Troy’s Bear Woods gets strength from faith, long hair

By Drew Champlin

Published: December 16, 2008

TROY — Everywhere Bear Woods goes, he gets the look.

The dreadlocks on his long red hair, which goes past his shoulders, along with the facial hair, make people take a second look.
Bear Woods is that guy.

And he doesn’t care.

“Malls, gas stations,” said Woods, a junior linebacker for Troy, which plays in the New Orleans Bowl Sunday against Southern Miss.

“A lot of people ask about it, but I don’t think I’ve scared anybody yet.”

He hasn’t gotten the look of a gas station robber yet, either, but curiosity is at its peak wherever he goes.

“I try to dress normal or nice,” Woods said. “I don’t think I have that look about me. At least I hope I don’t.

“A lot of people ask how I did it, and a lot of people give me tips on how to do it. That’s really fun, when people tell me what to do.”

Woods, who came to Troy as a walk-on, has given nearly a foot of hair to Locks of Love, an organization where hair is turned into wigs for poor children suffering from hair loss due to a medical condition.

He’s cut his hair four times, but it might be a while before the next trim. It’s already been two years.

But from the looks of Woods’ season for the Trojans, his hair has given him strength.

Despite missing three games with various left foot injuries, the junior racked up 104 tackles, second on the team, including six for loss and two sacks. For that, he was awarded second team all-conference honors.

To hear Woods tell the story, he’s a man of faith. His father, Mark, is a pastor at Taylor Church, a nondenominational church in MacClenny, Fla., and Bear bases his decisions on his faith.

“I realize that I haven’t cut my hair in years,” Woods said. “I’m a man of faith, and my dad’s a preacher. Samson was in the Bible. He had two promises to the Lord. One was to never drink wine and one was to never cut his hair.

“To this day, I haven’t had a sip of alcohol and I haven’t cut my hair in two years, so I’m going to keep rolling with it.”

With the assistance of his girlfriend of two years, Jennifer Turner, he put his hair in dreadlocks in January.

At that time, Turner was more well-known on campus than Woods because she started a hip-hop group at Troy. Woods was just the guy with the hair.
This time, the hair took more work to manage, but it’s gotten easier.

“At first, it was work,” Woods said. “My girlfriend had to tighten it every week. Now, there’s no work to it.

“It doesn’t take long (to wash). Really, it repels water. It’s so tight. I wash it the same, but the water just runs off it. It’s really kind of neat.”

The long hair

Mark Woods and his wife were asked a question when Bear was in eighth grade. Bear wanted to start growing his hair in honor of one of his best friends’ mother, who was stricken with cancer.

“He wanted to do that because he was so touched,” Mark Woods said. “We said that was fine.”

Mark Woods saw his son get recruited as a quarterback at Baker County High School in MacClenny, but his heart was on defense.
Good thing, says teammate and good friend Boris Lee.

“He showed me his highlight tape,” Lee said. “The balls took for years to get to the man, so if he had played against us in high school, we would have picked it off and scored.”

Woods actually came to Troy as a quarterback, but moved to linebacker immediately. He played in a reserve role as a true freshman, but one quarter of action in the 2006 season opener against Alabama State will cost him Troy’s first two games in 2009.

“We were going to redshirt him, but we unknowingly played him,” head coach Larry Blakeney said. “He got dinged up in that game or shortly thereafter, but we didn’t have the medical documentation for it.

“Our compliance people found a similar case in another sport and put together a waiver and the NCAA approved it. They always charge you two for one, and I was really hoping it would work out for Bear.”

Woods was back in that reserve role last year, and he blossomed this year. His breakout game came in the season opener, when he had 24 tackles and two sacks in a 31-17 win over Middle Tennessee.

“Bear has evolved and worked hard and become a heck of a football player,” Blakeney said. “He’s a smart, cerebral guy that does everything you ask him to do twice, and our players love watching him play.”

Woods suffered a stress fracture of his left foot in the MTSU game and a sprained ankle Oct. 18 against FIU. From the ankle sprain, an os trigonum (extra bone that develops behind the ankle) formed.

He missed the next two games and still plays through the pain. He’ll likely have surgery on that after the season but should be back for spring practice.

“(The ankle sprain) limited me from going side-to-side,” Woods said. “The os trigonum kept me from going forward. I couldn’t go any direction.”

The long road
Mark Woods and his wife have put 80,000 miles on a 2006 Ford F250 pickup since Bear started at Troy. The family drives to every game, with notable trips to Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Missouri and North Texas.

The pastor has been to every one of Bear’s games since he was 6, and saw him fight through all adversity to earn his stripes, with the NFL in sight.

“He’s said since he was 6 years old that he was going to play in the NFL and be a preacher,” Mark Woods said. “He hasn’t backed down from it.”