Aug. 31, 2006

Bellingham, Wash -

By Larry Henry, special to the Everett Herald

His football-playing days were over. High school would be the last time he ever put on pads. It was time to get on with the rest of his life. Time to put games behind him and begin preparing for the future. His would be a future without tackling a ballcarrier ever again. Then he took up intramural football his freshman year in college and realized that the desire to hit someone was still alive.

"I was being too physical," Taylor Wade admitted, "when you weren't supposed to be."

Now, three years later, it's OK if he unloads on someone.

And he has. Which has brought him to where he is: on the starting defensive unit for the Western Washington University football team.

He has come a long way. From a kid unrecruited by any college team when he graduated from high school to starting outside linebacker for the Vikings.

Wade's playing days aren't over. They're just beginning.

And he's having a blast, which is what college football should be. "I look forward to practice," he said. "I'm learning new things."

But the real fun won't come until the games begin, and the Vikings start getting serious tonight when they open the season at Humboldt State in Arcata, CA.

"I want to play in some games and get some stuff done before I feel too good about myself," said Wade recently at lunch after a morning practice.

That's what playing on the Scout Squad for two years does to a guy. It keeps him humble.

While Wade, a 6-foot, 207-pound junior out of Kamiak High School, has every reason to be proud, he realizes that just as starting positions are won with strong performances, they are also lost with poor performances.

He has no intentions of losing his job, but it's understandable why he's eager to get into a game against players he doesn't eat lunch with every day.

To truly know what he's capable of, he has to "get some stuff done" in a real game.

Which will be something new for him at the college level. He played very little the last two years, getting into seven games all told and making three tackles.

That can be discouraging when you practice all week on the Scout Squad - the reserve unit, going against the No.1 offensive team - and know that on Saturday, all you're likely to do is stand on the sideline and maybe get in for a punt return.

After last season, Wade wasn't sure he wanted to continue playing football.

Then something happened that had a major impact on his deciding to stick with it: a coaching change.

Rob Smith stepped down after 17 years as head coach, and Robin Ross took over.

"He's a big reason I stayed," Wade said of Ross, who served as the defensive coordinator at Western in the mid-1990s.

Sometimes that's all it takes for a player to feel rejuvenated, a new set of eyes watching him on the practice field.

"I focused more than ever in spring practice," Wade said. "I studied more than I ever had.

"This year I stepped up and made myself known. I showed the coaches some ability that they didn't know I had."

Most of the coaches were new to the staff, so they didn't really know that much about the players they'd inherited, other than what they'd seen on film.

Ross came to his new job with the perspective that no player had a position sewn up. Which encouraged guys like Wade. He said he had never been more determined in practice. The coach noticed.

"He's going to play a lot," Ross said. "He'll be very tired after Thursday."

What new linebacking coach Al Genatone has learned about No.40 on the defensive side of the ball is that he's intelligent and he gets to where he needs to be to make tackles. "You only have to tell him something once and he learns it," Genatone said of Wade. "He's very smart. He always has questions.

"As a coach, he always keeps you on your toes. He's always thinking of a situation that could come up and he's always looking for the answer."

Wade admits, he does ask a lot of questions. "I always think about 'What if?' "

He acknowledges he's somewhat "undersized" for a linebacker even at the NCAA Division II level, and Genatone concedes that Wade has some physical shortcomings, none of which the coach is about to reveal, of course. "He knows his limitations," said Genatone, a former linebacker for Washington State who is in his first season as a fulltime assistant coach, "and he puts himself in the right position to make the play.

"He's really learned this new system and he's the kind of player we need on the field because he can get the other guys lined up right."

Wade asserts that if he can get to the ballcarrier, he can bring him down. "It might not be the best form all the time," he said with a grin, "but I'll get him down."

As for his size, "when it's time to play defense," he said, "I don't think it matters that much."

"The bottom line is ... production," Ross said. "He's been one of our leading tacklers in practice."

Defense is the new head coach's specialty. Under Ross' guidance, Western had the best scoring defense in NAIA Division II in 1994 and was No.7 the next year. "He knows his stuff," Wade said. "You could tell from the first time he talked in a meeting that he was intelligent."

Likewise, Ross, who is acting as his own defensive coordinator, has a smart player holding down the outside linebacking spot. Wade, a finance major, pulled a 3.8 grade point average the last quarter, and has a 3.2 cumulative average after three years of school.

He doesn't know exactly what he'll do with a degree in finance, but the possibilities seem plentiful. "Hopefully, I can make money making other people money," he said.

This fall, though, he wants to make tackles to help his team get back to winning after a 4-6 record a year ago. The Vikings are beginning play in the North Central Conference, which includes teams from five states and is considered one of the strongest leagues in Division II.

"It's going to be a challenge," Wade said. "I'm anxious to see how we do. We're not picked very high."

If the Vikings rise up as No. 40 on defense has, they should do just fine.