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Huskies Offer Young Safety from Arizona Powerhouse in Disarray

Class of 2025 prospect Rylon Dillard-Allen has emerged from Desert Vista High turmoil to catch recruiters' attention.
Dan Raley|
Huskies Offer Young Safety from Arizona Powerhouse in Disarray
Huskies Offer Young Safety from Arizona Powerhouse in Disarray

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Washington Huskies

When it opened in 1996, Desert Vista High School in Phoenix had big plans for its football program. Everything was modeled after Notre Dame, right down to the school colors and the fight song.

The school won state championships in 1998 and 2011 and regularly sent players to the college level and the NFL. 

However, the Desert Vista football program recently has fallen into disrepair. The Thunder come off a 2-8 season and will answer to their fourth head coach in four seasons in Andrew "Scooter" Molander, who was hired just last Wednesday. 

COVID turned this Phoenix football powerhouse upside down, putting longtime coach Dan Hinds in retirement and causing several players to change schools as the coaching staff turned over nonstop, among them running back Christian Clark, who transferred to Mountain Pointe and might be the top 2024 recruit in the state.

Yet emerging from the Desert Vista turmoil is Rylon Dillard-Allen, a 6-foot, 165-pound safety and sprinter on the track team, a Class of 2025 recruit out to succeed regardless of the continual program rebuild.

On Thursday, Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington recruiters offered a scholarship to Dillard-Allen, his fifth to go with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado State and Nevada.

Dillard-Allen was a wide receiver as a freshman in 2021, but his recently departed coach Nate Gill astutely made him a defensive back this past fall.

It was a good fit. Even while the defense was serving up an overly generous 36.3 points per game, Dillard-Allen had his shining moments in the secondary, finishing with 60 tackles, a pair of interceptions and 12 pass break-ups as a just a sophomore.

"It was a fun season for me," he told Arizona Varsity. "Obviously, it didn't work out the way we wanted, but we're working on it."

The attraction to Dillard-Allen is speed, with the sprinter clocking 22.76 seconds in the 200-meter dash and regularly running in the low 11s in the 100, promising to hit 10.8 before he's done. 

With seven Arizonans on the roster, the Huskies continue to comb this state for football talent. The others include junior edge rusher Bralen Trice from Phoenix; senior safety Dominique Hampton from Glendale; senior center Matteo Mele from Tucson; sophomore kicker Grady Gross from Scottsdale; junior long snapper Jaden Green from Gilbert; and center Parker Brailsford and edge rusher Lance Holtzclaw from Mesa, both redshirt freshmen.

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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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