Inside The Huskies

Tuputala Is the Lone Survivor, Last of 4 Husky LBs Who Came In Together

He's was the least heralded and became the most successful.
Dan Raley|
Tuputala Is the Lone Survivor, Last of 4 Husky LBs Who Came In Together
Tuputala Is the Lone Survivor, Last of 4 Husky LBs Who Came In Together

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Washington Huskies

Alphonzo Tuputala is "the Lone Survivor," not unlike that resourceful and resilient Mark Wahlberg character dodging bullets and rockets on an exposed Afghanistan hillside in the Hollywood film, as the only one of four Navy SEALS operatives to survive a fierce military engagement.

In 2019, Tuputala arrived at the University of Washington as part of a quartet of freshman linebackers who brought heady credentials. 

Daniel Heimuli and Josh Calvert were 4-star recruits from California while Miki Ah You showed up as the promising grandson of the greatest football player ever produced in Hawaii, Junior Ah You.

"Those are my brothers, will always be my brothers," Tuputala said. "We came in together. Everybody has their own story to write and it's always love with them."

Heimuli and Calvert had entertained offers from Notre Dame before choosing the Huskies, with Daniel also turning down Alabama, while a menacing looking Ah You became an internet sensation doing "the Haka" before one of his games in the islands and was hotly pursued by the school where his grandfather excelled, Arizona State.

Tuputala simply hailed from nearby Federal Way, Washington, and was offered by the UW and mostly Mountain West and FCS schools.

With the 2023 Husky season ready to begin, these linebackers have scattered to the wind. Heimuli is pushing for a starting job at Arizona, Calvert simply to get on the field at Utah. Ah You, who suffered a debilitating knee injury as a high school senior, no longer plays the game.

"They had to make those moves," Tuputala said.

The 6-foot-2, 240-pound Tuputala, the least heralded of the bunch, also is the most successful. He's poised to start for a second consecutive season for the UW after earning All-Pac-12 honorable-mention accolades in 2022.

Heimuli, who goes 6-foot and 225 pounds, is in the running for a starting job with Oregon transfer Justin Flow in Tucson. He spent four seasons with the Huskies, appeared in 18 games and started two of them, and left under dubious circumstances, caught up in a University District bar incident and suspended from the team.

The 6-foot-2, 223-pound Calvert never played in a game in two seasons at the UW after suffering a knee injury in practice as a freshman when he was penciled in to be a special-teamer on Saturdays. He's appeared in one game in each of his two seasons for the Utes and is currently in competition for a back-up role.

The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Ah You spent two seasons at the UW, played in one game in 2020 and went home after running 34 yards with a fumble recovery in the following spring game and hung it up.

"Daniel at Arizona and Josh at Utah, we always keep in touch, are always calling each other, checking on each other," said Tuputala, who will go up against those two for the first time later this season. "I'm always rooting for them. I'm happy for them. I'm always going to support them."

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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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