocks he delivered during the game,
"It's all (coach Zach Azzanni's) mentality. He really wants us to be aggressive. He always tells us to go hit them. If you hit them and knock them down, when you go run a route, it's going to open your passing game as well because they are going to be more nervous," Ruiz said.
It's been a long, twisting road for Ruiz to become a Division I-A football player.
Until he was 13-years-old, baseball was the favorite sport for Ruiz, who spent some of his youth growing up in Mexico.
Then he gave up sports for two years before wandering into the gym at Pueblo High School in Arizona.
"I had never been there before because I had just transferred," Ruiz said. "I saw there were people playing basketball. ... It was just like an open door thing. So I was just out there by myself on the court shooting and the head coach told me to come over there and shoot a little bit with these guys.
"Then he asked me if I wanted to play in the tournament with them. I said great and started playing basketball with them."
The football coaches at Pueblo saw Ruiz playing basketball and talked him into trying football his senior year.
"They started me as defensive end and I was really doing well, but I always wanted to play offense, I wanted to catch the ball," Ruiz said. "So they tried me at tight end. But as a tight end, I didn't do good at all."
However, the coaches at Arizona Western saw enough raw talent in Ruiz to offer him a chance.
"My junior college coach decided to roll the dice on me. My first year, I was really small. I was barely 200 pounds, I could barely run a 5.1 in the 40 and I could barely bench 225," Ruiz said. "For playing tight end I was really skinny and I was really slow and I was weak ... I pushed myself and then I started.
"We used to throw the ball maybe twice a game. The two years that I played I think I only caught the ball like three times."
Bowling Green was in the market for a tight end and Ruiz's first two choices -- the University of Arizona and Arizona State University -- showed little or no interest in recruiting him.
"We knew he was athletic. We didn't see much on film. But he was a big athlete and at the time we were lacking big athletes," said Azzanni, who works with the wide receivers. "We took a chance ... It worked out well for us."
Ruiz has made himself into a receiver. He now runs a 4.7 40-yard dash and has gained 45 pounds in addition to working on learning how to catch the ball.
During the summer before his first season with the Falcons, Ruiz caught 200 to 300 balls a day from the JUGS machine. He then started hanging out with the wide receivers, picking the brains of veterans Steve Sanders and Charles Sharon.
"Steve Sanders, I would ask him so many questions. `How do you do this?, What do you do in this situation?'" Ruiz said. "I never thought there was so much in being a receiver."
Azzanni appreciates the hard work Ruiz has done to improve himself overall and in making the change to wide receiver.
"He did above and beyond the call of duty this summer. He caught so many balls; he ran so many routes," Azzanni said. "He shed about 12 pounds, on purpose, so he could have a little more endurance at the position because no one runs more plays than we do in a practice or in a game."
