“They let me breathe,” he said. “They let me relax, and just go through my own process of thinking, and go through my own recruitment. But then a few months later, they started hitting me up gradually. I appreciate them not bombarding me, even though I had eliminated them. I thought they handled that process the right way.”
If there was a single moment that most helped to seal this for UW, it was a one-on-one meeting with coach Chris Petersen the week before Kennedy’s season-opener. That day, Smalls said, Petersen simply laid out his vision for Smalls at UW, detailing again the school’s “Built For Life” philosophy.
“What I can do with my life there, nothing else beats it,” Smalls said. “So I had to just shoot the gun and just do it. No point in wasting my time and other people’s time.”
Shortly after that meeting, Smalls said, he decided he would commit to Washington. He called Petersen and defensive line coach Ikaika Malloe five or six days ago to let them know. Their reaction? “Ecstatic,” he said. “The whole staff talked to me on the phone.”
It helped, too, that he’s spent so much time recently with Huard, who was “nudging me every single day. He never let off. Just hearing UW every day definitely helped a little bit.”
Rest is in the WAM.
