UW Roster Review, No. 2-99: A Walk on the Wide Side for the Huskies
Bear Bryant's Alabama teams used to regularly dress a wieldy 150 players for football practice. Under Don James, the University of Washington topped out around 120 guys on the roster, with upwards of 50 walk-ons.
This April, the Huskies listed 109 players on their spring roster, filling spots so coveted that just one person, sophomore inside linebacker Josh Calvert, gave his up place when the 15 practices concluded.
With so much participation, the reality of this is a good portion of these guys will never play for the UW on Saturdays. A third or more of the roster probably will never officially log any game time.
Still, they show up and put on a uniform.
Husky walk-ons used to get shuffled off to a separate locker room and take plenty of abuse from the scholarship players, some of whom wouldn't even bother to learn their teammates' names.
"Hey walk-on," a 1987 UW starting linebacker barked to a teammate he would never know, while reclining comfortably on a sideline bench. "You're in my view. Move."
They're unpaid players for any number of reasons. It's big-time college football, even if the only reward is laborious practice repetitions.
Some players join the roster to enable their fraternity brothers to live vicariously through them. Others come for the free gear that includes sweats, T-shirts and shoes of the highest quality.
Yet others remain the intense competitors they've always been, quite possibly overlooked by recruiters. Some of these determined guys enter the program as so-called preferred walk-ons, convinced they'll someday earn a scholarship, or at the very least enjoy a Rudy game-day moment.
Nebraska built powerhouse teams with a dedicated walk-on program that was unparalleled anywhere in college football, continually finding farm boys it could turn into scholarship players, starters and even NFL players.
The Huskies have turned some of their football volunteers into serious players, more recently inside linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio, cornerback Myles Bryant, outside linebacker Ryan Bowman, defensive tackle Josiah Bronson, kicker Peyton Henry and tight end Jack Westover.
Going down the current UW roster in numerical order, this is another of our post-spring assessments of all of the Husky talent at hand, gleaned from a month of observations, as a way to keep everyone engaged during the offseason.
In this case, we look at six of the 28 Husky walk-ons from spring practice who are stacked together on the lower half of the roster, and we tell you who they are.
Their numbers are 27, 29, 31, 32, 36 and 38, all of them roster duplicates. Again, the bottom line is to get yourself noticed.
Javon Forward
This redshirt freshman from Auburn Riverside High School — the same place that produced UW grad transfer quarterback Kevin Thomson — did something that the other guys, that accomplished former Big Sky Offensive MVP, couldn't do.
Forward entered a Husky regular-season game in 2020.
He pulled a few plays in a 44-27 victory over Arizona, drawing minutes in an outing that was far more lopsided than the final score.
While he was a running back, a defensive back, a wide receiver and a punter at Auburn Riverside, Forward is a 6-foot, 240-pound UW tight end, which is one of the reasons he's not on scholarship.
The Huskies make it abundantly clear they want their tight ends some four to five inches taller than Forward, simple as that, or Cade Otton size.
Still, Forward presses forward, sharing the same jersey No. 27 with scholarship cornerback James Smith, having experienced an early breakthrough in his Husky career and looking for more.
Brennan Holmes
This scrappy little wide receiver, all 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds of him, came to the Huskies from Seattle Preparatory School after playing nearly a decade of competitive lacrosse and winning a wrestling league championship, the latter for Bellevue High, which offered the sport whereas his high school didn't.
Oh yeah, Holmes chalked up 16 tackles as a Seattle Prep safety in a game against Kennedy Catholic High and quarterback Sam Huard, now a UW teammate.
Brennan Holmes goes through the receiving line.
Dan Raley
In his lacrosse recruiting profile online, Holmes described himself in this manner, which probably sums him up as a football player, as well: "I personally am a bit undersized for your average lacrosse player, but I outwork the competition each and every day. On the field I play with tenacity and have a competitive nature like no other. I understand the game extremely well."
Standing to the far left in the cover photo, Holmes wears No. 29, a number he shares with scholarship safety Julius Irvin. As a junior, he joined the Huskies this past spring, as one of five new walk-on receivers, all possibly motivated by the winter departure of five scholarship pass-catchers through the transfer portal.
Charlie Fuller
The 6-foot, 180-pound player joined the UW this past spring for the first time as a walk-on wide receiver, after earning first-team, all-conference honors at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles.
He's a redshirt freshman, which means Fuller attended school for a year without playing football. Again, the potential openings at Husky wide receiver most likely motivated him to come out.
Charlie Fuller runs a spring practice route.
Dan Raley
Fuller wears No. 31 for Jimmy Lake's team, sharing the digit with sophomore defensive back Kamren Fabiculanan, a scholarship player.
Nick Juran
The native of Los Altos, California, is a 6-foot, 200-pound wide receiver who is entering his fourth season in the UW football program, still looking for his first game-day minutes.
In the Husky spring game, Juran caught 3 passes for 29 yards, pulling in 2 of them from No. 1 quarterback Dylan Morris — the only walk-on with receptions — before finishing up at safety, likely the only guy who went both ways that day.
He wears No. 32, after switching from 39 during the spring, a Husky jersey he shares with junior punter Tristan Brown.
Accepted into the Foster School of Business, Juran regularly turns in the top GPA, as high as 3.85 for the UW football team.
In 2019, he shared the above postgame photo at Husky Stadium with Oregon running back Cyrus Habibi-Likio, a former teammate at St. Francis High School in the Bay Area.
Mason Wheeler
Similar to some of the others, Wheeler joined the Huskies for the first time for the recently concluded spring practice, likely drawn by all the offseason turnover at the position.
A 5-foot-10, 165-pound redshirt freshman, Wheeler was a two-way player for Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington, and his class standing means he attended a year of school before pulling on the pads.
He wears jersey No. 36, which he shares with fellow walk-on Kasen Kinchen, a redshirt freshman cornerback.
Camden VerStrate
This 5-foot-8, 170-pound sophomore wide receiver comes to the UW from Cheney High, the same school that sent All-America and NFL No. 1 overall draft pick defensive tackle Steve Emtman to the Huskies three decades earlier.
The versatile VerStrate played football, basketball, soccer and track at Cheney, trying the sprints for the first time competitively as a senior and winning the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the state meet.
Camden Verstrate wins the 100 in the 2019 2A state meet.
WIAA photo
VerStrate was part of the Husky roster in 2019 and 2020 without receiving any game time. Shown in the cover photo at the far right, he wears No. 38, which he shares with walk-on kicker Jarrett North.
2021 Outlook: All are projected as deep reserves
UW Service Time: Forward has 1 game appearance
Stats: None
Individual Honors: None
Pro prospects: None
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