Jeremiah Hunter Was Destined to Play For Jedd Fisch at UW

The former California wide receiver was caught in the middle of Washington's coaching change.

As fate would have it, Jeremiah Hunter ended up playing for the coaches he preferred at the school that fit him best. 

The road to that decision wasn't as easy as a go route.

Hunter, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound wide receiver who led the California Golden Bears the past two seasons with a collective 123 receptions for 1,696 yards and 12 touchdowns, put his name in the transfer portal in late December.

Two days later, Hunter announced his commitment to play for then-Washington coach Kalen DeBoer, almost two weeks before the Huskies beat Texas 37-31 in the Sugar Bowl. 

Coincidentally, the other school that the senior wide receiver considered was Arizona. 

Hunter made his decision before coming up on an official visit to UW scheduled for Jan. 12, the same day DeBoer left to become the head coach at Alabama. 

"It was just crazy because I was up on my official visit when it happened," Hunter told Inside The Huskies. 

With the football leadership future in flux, Hunter went back home to California before ultimately returning to Seattle for good in late January to play for Jedd Fisch's staff. It was a confusing situation, with the receiver caught in the middle.

"I was like, 'So what's about to happen now?' " he said of his UW visit. "They basically just sent me home and said, 'We're not trying to sell you on a school that we won't be here for,' and I understood."

Hunter had decent success playing in Husky Stadium during his time at Cal, totaling 11 receptions for 162 yards and a touchdown in two games against the UW in 2021 and last fall. He did not play in the 2022 game in Berkeley because of an injury. 

On Saturday, Hunter was one of a half-dozen new Husky players who took part in an NIL event with Montlake Futures and Girl Scouts of America partnering to have players help sell the latter organization's cookies near campus.

He felt comfortable all along in dealing  with the Fisch coaching staff, and it was even better that he now would play for these coaches in Seattle. 

"It was either here or Arizona," Hunter said. "It just so happened that the Arizona coaching staff came up here and everything worked out, so I stayed."

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