Inside The Huskies

Huskies Offer Son of Former Standout CFL Linebacker

Ty Benefield moved from Vancouver, B.C., to Southern California to make himself a desired recruit.

Dan Raley

In this story:

Ty "Buck" Benefield just missed out on his father's lengthy and successful Canadian pro football career, born shortly after the linebacker's retirement. He's 16 and dad hung it up 17 years ago.

He doesn't intend to let any more football elude him.

The younger Benefield is a 6-foot-3, 185-pound defensive back originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, who moved to Southern California to play against the best high school players he could find.

So far, so good.

On Saturday, Benefield received a scholarship offer from the University of Washington, the closest Power 5 football program to his north-of-the-border hometown. He currently plays for Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

Say that five times real fast. 

The UW previously recruited and signed Hamburg, Germany, native Maurice Heims from that same high school. A redshirt freshman, Heims is a 6-foot-5, 251-pound edge rusher for the Huskies.

Benefield's recruiting profile shows him working out barefooted at the beach and in proper footwear in parks and at football camps. It shows him last season catching 15 passes for 186 yards and pair of touchdowns and coming up with 2 tackles. 

A Class of 2023 prospect, he's still making the transition to American football, but his upside apparently has people enthused, leading to a UW offer.

Benefield's father, Daved, played 13 CFL seasons for five teams, plus 15 games for the San Francisco 49ers in 1996. The 6-foot-4, 231-pound linebacker was a two-time CFL All-Star. He set a record with 5 sacks in a game. At one time, he was the object of a CFL bidding war. 

He played his college ball for Cal State-Northridge and made his way north as a free agent who eventually convinced people he could play as a pro, and play well.

Ty Benefield has now gone in the other direction, leaving Canada for Southern California, and maybe back to Washington, to show he can do the same.

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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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