More bowl coverage: Seniors appreciate Brohm's insistence on winning now | Sindelar rose to occasion ($) | Purdue finding fun-focus balance at bowl site | Complete coverage leading into bowl

SAN FRANCISCO — Walt Arnold remembers the moment vividly.

He was sitting in his office at Bellarmine College Preparatory, the boarding school in San Jose, Calif., on a day about 40 years ago when a knock got his attention.

He looked up to see four fellas near the door, including a good-looking, well-built, dark-haired eighth-grader. That kid’s dad spoke up, and Walt Arnold had a good idea what the elder Nick Holt was going to say.

“Hey, Walt, I want to introduce you to my son,” said Nick Holt V, who’d known Arnold from Cal-Berkeley. “He’s going to be coming to Bellarmine as a freshman next year.”

Arnold didn’t quite know then what he was going to get with the younger Nick Holt, but it didn’t take long for him to find out.

Arnold was Bellarmine’s varsity football coach, so he doesn’t remember much about Nick Holt as a freshman — other than he already was making an impression as a physical, sound, talented linebacker. But by Holt’s sophomore year, Arnold heard much more. And not all good: Holt was getting in fights during games, sometimes getting kicked out. Perhaps it was a reaction to Holt being admittedly homesick early on — he was one of the full-time boarders at the school.

When Arnold finally got Holt to himself on varsity, he immediately made Holt a starter and was eager to fine-tune talents. But, in Holt’s first varsity game against the Branham Bruins, Holt got in another fight and, again, got kicked out.

“So we had a talk,” Arnold said. “I handed him my clipboard and said, ‘Hey, if you’re not going to be in the game, you might as well help me coach.’ And that was the end of that. He straightened up and managed to finish all the rest of his games.”

Holt did more than just finish.

He'd set the tone for the kind of player, the kind of coach, the kind of man he’d become.

He became one of Arnold’s most productive and best players over the next two seasons, ending his career as a team captain and, ultimately, ending up in the school’s Hall of Fame. And, looking back now, the coach of 30-plus years can say Holt is one of his favorites.

Because the Nick Holt fans see pacing, laser-focused and intense on Purdue’s sidelines as the Boilermakers’ linebackers coach and defensive play caller is, basically, the same Nick Holt from back then.