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Oklahoma RB Gavin Sawchuk Lands on Prestigious Watch List

The Sooners' junior running back has earned a spot on the watch list for the Wuerffel Award, which includes athletic exploits as well as citizenship and academics.

John E. Hoover

Oklahoma running back Gavin Sawchuk
Oklahoma running back Gavin Sawchuk / Daniel Dunn-USA TODAY Sports
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Gavin Sawchuk’s hard work is paying off — both on the field and off.

Oklahoma’s talented running back was among a record 111 college football players included Thursday on the watch list for the 2024 Danny Wuerffel Trophy,  billed as the premier award for community service.

Sawchuk, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound sophomore from Littleton, CO, ran for 744 yards and nine touchdowns on 120 rushing attempts as a redshirt freshman for the Sooners last season. He averaged 6.2 yards per carry and broke the 100-yard barrier in each of the Sooners’ final five games.

Sawchuk also caught 14 passes for 94 yards.

His emergence as the feature back midway through the season included 111 yards against Oklahoma State, 135 against West Virginia, 107 at BYU, 130 and three touchdowns against TCU and 134 in the Alamo Bowl against Arizona.

That production came after a preseason leg injury hampered him through the first two months of the season, when he ran the football just 34 times for 127 yards — 10 for 63 in his big breakout against UCF, which included the game-clinching touchdown in the fourth quarter.

But Sawchuk has always been about more than just yards and touchdowns.

At Valor Christian High School in Colorado, Sawchuk served a poor community in Alabama by working at a school teaching basic education skills. He also got to visit various civil rights historical venues. 

He was also nominated as one of three “Above the Standard” athletes at OU, recognizing excellence in the classroom and on the football field.

Sawchuk also serves at a local church as well as throughout the football program. This summer he served a micro-intership in Colorado with Good Living Ventures, a private real-estate investment firm that focuses on thoughtfully designed and affordable housing solutions. 

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John E. Hoover

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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