PISCATAWAY -- Standing on the sideline where he enjoyed his greatest achievements, Raheem Orr surveyed the Rutgers football practice field and experienced emotions he hadn't felt since his playing days.
"As soon as I walked through those gates,'' Orr said, "I almost had an anxiety attack. I said, 'It's so great to be back home again.' ''
Not far from where he took his first steps as a collegian ... from the study-hall room where he spent so many hours working to become academically eligible ... from the stadium where he morphed into one of the premier Rutgers players of the last decade ... and from the luxury suite where he once delivered a memorable pep talk, Orr took in his surroundings.
"Man, I got lost coming off (Route) 18 because even that jughandle (into Busch campus) is new,'' he said. "This place has completely changed.''
As the Rutgers football team cleared the field, Orr dragged his feet through the plush FieldTurf and recalled a practice from early in his playing career, when a snowstorm deflated the nearby practice bubble and forced then coach Greg Schiano to call an audible.
"We came out here and shoveled a path to the field just to do our winter conditioning,'' he said. "We were so determined that we said, 'Coach, we're not missing practice because there's no bubble. Let's go.' He didn't take it easy on us, but that's what we needed and a lot of those guys set the foundation for what's here today.''
Orr's college football career was one built on perseverance, driven by a desire to succeed. Not just on the playing field, either.
He arrived here from Elizabeth High School in 1999, regarded as an All-State linebacker and the most decorated New Jersey recruit signed in the Terry Shea era.
But Orr never saw the playing field in Shea's final two seasons. He missed the '99 campaign as a non-qualifier, then could only practice with his team the following season while sidelined for games as a partial-qualifier.
Orr didn't become eligible until Schiano's first season, but eventually lived up to his initial hype. He started at linebacker in 2001 before switching to defensive end and earning captain honors for his final two collegiate campaigns.
He finished his career in style, besting all Big East defensive linemen with 82 tackles -- including a conference-best 19 tackles for loss and eight sacks -- en route to earning team MVP honors in '03.
"I just love everything that Rutgers helped me become,'' Orr said. "I had a real good support system, and I cherished it then but I really cherish it now because they made me into what I am today.''
Even more than his on-field contributions and his classroom perseverance, Orr's legacy is defined by a single night in early December 2000.
Schiano was less than two weeks into his Rutgers tenure, and already had gained the attention of some of New Jersey's top scholastic recruits. In the wake of a winless Big East campaign, Schiano somehow convinced two dozen of the state's finest to visit Rutgers.
But for all of his charisma, Schiano still needed something extra to sell the message that it wouldn't be long before the Scarlet Knights would rise from the dregs of college football to become a Big East contender. That something was someone who had stood in those recruits' shoes not long before, a player who despite all of his academic risks, could've gone to a handful of more established programs.
"Schiano came to me and said, 'Raheem, I got a big task for you. I'm bringing up some kids, I want you to go talk to them,' '' Orr recalled. "I said, 'Coach I got it. Whatever you need.' ''
"So I went in there and talked to those guys about being a Jersey-bred guy, about how you saw all these guys going to Penn State, Temple, Boston College, Syracuse and Miami, and no one was staying home,'' he said. "I was never scared to take a chance in life so I told them: 'I came up here with my mom, who was my biggest supporter, and I said, I gotta be some place where my mom can be there any time she needs to be.' I said, 'Why not Rutgers?' ''
The result? Schiano signed 13 of the state's top recruits to his initial class. It was a start of a trend that saw Schiano eventually turn a string of highly rated recruiting classes into a string of bowl bids.
"Yeah, Rutgers wasn't winning back then,'' Orr said. "But when everyone was telling me, 'Why are going to Rutgers? They'll never win,' I said, 'There's something about Rutgers. It's going to happen.'
"And it did.''
Talk to Orr about his time at Rutgers and the 33-year old is more likely to reflect on his early academic struggles than cite a sack total (18) that ranks seventh on the school's career list.
"I try to teach these kids to avoid the situation that I went through,'' Orr said, "basically a great athlete with no grades.''
He works as a counselor at Glen Mills School, a suburban Philadelphia residential facility for juvenile delinquents.
"The biggest thing I stress is to put the student first in student-athlete,'' he said. "You can be the biggest football star but when all those accolades come to an end, you have to fall back on your education. All I do is talk to them about what I went through prior to going to Rutgers and while I was here.''
It's the same message he preaches to children in the community from where he was raised. Earlier this year, Orr became co-founder of a non-profit organization called More Than A Sport, which aims to help kids who face peer pressures such as gangs, violence, drugs and teen pregnancy.
"Students in certain demographic areas are deprived of a quality education,'' said Orr, who hopes is to raise funds for the purchase of a facility large enough to support training equipment for athletic pursuits and for classroom space to hold tutoring sessions.
Another goal is to find donations for a "Back-To-School Supply Drive'' scheduled from Sept. 5-7 at Elizabeth Recreation Fields. Orr hopes to send Elizabeth community children back to school prepared with necessary supplies and "also remind them as a member of the community that we are committed to their success.''
One of his commitments is to the Elizabeth Packers, the city's youth-football organization, which he escorted to a recent Rutgers football practice.
"I brought these kids here,'' Orr said, "to show them a place where they can go to learn discipline, where they can learn to be a great athlete and at the same time be in a family environment.''
As he pointed to a future that he hopes will result in one or more of these youth-football players following his footsteps by attending Rutgers, he couldn't shake the past.
"I just saw Mr. Mulcahy and told him, 'thank you,' because Rutgers took a chance on me when no one else would,'' Orr said, referring to the Scarlet Knights former athletics director. "I said the same thing to Coach Shea last week when I talked to him. Despite me being one of the greatest athletes to come out of Elizabeth High School, everyone else washed their hands of me because of my grades.''
Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.