Inside The Huskies

Shades of Looker and Kralik, UW Offers Another Puyallup Receiver

Malachi Durant from the Class of 2024 can add the Huskies to his growing list.

Dan Raley

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The University of Washington football team has made room on the roster before for accomplished receivers from Puyallup High School.

With all of those high-powered quarterbacks coming out of that suburban football destination one after the other, it made perfect sense.

Dane Looker, a favorite Puyallup passing target for Brock Huard, first played his college ball for Western Washington before he transferred to Montlake and made himself into an NFL player. He now runs an asphalt business in his hometown. 

Joe Kralik, Billy Joe Hobert's top target as a schoolboy, joined him at the UW and they shared in a Husky national championship and a bunch of touchdown passes. He's now into finance in Texas.

Then there was Gail Bruce, an end and another Puyalup product who played for the post-World War II Huskies alongside Hugh McElhenny before spending time in the NFL. He passed away in 1988 at age 74.

Malachi Durant, the latest pass-catching prospect for the Vikings, has a chance to follow the others to Husky Stadium, to transfer his skills from the schoolboy level to the Pac-12 and maybe beyond in due time, to restart this pipeline of talent.

On Thursday, the 6-foot-2, 160-pound Puyallup wide receiver, just coming off his sophomore season, received a UW scholarship offer, setting off a torrent of well wishes sent his way from across the Puget Sound region. 

"I am extremely excited and blessed to receiver an offer from my hometown university," Durant tweeted.

Showing plenty of speed to go with his length, Durant now holds offer from Oregon, California, Missouri, Fresno State, Washington State and Florida Atlantic. 

While his 8-3 Puyallup team chose to run the ball more than throw it last fall, he caught a dozen passes for 100-plus yards, often getting loose for one long a game. He was able to show his best attributes. 

Durant still has two seasons remaining with the Vikings to pad some numbers to go with all of that potential. 

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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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