By Julie Buehler
In sports, stories usually start in a similar fashion: someone tells our protagonist he or she can’t accomplish their goal. Yet, in spite of those uneducated doubts, our fearless protagonist defies the naysayers, spends the extra time in the gym, often wringing out hours of hard work after working full days and leaving alone, dripping in sweat and a dream.
But it’s a sports story because we all know the ultimate glory awaits on the other end of those long hours in the gym and a longer process of patient pursuit.
And then there’s life.
In life, we hear of the guys who almost made it, but the “buts” started flowing and their reality melted into memories that are relived over Guinness and nostalgia.
And then there’s Latta….Greg that is. He’s living the dream drenched in sweat and his story is just beginning, so we’ll tell it now.
Greg Latta was a stand-out basketball player at Palm Desert High School, lettering all four years and earning all-league honors both his sophomore and junior years. He was 6’6” which made him tall on the Aztecs’ squad, but not tall enough to play at the next level.
So, Latta ended up at College of the Desert as a football player. That’s not a typo. He had never played organized football at any level before he reached the gridiron as a Roadrunner.
But thanks to the success of NFL players like Tony Gonzalez, Julius Peppers, Antonio Gates and now Jimmy Graham and Julius Thomas, the concept of a basketball player wreaking havoc on a football field didn’t seem like a long shot.
Plus, Latta had shaped his 6’6” frame into 265 pounds of muscle thanks to the help of long-time strength and conditioning coach Mike Butler at Kinetix Health and Performance in Palm Desert.
Training him as a high school basketball player, Butler taught Latta explosiveness, lateral quickness and improved his strength to get a jump on the first step. Butler also credits Latta’s insatiable desire to learn more, apply what he was taught and be dutifully disciplined in diet, sleep and training. All difficult tasks for a high school kid who knew what dream they were pursuing. Latta hadn’t yet discovered the path his dream would take.
At COD, head football coach Dean Dowty, seeing Latta’s lateral mobility and quickness honed in basketball, tried him out as a tight end his freshman year of college, then Latta moved to the defensive side of the ball his sophomore year where he had nine tackles in seven games his second year.
For Latta, those nine tackles were just the beginning of a journey on the defensive side of football that offered him a scholarship to Purdue University, where he lettered, and now the latest, a workout with the Oakland Raiders.
This past Monday, Latta, without an agent, corralled the attention of the Oakland Raiders, who sent their scouts to Purdue specifically to watch Latta run through field drills, strength drills and test the football acumen he’s been building for four years.
Latta said he’ll be working out for other teams as well and is grateful for an opportunity to showcase that sweat pouring off his brow some 4 years earlier could turn into the reality of living the dream many never realize.
There’s a whole Latta more to his story (sorry, I had to) and Greg knows there’s even more hard work on the other end, to make sure he’s not just telling stories, but living them.
For now, this sports story begins in a very different way, with the goal becoming clear only after the sweat was poured out, and a Palm Desert High School basketball star becoming an NFL prospect because of that.
Julie Buehler hosts the Coachella Valley’s most popular sports talk radio show, “Buehler’s Day Off” every day from 3-6 on 1010 KXPS, the valley’s all sports station. She’s an avid gym rat, slightly sarcastic and more likely to recite Steve Young’s career passing stats than American Idol winners. Tune in M-F 3-6 pst at www.team1010.com or watch the show on Ustream.
