2025 three-star Menlo Park (Calif.) Menlo-Atherton edge rusher Devin Hyde shares his experience on his official visit to Washington on Locked On Huskies.
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00:00First thing that stood out to me was when we had 17 guys there and they had us do this
00:03one drill, it was after a meeting that Coach Fish gave, where it was the same kind of exercise
00:07that they did with some of their players, where they gave us a bunch of Legos and they
00:10said, hey, you and another recruit, you're going to go off in your own little group and
00:14you're going to have like 10, 15 minutes to deliberate on these two questions.
00:17I think one was like about, you know, what do you love about Washington football?
00:19And like, what do you see in like winning at Washington football?
00:22And then you had to build what that felt like out of Legos and then go back in the room
00:26and, you know, explain about it.
00:27And it's just those little kind of team building activities like that, that just make you
00:30think, man, not a lot of people are kind of willing to do this kind of thing.
00:33And I really appreciate it even more so because with my high school, something that we've
00:37started to incorporate doing in springtime is we have two mandatory meetings, one that's
00:41about culture.
00:42It's a culture workshop and the other one's a leadership workshop, and they're about two
00:46hours long.
00:47You go through this whole packet where we're thinking about questions and we're talking
00:49about stuff that, you know, not really football related.
00:51They are in a way, but it's more so to bond in those kinds of ways where you're talking
00:55about stuff and you're engaging in these little activities.
00:58That's going to help you not only strengthen your bond as teammates, but also get you thinking
01:02about other things that are important about football that maybe aren't going to happen
01:05on the field that are definitely going to help you on the field.
01:09And so, I mean, obviously you can talk about the big seafood dinner they had at the end
01:12or obviously the Yacht Ride as well, too.
01:14But just that little activity that we did and then the fact that they're putting in
01:18this new room called the fifth quarter room where they're going to be doing, I think a
01:21couple of times a month, similar activities in there amongst the players to just get them
01:25thinking those kinds of ways and strengthening relationships with each other in ways that
01:30not a lot of programs do or used to, but in fact have been proven to be really effective.
01:35So obviously there's only one follow-up that we can make to that.
01:39Who was your partner and what did you guys build?
01:42So it was, I forgot his first name, but his last name was Smith.
01:44He was another Ed Rusher four-star from Texas.
01:49I think for him, he just built a big W out of Legos.
01:52And then for me, I built this whole little tower that was out of like just a bunch of
01:56just like amalgamous pieces of Legos.
01:58I was trying to like find some kind of structure to it.
02:00And for me, I explained it as, you know, success to get to this top is it's built on a bunch
02:06of different pieces that don't look like they fit together.
02:08It has this strong foundation and, you know, the pieces look, you know, it can look ugly
02:12in some places.
02:13Maybe it could be better put in another spot, but in the end you all get to this top point
02:17and you have this really strong, you know, pillar, you know, built together.
02:20And for me, that's what I see, you know, success at because a lot of people, you know, even
02:24my teammates included when they look at me and they think of my success, they just think,
02:27oh man, Devin High, he's this big guy, he's really strong, he's got great effort, he's
02:31got a great mindset.
02:32And that's just, you know, what made him successful.
02:34And yet, you know, the reality of it, you know, the reality of it is that success is
02:39not an overnight thing.
02:40And for me, really, it's been this building process since I started playing Popcorn, you
02:44know, 10 years ago up until even just recently where I really started to get a lot more attention
02:48from college coaches.
02:51And then as well, you know, some of the classes I even took as like a junior and even like
02:55a sophomore in high school, you know, for me myself, I really appreciate, you know,
02:58how articulate and well-spoken I am because I don't think a lot of, you know, athletes
03:01are really able to convey how they feel about certain things in a really, you know, serious
03:06way.
03:07But for me, you know, that didn't just come from football and that didn't just come from
03:09my coaches.
03:10It came from certain teachers.
03:11It came from certain classmates who, you know, I really aspired to and looked up to, to want
03:15to be like.
03:16And it's those kind of people in my life that then built on me as an athlete.