Inside The Huskies

Huskies Continue Special-Teams Makeover, Add Long Snapper

Ryan Kean will transfer to the UW from Utah Tech for the 2025 season.

Dan Raley

Long snapper Ryan Kean will transfer from Utah Tech to the UW.
Long snapper Ryan Kean will transfer from Utah Tech to the UW. / Kean

Details weren't necessarily an immediate priority for Jedd Fisch's first University of Washington football team. The coach and his staff had much bigger concerns, such as replacing all but one of the 22 starters from the Huskies' national runner-up finisher and installing all sorts of new systems and processes.

It showed as the Huskies committed more than their fair share of mistakes during the regular season, especially on special teams, by giving up several long kick returns, shanking a few punts here and there, and misfiring on multiple long snaps.

Yet that was then and this is now -- and the UW is finally addressing some of those troublesome details while some of the principle characters on special teams have headed for the transfer portal, bringing about change.

Fisch's staff first replaced the Husky punter for 2025, by signing Australian rules football player Dusty Zimmer, and now it has a new snapper coming to Montlake in Ryan Kean, a transfer from Utah Tech with seasons of eligibility remaining.

The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Kean from Corona, California, will come to the UW after serving up a near-perfect 225 snaps not always under the best of circumstances in 23 outings.

His Utah Tech team finished 1-11 this past season and 2-9 in 2023.

Still, Kean was able to earn All-UAC honors as a special-teamer as a redshirt freshman and has a big portfolio of kicking-camp accomplishments.

Once in the portal, he heard from Florida Atlantic, Hawaii and Massachusetts before settling on the UW, which likely gave him a scholarship or a partial financial package.

The Huskies utilized a pair of snappers during the regular season, including sophomore Caleb Johnston, who has entered the portal, and junior Cameron Warchuck, who transferred in before this season from Colorado and remains in the fold.

Johnston handled the place-kick snaps while Warchuck delivered the punt snaps.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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