Inside The Huskies

Eliyas Woods is 14, 140 Pounds, in Middle School — And Has UW Offer

The Huskies are the first to put a scholarship in front of him.
Dan Raley|
Eliyas Woods is 14, 140 Pounds, in Middle School — And Has UW Offer
Eliyas Woods is 14, 140 Pounds, in Middle School — And Has UW Offer

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Washington Huskies

Eliyas Woods is all of 5-foot-11 and 140 pounds.

He wears Fortnite T-shirts and his hair at corresponding lengths, seemingly longer as he gets older and chooses what's trendy at the moment.

As an eighth-grader at Sutter Middle School in Folsom, California, he's just figuring out who he is and what he wants to be.

University of Washington football recruiters have decided they are more than willing to help Woods in this area of personal growth.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Courtney Morgan and his staff offered the young California prodigy his first college scholarship opportunity.

Woods was in Seattle two weeks ago, playing in a 7-on-7 tournament, though it's not clear if that's where the Huskies first noticed him. He wrote on social media how the the experience was "like a movie."

A few days ago, Woods posted this sobering social-media observation straight from Folsom, "Got the opportunity to play against some amazing high school talent ..."

He's from the Class of 2027, which means if Woods chooses to play for the Huskies very few of the players currently on the roster will be around to greet him.

By then, Kalen DeBoer would be in his sixth season coaching the Huskies and Ryan Grubb no doubt will be a head coach somewhere.

The UW opener on the schedule that season is against Fresno State, followed by Nevada, with the latter school not all that far from Woods' Northern California home. 

Football people have been noticing this kid has amazing athleticism for someone so young, such as the one-handed catch he made in the accompanying video. 

No, he can't reclassify four years. 

Woods first will have to attend Folsom High School, which recently supplied the Huskies with a quarterback commitment from the touted Austin Mack, a graybeard from the Class of 2024, and before that a four-year starting QB in Jake Browning, who's really an old man now in the NFL. 

The teen's middle school, for students in the sixth through the eighth grades, is named for John Sutter, whose 1800s sawmill brought a historic gold rush and all sorts of prospectors to the area. 

That could be what's happening now.

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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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