Class of 2025 California Recruit Pulls Out of UW Commitment
His situation was comparable to someone going out on a first date and immediately asking the other person to marry him.
Such was the case when wide receiver LaMason Waller III, then a 15-year-old California recruit from the Class of 2025, surprised everyone by emerging from his freshman season at Sultana High School in the High Desert and committing to the University of Washington and Kalen DeBoer's new coaching staff on May 24.
“I had the best vibes at UW, like I said, it felt great out there,” Waller told Greg Biggins of 247Sports. “It’s funny when I told the UW coaches I wanted to commit, they were even a little surprised but me and my family felt like it was a good time."
Insider reaction to this development was OK, nice get for the Huskies, but that decision, so early in the process, will never hold up. He was just beginning to pile up all sorts of scholarship offers from the likes of Florida State, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Oregon and Texas A&M.
Waller's commitment lasted not quite six months.
On Monday, the 4-star recruit announced on social media that he had decommitted from the UW with no further explanation.
However the day before, the 6-foot-2, 170-pound speedster posted on Twitter with three exclamation marks how he would be visiting Oregon this weekend. It's not clear if he had to say goodbye to the Huskies first to make that happen, but either way he's a free agent bound for Eugene. Ten days earlier, Penn State offered him.
Certainly Waller couldn't have been too disappointed in the UW offense put on display by DeBoer's coaching staff, with the Huskies currently ranked eighth in the nation in scoring at 42.1, a bare percentage point ahead of the Ducks at 42.0 points per game.
Quite possibly the name, image and likeness potential was decidedly better somewhere else.
Waller likely will end up with some team that plays Washington in the future, maybe Oregon for that matter, and he'll forever be remembered as the young kid who thought it was love at first sight with the team in Montlake. And then it wasn't.
“I know Washington is the best place for me,” Waller told 247Sports back then. “I really didn’t see a need to wait when I know this is what I want to do."
As Waller knows by now, nobody at 15 knows exactly what he wants to do.
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