‘It grew my love for football again’: Players with JUCO background vital for Eastern Washington football

It was the end of the 2022 football season, and taking roll at the quarterback position meeting – which in the best of times is still not a lengthy exercise – took hardly any time at all, considering there was just one player left.

“It was literally Kekoa (Visperas) and me, sitting in a room together,” EWU offensive coordinator Jim Chapin recalled on Tuesday.

After the graduation of four quarterbacks, the Eagles were desperate for more, a “perfect storm” situation that meant Chapin needed to be aggressive in recruiting.

Visperas, who is in line to make his 15th career start Saturday at Nevada (1-3), had played well in his first start, a 45-21 victory over Northern Colorado in the 2022 finale. Still, the Eagles could hardly rely solely on him and some incoming freshmen to handle the position in 2023.

“We wanted to find quarterbacks with game experience,” Chapin said. “I didn’t want to take a risk on a kid that hadn’t done it.”

Enter Jared Taylor and Michael Wortham, two quarterbacks with junior college experience who carved out important roles in Eastern’s offense last year, roles that they have continued to fill this season.

While Taylor and Wortham are the most visible junior college transfers for the Eagles (1-2), they are certainly not the only ones.

“We have kids on our team who went down (to California) for an opportunity,” Chapin said. “… They’re being underrecruited, and that’s a niche we can take advantage of.”

There are 14 players on the EWU roster who played previously at California junior colleges. All but two play primarily on offense (many of whom also contribute on special teams), plus starting punter Landon Ogles and backup safety Trevion Shadrick-Harris, who also spent time at Central Florida.

Jack Seelye, the team’s starting center, began his career at Diablo Valley College, about a 15-minute drive from his hometown in Lafayette, California.

Austin York, Eastern’s third-year fullback and first-year team captain, played the COVID-19 year and 2021 at Butte College in his hometown of Chico, California.

Some, like Taylor and running back Malik Dotson – who were teammates at Lakewood High School – moved from Washington to California to play junior college ball. Dotson and Taylor played at Feather River College in Quincy, California, about 1½ hours from Reno, Nevada.

But the majority of Eastern’s former junior college players are Californians who opted to start at that level first, proving themselves there to FCS coaches who might sign them a year or two later.

“You have guys coming from all over to play California JUCO ball,” said Ogles, who played his first two years at Palomar College in San Marcos, just north of San Diego. “You have to find a balance of (thinking), ‘How can I make it to the next level?’ and ‘How can I work with the guys next to me to help the team and make it to the next level?’ ”

Ogles grew up in San Diego, where he was first a soccer player and then a specialist for the Rancho Bernardo High School football team as a junior and senior. At Palomar, he handled kicking and punting duties, performing well enough for Fresno State to notice.

It was originally his “dream school,” Ogles said, because of family ties in the Fresno area. But he didn’t play in any games – although he was on the sideline when Eastern Washington took Fresno State to overtime last season – and after spring ball he weighed his options. That’s when EWU special teams coach Danny McDonald contacted him, and by late July he was on the EWU roster.

Through three games, Ogles has landed six of his 12 punts inside the 20. Against Drake, he had a 69-yard punt that was the team’s longest in six years.

A week later, against Southeastern Louisiana, Noah Cronquist – another former junior college standout – stepped in for injured wide receiver Nolan Ulm and caught four passes for 71 yards and a touchdown.

Cronquist, a junior, started his career at Southern Utah. After serving a two-year church mission, he ended up at Moorpark (California) College last season.

“I am a Moorpark kid through and through,” Cronquist said. “I grew up there, went to high school there. … When I went back to Moorpark, I got to go back and be around family.”

Moorpark also threw the ball plenty. In 10 games, Cronquist caught 81 passes for 1,064 yards and 13 touchdowns. He was named to the first-team All-America offense by the California Community College Athletic Association. Of the other 14 players named to that list, all but one are now on Division I rosters, including Nevada backup quarterback Anthony Grigsby Jr.

Cronquist, who said he weighed offers from other Big Sky programs and some from the Missouri Valley Football Conference, signed with the Eagles in December, joining a recruiting class that included three other California junior college players: offensive lineman David Shinn (Mt. San Jacinto), wide receiver Jaylen Garrison (Fresno City) and tight end Landon Cooper (Butte).

Recruiting junior college players isn’t all that new for Chapin, who said even during his time at Sioux Falls, a Division II program in South Dakota, California junior colleges were a focal point.

“The landscape of West Coast football has changed dramatically,” Chapin said. “Twenty years ago, the number of Division II programs was very different than it is today. Every day a Division II program closes down, there are going to be kids who are going to go play at junior colleges.”

Chapin also said another mutual benefit for players and for FCS coaches looking to bolster their rosters: at junior colleges, freshmen and sophomores generally get a lot more playing time than they do at Division I programs.

Coaches often say that live reps can’t be replicated. Players who come in as juniors with more game reps can be at a significant advantage.

For Cronquist, Eastern is his second Division I program, and he’s grateful for the chance. But he also appreciated his time at Moorpark.

“It grew my love for football again,” Cronquist said. “Being in a junior college environment, you see guys from all over and all they want to do is play football, and you realize, if I do get to play Division I football, it really is everyone’s dream.”