Inside The Huskies

How the Huskies Got Germie Bernard to Return to the Program

All Kalen DeBoer's football coaching staff had to do was ask.

Dan Raley

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Wide receiver Jeremy "Germie" Bernard was in the transfer portal and the University of Washington coaching staff thought why not?

Kalen DeBoer and his recruiters felt compelled to reach out to a player who had signed with the Huskies 12 months earlier, even showed up in Seattle to enroll early in UW classes with snow on the ground and bolted when holdover receivers coach Junior Adams chose to take another job at Oregon.

Just days on the job at the UW, DeBoer had taken a home visit to Las Vegas to introduce himself to a player considered his No. 1 recruit and to try his best to keep him headed to the UW, even with the coaching change. It worked for awhile.

Bernard ultimately broke it all off and signed with Michigan State, yet DeBoer remembered there was a connection between the kid and the school he had seen.

"When you know you've got a chance, and he was a guy who really loved the program from the get-go, and I felt that a year ago," DeBoer said. "It wasn't just about the coaching staff. He loved Washington. He loved this program."

So the Huskies — who didn't have a receivers coach after Bernard arrived in Seattle — put the ever personable JaMarcus Shephard, Adams' replacement, on this one-time but oh so brief Husky to do his persuasive recruitment and soon they had this player called Germie back in the fold.

"I think there's a piece when he's ready to leave [Michigan State], you can't help but at least ask and find out where this is going to go and what the thought process is," DeBoer said. "He was all about looking at the U-Dub."

Shephard certainly was a compelling reason for him to retrace his steps once they got acquainted. Yet another was proof of the Husky offensive prowess with this new staff rather than take a flier on a promise. A pair of 1,000-yard receivers had to be a strong selling point. So was the Huskies' 39-28 victory over Michigan State in September with Bernard playing against the Huskies that day.

"I think a lot of it is Jeremy seeing what we did offensively," DeBoer said, "and he can see his role in it, not just next year, but in the years to come."

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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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