Over the weekend BYU freshman wide receiver Josh Weeks posted this tweet to his twitter feed:
Nothing special, but I am only 2 weeks outta surgery! Who’d be down to see a #BYUfootball dunk contest? pic.twitter.com/PoG8tBCRPX
— Josh Weeks (@allthehype928) April 18, 2015
I guess the rehab following his foot surgery to repair a small fracture has gone well. It also looks like the mission rust is coming off. Weeks is a record breaking receiver out of Arizona that will play his first down of D1 football in the fall… but fresh off basketball season I’m with him–a BYU football slam dunk contest would be awesome. The front runner for the contest would surely be Mitch Mathews, whose tweet from a week ago shows dunking skills slightly more impressive than his teammate:
Lefty loosey. pic.twitter.com/Py8ik7pT6s — Mitch Mathews (@mitchmathews10) April 8, 2015
Of course all this dunking business is nothing new for Mathews who was spotlighted in last year’s boom shakalaka for the basketball team.
Wide Receivers most likely to dominate the dunk contest
So what do we have to do to get this dunk contest on the books? As a position group I think the wide receivers would run away with it. Consider the following: as a group of 19 roster receivers at least six of them played on their varsity high school basketball teams.
- As four year varsity basketball starter at Show Low High School, 6’4″ Josh Weeks averaged 11.3 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks per game. Clearly he has hops. His football game isn’t too shabby either. Many consider him the best wide receiver to ever come out of the state of Arizona and he has a few records to back that up (most career receptions and yardage).
- Mitch Mathews is a towering 6’6″ receiver, but he actually never suited up for the high school basketball team. Instead he was a star baseball player who represented Oregon on the Junior Olympic 16-under baseball team as a first baseman.
And that’s not the end of the non-basketball talent making up this years receiving corp. Other high school basketball players include:
- 6’4″ senior Terenn Houk played two years of high school basketball, averaging 9.0 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 2.2 steals per game his senior year.
- 6’3″ Junior Travis Frey played one season of varsity basketball at Viewmont High School and was named to the All-Region first team.
- 6’1″ senior Kurt Henderson competed in both baseball and basketball at Snow Canyon High School. In baseball he was on the 2007 state title team and was named an all-state honorable mention.
- He didn’t play high school basketball ball but when 6’6″ Nick Kurtz started his football playing career at Grossmont College he “thought about playing basketball but realized that I’d miss playing football so I didn’t go that direction.”
- Freshman Rickey Shumway (6’3″) played guard for three seasons for the Timpview basketball team, averaging 11.0 points his senior year, when he was made an all-region selection.
- And although not technically a wide receiver here’s a video of 6’7″ tight end Colby Jorgensen dunking in high school (thanks bybloo). Jorgensen started on Timpview’s 2010 state championship basketball team.
What About Baseball?
While we’re at it the wide receiving corp should also put together an intramural baseball team. They’ve got a great core to start with in Travis Frey, Kurt Henderson, Mitchell Juergens, David Kessler, Elliot Knox, and Jake Ziolkowski–all of whom played high school baseball (and several of whom were good enough to get baseball scholarship offers):
- David Kessler was a star baseball player at Claremont High School, recruited to play at Stanford, Oregon, and ASU. He was a three time all-league player and the son of a professional baseball player.
- Junior Mitchell Juergens was a three year letterman in baseball and named to the second team all-district as an outfielder in 2009.
- Junior Elliot Knox played 2B and pitcher for two years at Snow Canyon High School before playing football for Dixie State, ASU, and now the Cougars.
- Junior Jake Ziolkowski played baseball for Wauconda High School in Illinois before walking on to the BYU football team.
Other Athletes
And if that’s not enough the receivers have a few other “athletes” covering various other sports:
- Standout senior receiver Devon Blackmon was a star hurdler (110m) in High School, advancing to the CIF State finals his junior and senior seasons and winning a league title in 2008 with a time of 13.92.
- Freshman Zach Saunders went to Lone Peak so he should do well on the basketball court right? Actually, he was also a track star… a three-time letter winner with at state championship in the 2011 medley relay and named to the all-state track team in 2012.
- Junior DJ Doman was a three-time track and one-time wrestling letter winner at Pleasant Grove High School, winning the region title in the 100m both his junior and senior seasons.
- Freshman Jared Kapisi played football, soccer, and ran track at Maui High School.
All said, this might be the most athletic group of receivers ever assembled at BYU. And it is very likely the tallest group of receivers, at least in the two-deep. So what do we have to do to get a dunk contest going?
