Former Western football player Casey Hamlett moves on

Published 11:15 pm Sunday, April 19, 2009

PULLMAN — Casey Hamlett wasn’t about to give up football.

He didn’t have a team to play for, but he still had the desire to play.

His first thought when Western Washington University dropped its program early this year? It wasn’t a question of whether he would play football again. That, in his mind, was a given. It was where he would play.

“A lot of people who haven’t played the game don’t understand what it means to you,” Hamlett said. “I had worked too hard to give it up.”

His coaches felt the same way. “They told me, ‘You need to keep playing.’”

But where? He’d always wanted to play NCAA Division I football, but that wasn’t an option coming out of Edmonds-Woodway High School, so he accepted a scholarship to play for the Division II Vikings.

He played two years, getting “kicked around” his freshman year before starting on the defensive line and earning Great Northwest Athletic Conference second-team honors last fall. Then, because of a budget crisis, the program was discontinued in early January.

Now what? One of his coaches contacted a friend on the Washington State staff and told him about Hamlett. The Cougars needed help on the defensive line and invited him to walk on.

He didn’t hesitate. On Thursday, he was in class at Western. The next Tuesday, he was in class at Washington State.

“Not moping,” he said. “No ‘pity me.’”

By leaving Western — where he had a scholarship that was guaranteed even though there was no more football — he would have to pay for his schooling at WSU, unless he could earn a scholarship, which is possible.

“I thought about my mom, always in my ear about ‘What if this doesn’t work out?’” Hamlett said recently during a break from spring practice. “I said, ‘If I don’t make it, it’s on me.’ I could live with that. I’m confident that I’m going to work hard and prove that I belong here.”

As you might have guessed, Casey Hamlett takes football seriously. It was a prime motivating factor for him going to college.

His former coach at Western, Robin Ross, can attest to Hamlett’s commitment to the game. “He will give you everything he’s got,” Ross said. “He’s got great determination.”

Hamlett wants to excel not only in games, but in practices. Ross was heading for the locker room after practice one day when he saw Hamlett doing sprints up and down the field. Ross asked one of his assistant coaches what that was all about. “He’s (angry) with himself because he had a bad practice,” the aide said.

Hamlett had been looking forward to the upcoming football season at Western. “With the people we had coming back, we felt we could compete for a (GNAC) championship,” he said. “Everyone was excited and ready to go.”

Then came the ultimate letdown.

He got to WSU a week after the second semester commenced and was able to take part in the Cougars’ winter conditioning program. He found it a “lot more structured and more intense” than what he was used to, but added that there have been no “setbacks so far.

“So it may turn out to be a good thing.”

The coaches are getting the same feeling. They like what they have seen of the 6-foot-2, 239-pound Hamlett.

“He’s been going with the ones and twos (first and second-team units),” co-defensive coordinator Jody Sears said, “and has been doing a really, really good job.”

Defensive line coach Malik Roberson echoed Sears’ assessment. “He’s got some toughness and he’s extremely intelligent,” Roberson said of the sophomore defensive end, who was on the GNAC All-Academic team last fall. “He’s a little undersized, but those other two qualities can make up for that.”

While acknowledging that the Cougar players are “a little faster, a little bigger and a little quicker” than the ones in the GNAC, Hamlett said he hasn’t felt overwhelmed.

Part of that is due to the work he got in the winter program. “I feel more explosive, more powerful, more comfortable,” he said. “My maxes (in lifting) have all gone up.”

Hamlett said he believes the experience he got at Western also benefitted him. “I never really thought about coming here and sitting,” he said. “I wanted to get on the field and have an impact.”

Now he wants to prove to the Cougar coaches that he deserves to be on the field on Saturday afternoons this fall.

“Confidence is the key,” he said. “Not being afraid of the Pac-10 and the bright lights. It’s still football.”

A game he refused to give up.