Huskies Head to the High Desert to Offer Running Back
Karson Cox plays football for Oak Hills High School, a name that is a bit of a misnomer because there aren't any trees and all you see for miles around is Mojave Desert.
However, this 5-foot-11, 195-pound running back seems to thrive in his arid Hesperia, California, surroundings, so much that Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington football recruiters on Friday offered a scholarship to Cox.
This area is known as the High Desert, which is where the Huskies recently found wide receiver Keith Reynolds in nearby Adelanto and two decades earlier in Hesperia plucked wide receiver Marcel Reece, who still holds the UW school record for longest scoring play from scrimmage at 98 yards.
Cox is just getting started, as a Class of 2025 recruit coming off a sensational sophomore season for a playoff-bound Oak Hills football team that won its first 11 games before losing to Bishop Amat.
Besides the Huskies, he holds offers from Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, UNLV, Washington State and Western Michigan.
Reminiscent of the Huskies' Cameron Davis, another Southern California-produced running back, Cox appears deceptively fast and likes to mix it up.
"One thing I like about the sport is the physicality and. hitting people in games," he told the Victorville Daily Press.
Cox did this well enough this past season to rush 128 times for 1,215 yards and 18 touchdowns, and catch 6 passes for 150 yards and two more scores.
Against Serrano High in mid-October, Cox picked up 221 all-purpose yards, scoring from 41, 63 and 80 yards on three of his four touchdowns.
He appears to be the sort of multi-purpose running back that DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb require for their up-tempo, spread offense, one in which
Cox has good genes as a distant relative of the late Elbert Dubenion, a wide receiver with the Buffalo Bills for nearly a decade who died in 2019.
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