Inside The Huskies

LaMason Waller, One-Time UW Commit, Chooses BYU

The California wide receiver pledged to Kalen DeBoer's Huskies when he was 15.

Dan Raley

One-time UW commit LaMason Waller has pledged to BYU.
One-time UW commit LaMason Waller has pledged to BYU. / Waller

Twenty-five months ago, LaMason Waller III surprised everyone around Montlake by committing to Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington football program.

He was all of 15.

He was coming off his freshman season at Sultana High School in Hesperia, California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

DeBoer's then-Husky staff had been on the job for just six months and hadn't coached a game yet in Montlake, yet this kid's mind was made up. It was football love at first sight.

“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."

Five months later, this impressionable 6-foot-2, 170-pound pass-catcher, clealy a kid with talent, realized maybe he had been a bit premature in deciding his college football course and de-committed from the Huskies.

Forty-four scholarships and many recruiting visits later, Waller on Friday committed to BYU. The Cougars are getting someone who caught 62 passes for 1,151 yards and 15 touchdowns as a junior.

One reason the UW was caught off guard by Waller's pledge was the offer sent his way was more procedural than firm.

As then-Husky recruiting coordinator Courtney Morgan explained, hypothetically of course, it's understood in the recruiting world you can't hold long, involved conversations with a prospect unless an offer is on the table. It's not unlike handing over a business card.

Waller, so smitten by his first scholarship offer, said yes to the UW even though it wasn't expecting a commitment from someone so young and probably not surprised when he later pulled out.

Before he knew it, Waller began to pile up all sorts of scholarship offers from the likes of Alabama, Florida State, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Oregon and Texas A&M as schools found out about this young prodigy. The Huskies had just got there first.

So older and wiser, Waller has decided BYU will be his college destination. At least for now.

.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.

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