Huskies Will Conclude Spring Football with Another Night Game

Dawgs After Dark is scheduled for May 2 at 6:30 p.m. in Montlake.
TE coach Jordan Paopao encourages Ryan Otton during spring ball.
TE coach Jordan Paopao encourages Ryan Otton during spring ball. / Skylar Lin Visuals

For the second consecutive year, the University of Washington spring football game will be played on a Friday night at Husky Stadium with hopes the weather cooperates and a big crowd comes out for a look.

On Wednesday night, the school announced the second Dawgs After Dark spring finale with coach Jedd Fisch in charge will be held at 6:30 p.m. on May 2, culminating 15 practices.

Last year, a crowd close to 15,000 -- half of what the UW had hoped for but still much larger than any spring football gathering in decades -- filled the stands as Fisch put together his first Husky football team on the fly after the coaching change and graduation from a national championship runner-up had gutted the roster. Typically, there is no admission charge to attend this game.

With the scoring format not fully explained last May, Fisch's Purple team took a 24-23 victory on Grady Gross' game-ending 30-yard field goal -- with all of the kicker's teammates, both on offense and defense, out on the field and crowded around him, so close they could have reached out and touched him before the snap.

During last year's spring practice, the then new Husky coach returned just two starters, both on defense, from a 14-1 team supervised by Kalen DeBoer's staff.

This time, the Huskies will enter spring ball with 6 returning starters on offense in sophomore quarterback Demond Williams Jr., senior running back Jonah Coleman, junior wide receiver Denzel Boston and offensive linemen in junior center Landen Hatchett, junior right tackle Drew Azzopardi and senior left tackle Maximus McCree; and 4 on defense in junior edge rusher Isaiah Ward, senior conrerback Ephesians Prysock, sophomore cornerback Leroy Bryant and senior safety Makell Esteen.

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.