Josh Norris remembers sitting in the back row of the squad room, surrounded by teammates, and watching Ron Zook step in front of the Illini for the first time.

“This is surreal,” Norris wrote in his notebook as Zook, who he knew only as “that coach at Florida who’s always on TV,” addressed his new team.

Two years later, Norris is about to conclude a college career that has been defined by transitions.

“You talk about a winner, a competitor,” Zook says of Illinois’ starting defensive tackle. “Anybody would go to war with Josh Norris, anytime. There’s a lot of adjectives for Josh, and they’re all positive.”

Norris came to Illinois as a walk-on, but will leave as a starter on scholarship. He played three years under Ron Turner before finishing his career coached by Ron Zook. But the biggest change, Norris says, is how he handles himself on and off the field.

“I realized there were so many opportunities to be had and I just let them all go away, just by being immature,” Norris says. “I could have played hard my entire career, but for some reason I never thought I could until this year.”

This year he’s started every game on the defensive line and is a captain each time Illinois takes the field. He recorded a career-high 5 tackles against Ohio, and will likely finish this season with twice as many tackles as the rest of his career combined.

But Norris never expected to end up at Illinois, let alone start on a Big Ten team. After getting little interest from Division I-A schools, he took all his official visits at Ivy League schools, figuring if he was going to play I-AA ball, he might as well get a top-tier education in the process.

A good student and better athlete, he had little trouble impressing coaches. But when Norris sat down for the personal interviews required by the elite universities, the trouble soon started.

“I was very immature; I couldn’t look anybody in the eye,” Norris says. “I was very uncomfortable around adults, so when it came to the interviews, I just fell apart.”

Today Norris is one of the most eloquent athletes at Illinois. He says he tries to learn a new word every day, and focuses on making the kind of first impression that will reflect well on himself, his team and his university. One of Illinois’ captains, Norris regularly gives halftime pep talks in the locker room.

“He’s always trying to get us going. He does a great job of getting this team motivated to play,” roommate Billy Garza says. “And he’s interesting. He always has deep thoughts, deep conversations.”

Stepping to the 50-yard line for the toss every game, Norris is sure to look each opposing captain in the eye. He says it helps make up the difference between his 5-foot-11 frame and most Big Ten linemen, silently showing that he’s not intimidated by some of the top-ranked athletes in the country.

But Norris says his self-confidence has been five years in the making. As a teenager, he says, he was introverted and soft-spoken, unable to carry a conversation with strangers.

“I don’t know what it was,” Norris says. “For some reason, I was completely ashamed.”

When he got to college, Norris says, he was just as hesitant on the football field. He assumed being a walk-on meant little opportunity to make a difference on the team, and therefore never fully engaged himself at practice or in games.

After sitting out the 2002 season, Norris saw no action as a redshirt-freshman in 2003. But at the beginning of his third year, then-coach Ron Turner surprised Norris with a scholarship offer. The Springfield-native saw action every game that season, recording 15 tackles and a tackle-for-loss against both Wisconsin and Iowa.

But as Norris’ numbers improved, change was coming to Illinois football. The Illini went 3-8 in 2004, and two days after the season-ending loss at Northwestern, athletic director Ron Guenther announced Turner’s tenure would end.

Norris had already begun to turn things around, but says he still lacked confidence on the field.

“When I played as a walk-on I played with the idea that no matter what I did, the other guys were the ones who were supposed to play,” Norris says. “So when I earned a scholarship I thought the same way, thought maybe it was a fluke or something.”

Then, the week after Illinois played Cal last season, a car took a right turn too wide and struck Norris as he was riding his moped down Springfield Avenue. The impact gave Norris a severe concussion that sidelined him for the start of the Big Ten season.

“Walking to the game the next day I had to stop several times from nausea because the walking was just shaking my head up,” he says. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night just scared for no reason. And my back was swollen. Nothing was hurt, but it was just really, really painful.”

For a self-conscious kid who considers the domino effect of every event, the injury – and the aftermath of missing two key games – still weighs heavily. Illinois needed a good game in the conference opener against Michigan State, and Norris still says he was a detrimental distraction.

“Starting the Big Ten season, you shouldn’t be worried about one of your teammate’s or cohort’s health, you should be focusing on the game,” Norris says. “I took their minds off Michigan State.”

The guilt from the accident hung heavy on him throughout the season. Illinois barely pulled together a 2-9 season, and Norris still says he could have done more to improve the outcome. His performance had been steadily improving since the day he arrived on campus, but Norris insists he was not doing enough.

The change finally came when he went home for Christmas. His parents set him to work replacing the basement ceiling, and he says the long hours alone gave him time to reflect on the past year.

“If you want to be something, you simply have to become it,” Norris remembers realizing. “I realized I was wishing to be something better, but just doing that, just wishing. I needed to make a legitimate effort to become it.”

Over the next eight months Norris set to work transforming his game. He worked harder in spring practice and summer workouts than he had in four years at Illinois. He became more vocal on the field, realizing that Illinois’ youthful lineup was looking for guidance – and he was the perfect man to offer it. By the time preseason camp in Rantoul began in August, Norris was not only a candidate for a starting spot, but someone the coaches began to see as a vital piece of the team’s success.

“I’ll be perfectly honest, in Rantoul I kept arguing with Coach Sims, asking could Josh do it?” Zook says. “But I’ll tell you something. If there’s one guy you’d love to have back, it’s Josh Norris.”