How has WSU safety Jaden Hicks ascended so quickly? Thank his roots.

PULLMAN – On Saturday, as Washington State’s season opener unfolded and the Cougars built a steady lead on Colorado State, Laura Hicks pulled out her phone. She opened her family text thread, the one that includes her son, WSU safety Jaden Hicks, and wondered aloud when Jaden might make a play.

Come on, let’s get a pick, Laura texted.

Let’s get a sack.

Let’s see a tackle.

“Then, no sooner did I text that,” Laura said, “sure enough, that pick-six comes out. We were all screaming and yelling. I had the restaurant yelling and cheering for him.”

“I was eyes on the man,” Hicks said after the game. “Looked up, last second, just right at my face. So I put my hands up, caught it, and then just seeing the open grass, it felt good just running into the end zone.”

Laura couldn’t make the trip to Fort Collins, but she had done the next-best thing: She and some friends, in Laguna Beach, California, for the Labor Day holiday, had turned The Point Restaurant & Sports Bar into a Jaden Hicks watch party.

The bar had plenty to cheer for. Hicks didn’t just return an interception 37 yards for a touchdown, breaking the Cougars’ 50-24 win wide open. He also recorded a half-sack on a blitz. Hicks totaled seven tackles, plus one interception and two pass break-ups.

It added up to a sterling outing for the Cougar redshirt sophomore . Hicks, starting his second full season with the Cougars, is building on what has become one of the team’s best safety careers in recent memory. A year ago, he became the program’s first defensive Freshman All-American in six years; this summer, he earned All-Pac-12 preseason honorable mention honors.

He played in one game his freshman season, maintaining his redshirt and another year of eligibility. He led all Pac-12 freshmen defenders in tackles and starred for a team that won seven games and made another bowl game appearance.

Opponents, like No. 19 Wisconsin coming to town on Saturday for a prime-time game, surely has his name near the top of its scouting report.

“I think it’s maturity,” WSU head coach Jake Dickert said. “I think maturity is the first thing that comes out. He’s focused, He’s smart, he’s detailed, he wants to get better. He takes coaching. He practices really hard, and he sees the results of his work. I think he’s a great example, just for a lot of other guys on our team, that everyone wants to play and everyone uses this term very loosely – he comes out every day ready to work.”

How he came to Pullman, though, is interesting. Three years ago, he didn’t have a place to work at all.

Las Vegas temperatures would be reaching the 90s when Lamont Hicks would take his sons, Jaden and Kalen, and head to his training facility, Game Changers Sports. They would arrive, Hicks would unlock the place and in they would go, ready to work out at a time when there were few other places.

That was in the summer of 2020, shortly after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the world. Jaden was headed into his senior year at Bishop Gorman High, where he played cornerback and earned MaxPreps all-state first-team honors and a spot on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s All-Southern Nevada first team – as a junior.

Hicks got no senior season. The pandemic wiped that out. That he had done enough to earn a handful of offers says something about his athleticism and numbers. A three-star prospect, he fielded offers from Boise State and Colorado State, Fresno State and Arizona, plus Washington State. Colleges were intrigued by the 6-foot-3 player’s numbers: 27 tackles (1.5 for loss), one forced fumble, 10 pass breakups, seven interceptions, including three returned for touchdowns.

With more playing time , Hicks likely could have racked up dozens more offers. He ended up in Pullman, with a population of 32,000 compared to Las Vegas’ sprawling metropolis of 646,000.

That’s what makes his journey to WSU so intriguing. In the end, what sold him was his relationship with former head coach Nick Rolovich, who previously coached Kalen at Hawaii. On July 14, 2020, Hicks called Rolovich and told him he was ready to become a Cougar. His announcement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, racked up hundreds of reposts and likes.

“It was a big sigh of relief for Jaden,” Lamont said. “I know he was really excited. It looked like there was a big weight lifted off his shoulders. You could tell that he was just excited, and that was behind him. He could just focus on getting ready for college.”

At the time, so many emotions ran through Hicks’ mind: Excitement from his commitment. Uncertainty around never having made an official visit to Pullman. And frustration at a lack of a senior football season.

So much of what drives Hicks today is written in his past. His junior season of high school, in 2019, ended with a loss in the state championship game. Bishop Gorman led at halftime. Most associated with the Gaels’ program saw it as a giant opportunity lost.

Hicks came back ready to right the wrong. He attended scores of college camps. He hit the weight room harder. Then 2020 arrived, February turned to March, and Hicks saw his world – his college outlook – turn sideways.

“That kind of was a damper for him because he was so motivated to redeem himself,” Lamont said, “and even the other players on his team, they were working harder and becoming a tighter unit as a team so that they could win the state championship his senior year.”

Hicks never got the chance, but if he let opportunities like that go by without a fight, he might not be the player he is.

That goes back to a game when Jaden was a kid, when Lamont stressed one thing to his 6-year-old right before he entered the game.

“Run to the outside,” Lamont, the team’s coach, told his son. “If someone’s gonna tackle you, just run out of bounds.”

Everyone else on the field was 10. Lamont had been adamant about holding Jaden out of tackle football until he was 10, same as Kalen, and besides, Jaden was seriously smaller than everyone else in this game.

But other coaches changed Lamont’s mind. Jaden just wanted to be a part of the action, they reasoned, and they vowed to keep him out of harm’s way. Lamont liked the sound of that. He wanted his son to feel included, if nothing else.

Except soon enough, one of the team’s running backs twisted his ankle, and they needed a replacement. Other coaches clamored for Jaden. Lamont resisted. His coaches insisted. So he relented – with one direction for his son.

“OK, Dad,” Jaden said, agreeing to bounce it outside and avoid contact.

“Well, literally the first play, he gets the ball, he runs a toss, but he cut it back and goes up the middle,” Lamont said. “And scores a touchdown.”

Some 14 years later, Hicks has grown in all the ways that have helped him get here: He hit a growth spurt that made him 6-3. He worked out relentlessly. He established himself as one of Las Vegas’ best defensive backs before he lost his senior season.

What ties is all together is that Hicks still plays like that 6-year-old. He plays with abandon, the kind that might scare his parents, but the smart kind on a Pac-12 team.

He may not surprise himself with his next pick-six, not with the ball-hawking skills that Dickert gushes over, but he might make his mom scream and yell. Some things are worth losing your voice over.