This Logger plays with a ‘definite chip on his shoulder’

Published 11:30 pm Thursday, September 25, 2008

Phillip Thomas has been described as sweet and tender.

Tell that to his opponents on the football field. They’re likely to roll their eyes.

This month, Thomas has been opening some eyes with his defensive play for the University of Puget Sound Loggers football team.

In the first two games, both victories, the junior outside linebacker from Cascade High School in Everett posted some impressive numbers — 13.5 tackles (11 solos), one tackle for a loss, one interception, one fumble recovery and three forced fumbles.

“He plays with a definite chip on his shoulder,” Loggers defensive coordinator Jared McNeilly said. “There’s a nastiness about him.”

What makes this so impressive is that Thomas is relatively inexperienced in the game of football, compared to most kids his age.

He really didn’t begin playing the game until his senior year of high school. That is, he didn’t really begin exposing his body to contact until then. His first two years at Cascade, he was a place-kicker.

“My mom didn’t want me to go out and get hurt,” he said in a telephone interview this week. “She kept me in soccer pretty much.”

No, his mother said, it wasn’t that she was afraid he would get hurt. She just didn’t believe he had the time to dedicate to playing a full-time football.

“Part of the problem was he was a three-sport athlete,” his mother, Gayle Ingalls, said. “He played soccer year-around. He got hurt more playing basketball than anything. It was a time factor and education was the most important thing.”

Cascade football coach Jake Huizinga realized what a good athlete Thomas was — Thomas played goalkeeper on an elite soccer team — and encouraged him (with his mother’s approval) to work out as a split end and cornerback during the summer before his senior year.

After a couple of junior-varsity games early in the season, a Bruins assistant coach came to Huizinga and said, “This guy (Thomas) can play some football.”

“By game three, he was a starting corner and split end and he just kept getting better and better,” Huizinga said. “He became a huge part of our offense and by midseason he was a big-time contact player on defense.”

Because he was such a latecomer to the game, Thomas didn’t get recruited, but UPS did contact him and invited him to walk on. He appeared in two games his freshman year and then split time at outside linebacker as a sophomore.

As one might expect, his inexperience was evident his first year there, but there was also much for the coaches to be encouraged about.

“Right from the start, you could see that he possessed real good athleticism,” McNeilly said. “And he was never afraid to stick his nose in there. You could tell he was going to be a guy who was unafraid to be physical.”

Because he was still learning the game, Thomas sometimes had to think about what he was doing a year ago instead of just reacting.

“He’s gotten to the point now that he just flies around out there,” McNeilly said. “Great players have the ability to always find themselves around the ball. And that seems to be the case with him. When there’s a loose ball on the ground, he seems to be the guy closest to it.”

Thomas says it was just a matter of learning the “flow and pace” of the game.

“This year,” he said, “I understand what I have to do.”

What he did this summer was work hard in the gym, putting on what McNeilly said is “functional weight (i.e., muscle),” and watch a lot of game film.

Thomas knew he would be competing for a starting job in practice and, despite what McNeilly called a “shoulder issue” that prevented him from raising his arm, he “would not allow himself to be pulled out of drills,” the coach said.

That earned Thomas a team toughness award coming out of camp and “nobody has challenged to take it away from him,” McNeilly said. “He has a little bit of bulldog in him and it’s been really impressive to see that.”

At 6-foot, 210 pounds, Thomas is what McNeilly describes as “wiry.”

“He has that goaltender’s body, great length. His strength is he has quick feet.”

“I’m just an athletic person,” Thomas said. “And aggressive.”

And if you want to know why he’s able to be around the ball all the time, his mother has the answer. “It’s being the goalkeeper in soccer,” she said of her only child who began playing the game when he was 11. “He always had to have his eye on the ball.”

As a student/athlete, he’s kept his eye focused on what’s important — his classroom studies (he has a 2.9 grade point average). And he has learned to manage his time well (besides football and school, he works 10 hours a week as a clerk on campus).

This Saturday, he and the Loggers face what probably will be their biggest challenge of the season when they entertain defending NCAA Division III champion Wisconsin-Whitewater in a 12:30 p.m. homecoming game at Baker Stadium in Tacoma.

“We’re pretty excited about that,” Thomas said. “We’re looking forward to playing them.”

You can bet he’ll not come to the game with a sweet and tender attitude.