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Dream come true for Heflin

Jack Heflin will be living a dream playing for the Hawkeyes this season.
Jack Heflin will be living a dream playing for the Hawkeyes this season.

Jack Heflin could have played one more year at Northern Illinois and called it a career. But, he decided to challenge himself and enter the transfer portal and see where it took him. As it turns out, his dream school, the University of Iowa, was interested in bringing him in to play defensive tackle. He discusses how he has fit in so far, what daily testing is like, and what his teammate from NIU will bring to the table this fall.

Q: What have the last few months been like for you? How well acclimated have you become to Iowa?

HEFLIN: The last few months have been really good. There are certainly more resources at a Big Ten school. Everyone in Iowa City has received me with open arms. I have gotten along great with everyone and I am having the time of my life. It was a dream come true for me to be a Hawkeye, so I have to pinch myself every day. I have great roommates and teammates here.

Q: You spent time in another locker room and know what that’s like. After the off-season that Iowa has had, what do you see in the locker room and with team chemistry at Iowa?

HEFLIN: Here at Iowa and when I was at NIU, all the guys in the locker room have really cared about each other. That is especially true at Iowa. The players here don’t care where you are from. They care about your well-being and how you are doing. It’s a true brotherhood here. It’s something special and they brought me in with open arms. Everyone was happy and I fit right in with them.

Q: What was the challenge in switching defense and changes you have had to make to your technique?

HEFLIN: Every defense at every school is different with their scheme, calls, and terminology. I was think coming in, ok, that was like this, but I just had to kind of clean the slate from what I did in the past and kind of think like I was a freshman again. Other than that I feel like I am coming along well. There are things to improve upon all the time and that’s what I am trying to do. I am trying to be the best I can be to help the Iowa football team in any way possible.

Q: What is the biggest thing you have learned about yourself in the past month?

HEFLIN: I was really self-motivated and since Covid happened I had a dream to play in the NFL. I’ve always had two dreams in football, play for the Hawkeyes and play in the NFL. I had a decision to make this spring and decided to do that in May, so I had to get after it myself and train and get after it myself. In the past couple of months, I feel like I have done a lot of maturing. I am at the age where you have to figure things out because I have two more months of college and then I am out in the real world. I just think about how tough these times with Covid and not being to be around people. I learned that the people that I love and mean a lot to me, I need to reach out to them. It’s never sunshine and rainbow and every day is a new challenge and you have to attack it.

Q: How have Coach Bell and Coach Niemann helped you and what can Iowa fans expect from your NIU teammate, Matt Lorbeck, who is also at Iowa now?

HEFLIN: Coach Bell and Niemann have been great. They knew that coming to Iowa I wanted someone who would coach me hard, make me a better player, and challenge me every day. They have done that every single day and I can’t thank them enough for it. I have been able to talk to them every single day and bounce ideas off of them. They are my fourth and fifth defensive line coaches, so I’ve been around a lot of coaches and had a great time with him. With my buddy Matt, he’s a tough player who is going to play hard every down and come in and try and contribute everything possible. He’s a hard working kid.

Q: You mentioned this being a strange time. What are the conversations like with teammates about keeping the testing positive numbers really low?

HEFLIN: I don’t think we have to discuss it as a team because the season is so important to us and we had it taken away already one time. Now that it’s here and we have put so much work in, all the guys know the importance of keeping the number low. We have to keep socially distant, wash our hands, wear a mask, and staying out of crowed places. We are not normal college students that can go out and meet people because we could lose three weeks of football, at least. We have a lot more to lose than the average student this year.

Q: Can you go through the testing process? What’s it like every day?

HEFLIN: We have to do a survey every single morning before we come in the building. Then after that we get our temperature taken. We get tested every single day right after practice. We have night meetings and then go home and go straight to bed. We don’t go anywhere to get food. It’s all here at the facility. For my day, I come here in the morning, I have meetings practice and eat breakfast. Go home and then get tested and then go back home and then come back for meetings. Basically, I don’t go anywhere but the football facility and my house.

Q: What will it be like to be playing in an empty Big Ten venue?

HEFLIN: We kind of have a running joke that back where I used to play at NIU, we played a lot of games in November when it was really cold on a Tuesday night and there aren’t students in town. The fans have never been a motivational factor for me. It will be different. At NIU we had a few full stadiums, but later in the season the attendance kind of died off because it was cold and the games were on Tuesday or Wednesday nights. Basically, I am kind of used to it with a small number of fans, so I will just focus on playing the best football I can play.

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