An off day from football. Time to let the wounds heal. Time to catch up on some sleep. Then the phone rings.
Shiloh Keo doesn’t sound in a mood to talk. No one does when he’s awakened from a sound sleep on a Monday afternoon, less than 48 hours after playing an NCAA Division I college football game.
His 18-year-old voice sounds older.
His 18-year-old body feels older.
“I feel a little more sore,” he says. “The dings and bruises stick around a little longer.
“In high school, you’d give them a day or two and they’d be gone. Sometimes out here, it takes a week for them to heal.”
This time a year ago, Keo was playing football for the Wildcats of Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy High School in Everett. On Sept. 23, he played his fourth game for the Idaho Vandals, a 38-0 loss to the Oregon State Beavers in Corvallis.
Make that, started his fourth game. The true freshman from a Class 2A high school is starting on defense for a Division I team.
It’s even a first for Idaho coach Dennis Erickson, who grew up in Everett and is back where he began his head coaching career in 1982. He’s had true freshmen start for him in the 17 years he’s coached in college, but never at strong safety.
About a month ago, Keo woke up on a Saturday morning in East Lansing, Mich. That afternoon, he would be making his college debut in Spartan Stadium against Michigan State of the Big 10 Conference.
He would be playing in front of a crowd of 70,000, about 65,000 more than he’d ever seen at a high school game.
He said he wasn’t nervous.
“It’s always been my dream to play college ball. It was an awesome feeling to know I’d be starting in front of almost 80,000 (actually, 70,711) people in a week. I wanted to practice so hard because I didn’t want to embarrass myself.”
He didn’t. Nor did the rest of the Vandals, making the Spartans work for a 27-17 victory.
“He wasn’t scared,” Vandal defensive coordinator Jeff Mills said recently. “He’s mentally tough.”
He needs to be, after a punishing 1-3 start.
The Vandals didn’t open up with softies. After playing Michigan State, they took on Washington State — the neighbors, eight miles down the road — and lost 56-10. Then, they got a break, playing someone their own size, Idaho State, and won 27-24. Then came the throttling at the hands of the Beavers.
“If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best,” Keo said.
Or at least play them.
At the beginning of the summer, Keo wasn’t thinking about starting: “I just want to make the travel squad.”
When fall camp opened, he was penciled in as the No. 3 free safety. But after a couple of injuries and transfers, Keo was switched from free to strong safety.
“Within a week, he was a starter,” Erickson said.
The fact that he came from a solid high school program helped make Keo’s transition to college football easier.
“He was coached by a legendary coach in Terry Ennis,” Mills said. “Then, it’s a matter of learning our system, coverages and techniques, and he’s done that.”
That’s not to say Keo hasn’t made mistakes. That’s a given for any first-year starter, especially a freshman. And, at 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, he’s somewhat small for his position.
“He’s not the stature of a lot of safeties at Division I,” Ennis said. “He is kind of filling a role of kids who are usually 200 pounds. He’s got his work cut out for him.”
His size doesn’t concern Mills.
“Tell you what, he packs a punch when he hits people,” Mills said. “I would rather have a guy lighter and faster than bigger and slower.”
Considering the opposition in the first four games, Ennis jokingly thought it noteworthy that Keo “is still around to talk about it.”
“I think that’s one advantage I have,” Keo said. “They know I’m young and small, and they think I’m going to be weaker than I am … before that first hit comes.”
Keo starred on both sides of the ball at Archbishop Murphy, rushing for nearly 3,000 yards his final two years and averaging better than 11 yards per carry.
“Every time he got the ball, you thought, ‘What’s he going to do with it now?’” said Jeff Schmidt, his defensive coach at Archbishop Murphy “He was a game breaker.”
Even though he knew the Vandals wanted Keo to play defense, Ennis suggested that they might want to consider him on offense.
“I actually told Dennis that Shiloh would be a very skilled receiver, and I think he would have been happy to be used as a receiver, but I think there was a need for him on defense,” Ennis said.
Archbishop Murphy is well represented on the Vandal defense. Besides Keo, there is Jevon Butler, a 2004 graduate and now redshirt sophomore. Butler also plays strong safety, but was sidelined the first three games with a concussion suffered in fall camp.
“He’s one of the reasons I’m starting today,” Keo said of Butler. “He’s like my big brother up here.”
That Butler could be challenging him for playing time somewhere down the road, Keo said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
While Keo likes challenges, the Vandals have a monumental one for their opening foe next year. They’re scheduled to play USC in Los Angeles.
“That, by far, will be one of the most exciting moments in my football life,” Keo said of the game that school officials may cancel.
As far as Keo is concerned, he knows how he feels. “To be the best, you have to beat the best.”
Or at least give it a shot.
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