Captain Chronicles | 'I Play for the Guys Next to Me': Adams Earns Captain Role in Second Season at Illinois

The first time Isaiah Adams put on a football uniform, he wanted to take it off as soon as he possibly could. It was simply too hot, and he quit the sport after one day.

Turning to hockey, one of the national sports of Canada, where he was born and raised, Adams immediately excelled. He became one of the best players on his team, but he soon realized that it was not for him, albeit shortly after his mom had bought him a new pair of skates.

Adams decided to give football another try after attending a Canadian Football League game, and he was hooked after watching and idolizing his local team, the Toronto Argonauts.

Faced with the opportunity to play both football and hockey, Adams tried to balance his time between the two sports, an especially challenging time for his mother, Christine Trotter. Adams’ hockey coach offered to work around his busy schedule, and though they tried to make it work, Adams ultimately decided to put all of his time and effort into football despite some initial hesitancy.

“The coach from the hockey team said, ‘Whatever your football schedule is, we'll make it work. We really want you on this team,’” Trotter said. “We threw that up in the air for a few days since they wanted him so badly on the team. They were willing to do anything. They were like, ‘Hey, listen, we'll make the schedules work,’ and Isaiah was like, 'No, I'm giving it all to football.' 

One of four siblings, Adams has always embodied the ideas of resilience, selflessness, and humility, traits that make him perfect for the role and responsibilities of being a team captain. Trotter recalls watching her son walk to school and read books to special needs students during a two-week teachers strike while in sixth grade, or seeing Adams think he had let his mom down by quitting hockey.

Bringing this demeanor onto the football field immediately paid dividends for Adams. Though he initially wanted to play nose tackle on the defensive line, Adams changed his mind after watching The Blind Side for the first time.

“I'm like, 'Hey, the o-line, the left tackle, that's the most important position on the field,’” Adams said. “It was through our high school where I made the switch. I loved playing o-line from the moment I played it.”

Originally playing with the Durham Dolphins Football Club, Adams played football from eighth grade through high school, turning down an opportunity in ninth grade to play in the U.S. and instead remained in Canada.

Getting snaps on both sides of the ball due to having only 30 players on the team, Adams grew up competing with slightly modified American football rules. Though there were four downs, akin to the style of play in the U.S., 12 players competed on each side of the ball, an adjustment Adams had to make when coming to the States.

Adams did not immediately look to make the transition to the United States, though. He opted to stay closer to home and enroll at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, where he played in one game in 2018 before stepping into a starting role on the offensive line the following year.

After a breakout second season, Adams began receiving offers from junior colleges in the States, which were in desperate need of players. He ultimately decided to take a leap of faith and accepted an offer from Garden City Community College in western Kansas.

The adjustment to life in the States, a country he had only visited occasionally for leisure or shopping experiences, proved difficult at first. Growing up just outside of Toronto, Adams had never lived in the middle of nowhere, let alone nearly 1,500 miles away from his family back home.

“It was the first time I really got a taste of the U.S. culture,” Adams said. “Not many people know Garden City, Kansas, smells like cow manure all the time. The weather was a little more dry in Garden City. The love for the game, I definitely felt that."

Trotter expressed some initial nerves when hearing about the prospect of her son moving so far away, but she knew he would be able to take care of himself in the rural Midwest.

“When he went to Kansas, yes, it was difficult for me, but it was always a discussion that the States was where he wanted to be. His dream was to play in the States,” Trotter said. “My son was born with ambition. Every single thing, he undertook. He did it at a level of, ‘I'm not going to just settle. I'm going to do it great.’ I love my son, I'd love to have him home, but I never doubted him.”

Playing in all eight games during the 2021 season, Adams secured all-conference second-team honors, which opened the door to Division-I football. With the intention of spending as little time as possible at the JUCO level, Adams rushed to earn his associate’s degree in only one year.

Adams received offers from several Power-5 teams and from institutions from coast to coast. Despite the plethora of schools offering Adams a scholarship, he and his family were still unaware of the true scale of college football in the United States. Trotter says she was “absolutely blown away” as she learned more about the sport’s craziness and popularity in the States, but Adams knew he wanted to continue to chase his dreams.

“I knew this is where I wanted to play, but I didn't know the magnitude of college football,” Adams said. “I didn't realize how serious this was. It matched perfectly: my love and passion with the amount of love and passion people have over here for football. I was standing out in Canada, loving football a little more than everyone. Now, I'm here, so it was a match made in heaven.”

Adams ultimately committed to Illinois ahead of the 2022 season, crediting the amount of time, effort, and research the coaching staff did while recruiting him. Offensive line coach Bart Miller flew to Canada to visit with Adams and his family, putting the Fighting Illini as an immediate frontrunner for the highly-sought-after offensive lineman.

“It wasn't just the offer to Illinois; it was something bigger than that,” Adams said. “Coach B and Coach Miller made that very apparent to me that it's not just an offer; this is something that they really take seriously. They actually came up to watch me practice, got to know me, got to know my family. When I felt the seriousness of that, when I got the offer and found out more about Coach B's track record, it was really just aligning.”

Adams established himself in the starting lineup in the Illini’s 2022 season opener, and he went on to start all 13 games for the Orange and Blue and earn All-Big Ten honors during his debut Division-I campaign.

Ahead of his final year of eligibility, Adams was voted a team captain by his peers, a title and responsibility he does not take lightly. Being a captain is an honor Adams has worked toward his entire playing career, and knowing this will be his last college season, he wanted to step into a bigger leadership role.

“It means everything to me. I didn't expect after 16 months that I'd be in a position like this,” Adams said. “Football plays a huge, important role in my life. The Brotherhood is why I play. I play for the guys next to me. I want them to know that they can count on me, so having them vote for me as a captain, it meant everything.”

As Adams took the field on Sept. 2 in the final season opener of his college career, he had a special spectator sitting in the stands. It was a woman who has had his back all his life, yet had never seen him play a snap in-person since Adams first came to the United States: his mom.

“She means everything to me,” Adams said. “She keeps me going. My family is my why and my purpose.”

Trotter could not be prouder of her son, who garnered preseason All-Big Ten honors from multiple media outlets and was named to the Outland Trophy preseason watch list. Though she is not able to physically attend as many of her son’s games as she would like, Trotter does her best to express her love and support, albeit from afar.

“Isaiah just wants to play ball,” Trotter said. “He really wants to focus on making this season his absolute best. When you have so many eyes on you, every play matters. Every game matters.I can't even imagine the pressure of all that. That whole element is kind of scary. He just wants to do his best, but now, the pressure is on.”

Seven games into the year, Adams has extended his streak of consecutive starts to 20. Suiting up for the Fighting Illini has been a “dream come true” for Adams, and he hopes to continue to build on his legacy and success heading into the back half of the 2023 campaign.

With the goal of being a professional football player still on the table, Adams still feels he has a lot to prove while playing on the big stage, under the bright lights, ready to serve as a role model for the next generation of fans who idolize him from the stands.

“I'm a lot more confident,” Adams said. “I think last year at this time, I was anxious, nervous, in a whole different state of mind. A lot to prove, but same mindset, same mentality."