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Gophers senior football players cherish memories and mementos

andy greder, pioneer press
·4 min read
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NEW YORK CITY — Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck will stop by players’ hotel rooms on Wednesday night in midtown Manhattan and give each of them a little memento to commemorate Thursday’s Pinstripe Bowl.

This isn’t one of those gifts ubiquitous with bowl games; it’s a weekly in-season tradition to give a little stocking-stuffer-type trinket on the eve of games.

Mariano Sori-Marin will tuck the memento in a safe place before playing against Syracuse at Yankee Stadium at 1 p.m. CT Thursday. The senior linebacker has kept each of the items Fleck has given players before games over the years — think Matchbox cars before playing in the Motor City, a.k.a. Detroit, for the Quick Lane Bowl in 2018.

Sori-Marin, a Gophers captain and the team’s leading tackler this season, has been moving out of his Dinktyown apartment building as his college career winds down, and he had specific instructions for his mother Katrina.

“My mom was actually up here last weekend with the van taking a huge load of stuff home” to Mokena, Ill., Sori-Marin said. “I was able to go through all of them, look at them. I have (the trinkets) in a little plastic box. I told her, ‘Keep these safe, don’t let these get mixed up with anything.’ She knows how much those mean to you.”

For a while, Sori-Marin didn’t have one of the trinkets — a several-foot plastic Star Wars lightsaber given to players before the Iowa game in 2019. Sori-Marin and some of his roommates — primarily fellow linebacker Josh Aune and running back Preston Jelen — got into an animated lightsaber battle. They put on the Star Wars theme song “Duel of the Fates” and started jousting like kids. Some things at home might have been broken as collateral damage, and in the playful mayhem, Sori-Marin’s lightsaber was destroyed.

“Fortunately, I came out on top,” Aune said. “I had to go after a couple guys and cut Preston’s arm off, Mariano’s leg. It was just part of the process of getting to the top there.”

Sori-Marin wasn’t surprised Aune came out on top. “He’s a big Star Wars geek,” Sori-Marin said. “He was all into that.”

Aune, who attended St. Paul Highland Park, has kept all the trinkets, too, though a few have gone missing. “I will cherish those trinkets forever,” he said. “Every single one of them has a moment and a memory with them.”

Fleck and Gophers general manager Gerrit Chernoff heard about Sori-Marin possessing all the mementos but one, so they filled in the gap.

“Two days later, nobody said anything to me, but I opened my locker, there was a lightsaber sitting there,” Sori-Marin said. “That’s really cool. I, of course, immediately knew it was Gerrit Chernoff. He’s the type of guy, he’ll hear those comments, store it in the back of his head. He’ll go out of his way to make a special moment for anybody. I immediately went up to him, ‘Hey, that meant a lot.’ ”

Aune didn’t live with Sori-Marin at the time of their epic lightsaber fight but has since moved in with him, Jelen and defensive end Thomas Rush. Their time with the U is coming to an end, and naturally they’re feeling nostalgic.

From his now-sparse apartment room, Sori-Marin spoke with reporters last week in a video conference.

“I think it really has been starting to sink in,” Sori-Marin, who has 264 career tackles, said about his last game. “I look around my room right now. It’s almost empty because I’m taking everything off the walls. I’m packing all the boxes. It’s a little emotional as you’re going through all your stuff, you’re doing it with the guys, your roommates that you’ve been together for the last five years. It is emotional.

“I just look back on all the times that I’ve had here, all the people I’ve met, all the relationships that I’ve built,” Sori-Marin said. “You just appreciate it.”

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