Imagine this: you’re a Michigan student, an Ann Arbor native. You grew up in the shadow of The Big House. You’ve never played football before — at any level. And you find yourself, suiting up, putting on that maize and blue uniform, the winged helmet.

This isn’t a dream, yet, you don’t know how to actually put your pads on. You’ve never done it before. You’ve seen these guys in the locker room on TV before, and yet, here you are, asking for help to put on your Michigan uniform.

It’s not a dream.

You’re doing this after sitting in meeting rooms with Jim Harbaugh, one of the most famous football coaches in the world, at any level.

This is NOT a dream!

It may not have been a literal dream for Mahmoud “Mak” Issa, but it was a figurative one — one that came true. For just a moment.

Issa grew up in the shadow of Michigan Athletics, attending a small, public charter school on S. Industrial Hwy, just a few blocks from Schembechler Hall. His family consulted with charter schools professionally, and his father’s stake was particularly with Central Academy — so Mak had little choice but to attend. He went to the same school from pre-K until graduation, where he was a part of a graduating class some 30-strong.

Attending a small school meant living in something of a small world. But that didn’t mean that Issa’s dreams were small. It took him a minute to branch out, but once he did, he started learning to go beyond what was right in front of him and to think bigger.

“Up until sixth grade, I hated not being around my circle, I hated new things,” Issa said. “And then I started playing basketball at the rec, and that changed my horizon. Then, my sophomore year, I did a Harvard program – a three week program at Harvard. It was pretty hard. I got four credits out of that and that really blew my circle up. That made me into who I am now.”

At 6-foot-5, 220-pounds, Issa was the natural size for a basketball player, and he was quite good at it. Playing small forward, he even accumulated a few D-II offers — but that wasn’t his passion.

With several cousins who had suffered from multiple ACL injuries, as an athlete himself, Issa wanted to find a way to help find a solution to the problems that athletes face in that light. He wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon.

So, as someone who was born at University Hospital and spent his entire life right next door to the state’s flagship institution, it was a no-brainer what he would do. He would stay home in Ann Arbor and pursue the path of medicine at one of the nation’s finest in that field.

When he was still in high school, though, before he knew his path was to be in the medical field, Issa started training with a name familiar to fans of the maize and blue — and now also to the scarlet and grey. Before he took a grad transfer year and accepted a graduate assistant position at Ohio State, former Michigan point guard Andrew Dakich worked with Issa, helping him perfect his craft.

Little did Issa know that would change his trajectory as he knew it.

“My junior year of high school, Andrew Dakich — he was really cool with Jay Shunnar,” Issa said. “Jay – we make the joke that he’s the most successful Arab athlete out of Ann Arbor, because he played D-I and did very, very well at Toledo. He was cool with Andrew Dakich, who trained me in high school. So when I got here my first semester, Andrew Dakich, Moe (Wagner), Duncan (Robinson) all texted me: ‘Yo, it’s very hard to make friends here. Groups are very tight knit. Frats stay with frats. Sports stay with sports.

“‘So, from now on, you’re just gonna kick it with us.’ And that’s how it started. It was really cool. It really meant a lot.”

What started was a deep friendship, and a living situation where the now-former high school athlete was rooming with Michigan basketball stars. Despite living with Moe Wagner and Duncan Robinson — both of whom are now in the NBA — the closest Mak got to playing was just going down the the gym and messing around. He never entertained the idea of actually playing sports at the college level.

Until one day, when everything changed.

“We were at prayer one day, and my friend comes up to me – he used to play for Michigan. His name was Rushdi Furrha, and he was like, ‘If I was your size, I’d be playing football. Like, such a waste of size!’

“‘Alright – that’s a good idea!’”

For some reason, that clicked with Issa, and like everything else in life, he took it seriously. That meant seeking out the best help he could find to help him get ready for what was to come.

Because of his roommates, and another unlikely source, Issa already had all the connections he needed, even if he didn’t know it yet.

“A lot of these guys I met through, his name is Moe Shwedi, and he cuts literally everyone’s hair,” Issa said. “The whole team, he cuts their hair. From Joel Honigford to Shea Patterson to Tarik (Black) – he cuts everyone. And he just started getting me connected, because he saw what I wanted to do.”

He already knew former Michigan offensive lineman Chris Bryant, who’s now with the team as the director of high school relations, through a family connection. So Bryant and others gave him guidance for what to expect if he really was going to go after a potential football career, if he really was going to walk-on.

