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SoCal Safety Sets College Reveal Date, UW Among Choices

Pole Moala is a 4-star defensive back who will pick from six schools.
Dan Raley|
Pole Moala and his mom on a UW visit in October 2025.
Pole Moala and his mom on a UW visit in October 2025. | Moala

Safety Pole Moala, a University of Washington recruit who is fast-tracking his football career, has reclassified his scholastic standing, changed high schools and now will reveal his football destination inside two weeks.

On Sunday, the 5-foot-11, 180-pound defensive back for Santa Margarita Catholic High School in the Los Angeles suburbs revealed he will pick a school on April 25 from among California, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, UCLA and the Huskies, according to Rivals.

He's a 4-star prospect who comes off a sophomore season at Leuzinger High in Lawndale, also in suburban L.A., in which he piled up 42 tackles, 4 tackles for loss, 3 interceptions and 9 pass break-ups for an 11-2 team.

Moala scored 8 times last fall, with three coming on pass receptions and another on a kickoff return for Leuzinger, which previously sent offensive tackle Kahlee Tafai to the UW. Tafai now plays for California.

The safety transferred to Santa Margarita Catholic after the first of the year and likewise reclassified to the Class of 2027, eager to get started as a college football player.

The fast-emerging Moala holds 27 scholarship offers, which also include Florida State, Miami, Missouria, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and USC.

He received a UW offer last May 14, shortly after spring football concluded, and he took a recruiting visit to Montlake during last season and attended the Illinois game, which the Huskies won 42-25.

The UW would seem to have as much of a chance in landing him with Taylor Mays, the former USC All-America and NFL safety, as the point person on Moala's recruiting.

The attraction to him is his blend of physicality and athleticism, which led to him being named to multiple sophomore All-American teams, including MaxPreps, plus nearly every Southern California regional team.

For Leuzinger, he was so versatile he took snaps at safety, cornerback, wide receiver and running back. He runs the 100-meter dash in 11.2 seconds.

Rivals predicts Moala will end up at UCLA, but none of the recruiting sites had the UW listed among his finalists, which appears to have changed fairly recently.

The Huskies currently hold 11 commitments for 2027, which include seven defensive players, including four linebackers, a cornerback and a defensive tackle.

The latest UW commit came last week from 4-star quarterback Blake Roskopf, a 6-foot-5, 235-pound signal-caller from Desert Edge High School in Goodyear, Arizona.

The Huskies currently have four 4-star prospects under wraps in wide receiver Zerek Sidney, a Roskopf teammate; running back Jeremy Adejanyu from O'Connor High in Phoenix; defensive tackle Jon Ioane from Tustin High in Tustin, California, and Roskopf.

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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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