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Inside The Huskies

Huskies Remain in Running for Las Vegas Linebacker

Christian Thatcher has the UW among 10 schools he will choose from.
Dan Raley|
LB Christian Thatcher (42) and his brother Thaddeus sit for a TV interview.
LB Christian Thatcher (42) and his brother Thaddeus sit for a TV interview. | Twitter

In his football eye black, Christian Thatcher looks more like a special-ops soldier sneaking through some war zone on a classified mission, only he doesn't go anywhere these days without people knowing all about it.

If he hasn't already, Thatcher probably should turn off his cell phone. Chances are it rings every few minutes either with an assistant college football coach or a recruiting coordinator on the line wanting to sweet-talk him, that is when the recruiting website hounds aren't badgering him to promise a fancy social-media graphic in exchange for the latest on his recruitment.

The 6-foot-2, 205-pound Thatcher is a super aggressive, 4-star linebacker from Las Vegas' Arbor View High School, which is located north of the strip and all the bright lights and continuous parade of people seeking some form gambling or entertainment diversion.

While followers of at least a half-dozen schools breathlessly think he will sign with each of them, the big news on Tuesday surrounding Thatcher is really no news at all -- he just narrowed his choices to 10 schools: Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, UNLV, USC, Utah and Washington.

The attraction to Thatcher is he runs all over the field looking to take people's heads off without many getting in his way. He has 327 career tackles, which is 100 shy of the school record. Some people consider him the top linebacker recruit in the nation, or at the very least on the West Coast.

He's a captain and wears No. 42, which is what people in Seattle likely will see from Husky senior and the equally physical linebacker Carson Bruner this coming season. He'll be told how Edefuan Ulofoshio came out of Vegas and became a first-team All-Pac-12 linebacker this past season and more recently a fifth-round draft pick for the Buffalo Bills.

Thatcher has four official visits coming up that will take him to Colorado this weekend, Utah on June 7, Kansas on June 14 and to Montlake on June 21. He has said he intends to make a decision on his college choice before his senior season at Arbor View begins.

Jedd Fisch's staff has been recruiting Thatcher since it was at Arizona, so it seems to have as good a chance of signing him as anyone. One site already is predicting he will end up at the UW.

“I love coach Fisch," Thatcher recently told Huskies Wire. "I love how he treats his people and his entire staff.”

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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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