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Inside The Huskies

Huskies Pad Special Teams Some More By Adding Punter

Nolan Balke of Phoenix offered his commitment to the Huskies on Friday night.
Dan Raley|
Nolan Balke, right, has committed to the UW.
Nolan Balke, right, has committed to the UW. | Chris Sailer

Some people go out and get a pizza on Friday night. Others make a burger run. Jedd Fisch's recruiting staff brought back a new punter.

With the weekend set to begin, Nolan Balke from Casteel High School in the Phoenix suburbs announced he has committed his punting talents to the University of Washington, becoming the Huskies 21st pledge for the Class of 2027.

The 6-foot-2, 205-pound Balke offered his commitment a day after the UW added a long snapper, and another Arizonan for that matter, in Braylon Logan from O'Conner High School, likewise in suburban Phoenix.

Balke will join the punting competition in 2027 once San Diego State transfer Hunter Green concludes his lone season in Montlake.

Last year's UW punter Luke Dunne, the one-time Oregon transfer, could be in the mix next season, as well. Yet he needs to refine his game, which is currently needs to overcome a slow release point that caused a lot of opponents to come hard on the punt block in 2025.

Balke brings ample schoolboy credentials with 40 punts for a 42.6-yard average for a 9-5 Casteel team that won Arizona's 6A state championship.

His punting was critical during the season in consistently backing up opponents with less than ideal field position as Casteel overcame a 6-5 start to win three consecutive playoff outings on the way to the 6A title.

In a 37-28 championship game victory over Tucson's Salpointe Catholic High, Balke was ready when called on, launching a pair of punts for 44 and 50 yards, dropping one of them inside the opposing 20 yard line.

While ranked as the nation's No. 3 punter by Kohl's Kicking, a special-teams training outfit, Balke still had to hustle to get teams to look at him.

Advocates for him and other punting recruits were online in recent months imploring college coaches to check these guys out.

The Huskies, in fact, extended the first Division 1 scholarship offer to Balke on June 8 and a few days later Arizona followed.

On April 19, Balke traveled to Seattle for a Chris Sailer competition.

Last weekend, he was back in the city for an official visit to the UW.

The big thing for Balke will to be to acclimate himself from the dry and safert desert kicking conditions to the perpetually windy Husky Stadium, which takes a bit of an adjustment.

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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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