From those preliminary conversations and some other well-placed connections, Issa managed to set up a meeting with Sean Magee, the Wolverines director of player personnel, who helped him figure out his course of action.

It was a chance conversation on Twitter that helped Issa find some solace, knowing that this course of action didn’t necessarily mean he had to be the biggest, fastest or strongest candidate. He just had to have certain attributes that the coaches were looking for, to go along with the work ethic and the know how.

“Eight months before the tryout, I DMed Jay Harbaugh, just because he was a tight end coach, and initially I wanted to be a tight end,” Issa said. “But, he helped me out a lot. He told me, ‘This is what you’ve gotta do. This is the speed we’re looking for. We’re not looking for you to be an All-American — (we’re looking) for you to just come in and help us here and here and here.'”

It was that, along with some other conversations, he realized the direction he would go in wouldn’t be tight end — that room was already loaded. What Michigan needed at the time was more offensive linemen. So Issa moved confidently in that direction and needed to start training.

It turned out, the perfect place wasn’t too far away: Barwis Methods in Plymouth. Founded by former Michigan strength and conditioning coach Mike Barwis, who served under Rich Rodriguez, the staff there was already knowledgeable about what he would need to do. They would be able to get Issa ready for precisely the exact workouts the walk-ons would go through once they got to the Al Glick Fieldhouse.

But it would be a long, grueling affair that would long precede his actual tryout.

“Dan Moses trained me for almost eight months,” Issa said. “At first, we would do combine stuff, because that’s what the tryout is, all combine stuff. And then, the last three months, we started doing O-line drills, because I didn’t want to walk in there having no idea what to do. When I do something, I want to be able to do it. So I didn’t think I was gonna fail. So I was like, ‘Let’s start working on the O-line stuff.’

“And then (former Michigan cornerback) Terry Richardson (who he met through Shwedi) – he helped me out a lot with conditioning. We’d do it every Saturday, Monday, Tuesday – we’d go to local Ann Arbor fields, when there was no school and stuff. We’d just run. Run routes. Do drills. He helped me out a lot.”

Training at Barwis Methods, Issa learned all of the foreign movements he would need to impress the coaches. It would have been one thing if he was built more for speed, but as more of 5-second-plus runner, playing a skill position such as wide receiver at Michigan probably wasn’t in the cards.

So with an offensive line position in sights, that meant that Issa had to learn an entirely new, very foreign, skill set, especially given his basketball background.

“Basketball, you’re not making short, strong movements, six-inch movements, which is the O-line,” Issa said. “Basketball, you’re just trying to go, go, go, so it’s a lot easier. It’s more footwork than doing football. It was a completely different thing, like put all your power into one short step. It’s a battle for six seconds, and then you’re relaxing for 20 seconds. Basketball conditioning was much different. So that kinda threw me off a little bit.”

Finally, the time came, in the early winter of 2018, and Mak was fully prepared for what the coaching staff was looking for. They say that luck is a product of preparation and opportunity, and Issa had both in spades.

He impressed, but it wasn’t without some Wow, am I’m really here? moments.

“I get to the drill where it’s under a mat and then you’ve got to get to four corners,” Issa said. “It’s just like a positional drill, you’ve just gotta move fast and stay low. And that was my first time meeting (offensive line coach Ed) Warinner. He scared the (expletive) out of me!

“I turned the corner, I put the last ball, they started screaming good job after my second attempt. And he was like, ‘Move, move, move!’ He came out of nowhere! This loud, powerful voice. I felt like he was a man amongst men. I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy you’ve got to respect.’ He was cool.”

Issa estimates about 100 some people did the initial tryout, which consisted essentially of paperwork and measurements. Thirty made the next cut and got invited to go onto the field and actually partake in the physical tryout for the coaching staff. From there, seven made that cut, though two ended up declining — one because it ended up being too much with school, the other because of concussion concerns.

But along with current roster players Ryan Nelson, Ethan DeLand and Tyler Grosz, Issa did it — he made the team.

In a state of disbelief, however, he didn’t do what most would: he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

“I didn’t tell anyone, because I felt like it was too good to be true. So I didn’t tell anyone,” he said.

For an Ann Arbor kid born in University Hospital, it was a dream come true. But he didn’t exactly have the time to pinch himself, because as quickly as he made the team, it was time to get to know his new trainer: newly hired Michigan strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert, with 2018 winter conditioning and 6AM workouts at Schembechler Hall about to begin in earnest.

TO BE CONTINUED…