Grateful to my coaches and teammates for a great season! Going to keep working hard in the off season, looking forward to next year. @CoachHF85 @Andy_Pham1@PrepRedzoneUT@sixstarfootball
🔥 IT'S GAME DAY! 🔥
Lehi vs. Maple Mountain
⏰ Tonight @ 7:00 PM
📍@ Lehi High School
📺 Watch/Stream: https://t.co/Pe1Fl7NpG4
Whether you’re in the stands or cheering from home, LET’S GO PIONEERS! And thank you to today’s Game Day Sponsor, Central Bank!
For two straight years, a Utah running back did something that should have been impossible to overlook. Almost everyone overlooked it anyway.
As a sophomore, he cleared 1,000 rushing yards. As a junior, he came up just short of it again.
Two workhorse seasons from a kid in Lehi, Utah — and the phone barely rang. The offers that came in were real, but modest: Utah State, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Weber State, Sacramento State.
Ten scholarship offers by his senior year. Not one from a Power Conference program.
So he answered the only way a running back knows how. He kept carrying the ball.
Senior season: 577 rushing yards, 10 touchdowns, through six games. Add 224 receiving yards and three more scores through the air. That's 8.2 yards every time he touched it.
He was named his high school's team MVP and All-Region — for the second year the numbers had been too big to explain away.
Analysts who watched the tape started reaching for a comparison: the tall running style, the receiving threat out of the backfield, the trust in pass protection — all echoes of a BYU great who went on to the NFL.
Then, at last, a Power Conference program noticed. It wasn't a surprise pick from across the country. It was the school half an hour from his own house.
He picked it anyway — turning down the exposure of a bigger conference stage for a program he'd grown up watching, with a head coach and a running backs coach he trusted from the first conversation, and a shot to stay close to the family that had watched every one of those 1,000-yard seasons in person.
He committed on social media, thanking his coaches by name, tagging the program's recruiting staff, closing with the hashtag every BYU commit reaches for.
Before he ever suited up, he showed up to watch the season opener — and stood for a photo with the program's all-time leading rusher, a back who's since gone on to play in the NFL.
This fall, he steps onto that same field for the first time, not as a fan in the stands but as a true freshman with a roster spot and a number of his own.
His name is Devaughn Eka.
Now you see the whole picture.
Follow Devaughn Eka — X: @Devaughn_Eka
#BYU #GoCougs #HearHim
X: @ASCENDING_AZ | https://t.co/0e2vGHo7mW
One of the best Father’s Day ever, being able to watch Raiden competing for college coaches. Thanks @butchpauu7 for working with him all off season to get him ready for these opportunities. Also thank you to @Boxer_Football for putting on a great camp. @LehiFootball