Aryn Sanderson
arynsanderson.md@gmail.com
If his life had gone according to plan, Cal Poly wide receiver Willie Tucker would be a shortstop for the Boston Red Sox right about now.
MLB teams, including the Red Sox and Rockies, were scouting Tucker during his junior year of high school until he burned out.
“I was bored, and I started dreading baseball,” he said. “Every hour at practice felt like days.”
When Tucker told his parents he was quitting baseball, his mom, Jennifer Tucker, said she and her husband were devastated.
“Oh my God, I thought I was gonna die,” she said. “He’d done baseball since he was 4, and he was getting letters of interest from huge colleges all across the nation, and we saw those scholarships and college educations go down the drain.”
Tucker just couldn’t do it anymore, he said, so his parents got on board. With the support of his parents, he decided to focus on football.
Now, Tucker is a wide receiver for Cal Poly and has become one of the best playmakers for the Mustangs.
The comeback kid
During the first play of the first football game his junior year in high school, Tucker tore his medial collateral ligament (MCL) — a huge setback that ended his season.
Tucker came back his senior year determined to put up “some dumb good numbers,” he said.
And that’s what he did. The next season, Tucker led the CIF-Sac Joaquin Section in receiving yards per game, catching 55 passes for 1,257 yards (a 22.9 yard per catch average) and scoring 14 touchdowns.
His single-season school records at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, Calif. for yards and yards per catch surpassed school records held by wide receivers who went onto NFL careers — Austin Collie of the Indianapolis Colts and Seyi Ajirotuto of the San Diego Chargers.
His numbers were more than “dumb good” enough to land Tucker multiple college offers, including one from the Division I Nevada Wolf Pack after their 13-1 season in 2010.
But when Tucker got the offers, his dad’s best man and close family friend, Pete Magnusson, was in critical condition with terminal cancer.
Magnusson, a former Cal Poly football player, died right before Tucker signed with the Mustangs.
“Pete was a big man, you know, he was an ex-lineman,” Tucker’s mom, Jennifer, said. “And he really filled the room with his personality too. He loved Willie, and Willie loved him. He had a big impact on Willie.”
When Magnusson was in the hospital, he shared a room with another patient who gave him a George Crowe Topps baseball card that he passed along to Tucker. Now, before each game, Tucker reads Psalm 28 out of his orange pocket Bible and uses Magnusson’s old baseball card as a bookmark.
Another loss
Tucker has read Psalm 28, which asks for God’s strength, before every game since freshman year of high school, but this pre-game ritual became more significant last season.
On the bus home from a 34-17 loss to Eastern Washington, Tucker found out his grandpa had passed away.
“I immediately broke down on the bus,” the almost 6-foot-3, 200-pound player said.
After taking a week off for the funeral, Tucker returned to score the Mustangs’ first touchdown in a 70-14 win against Idaho State.
“I dropped to my knee after, and I said a blessing,” he said, and pointed up toward the sky. “It was for him.”
Soon after, Tucker found out that his favorite psalm, the one he read before every game, was one of his grandpa’s favorites too. In a move his mom called “awesome,” Tucker got the psalm tattooed on his bicep.
“When I read (the psalm) before a game, it helps me reflect because my grandpa’s big thing was giving back,” Tucker said. “I use the card as a bookmark, because he (Magnusson) played at Cal Poly. It reminds me that I have him looking down on me when I get on the field.”
The field is Tucker’s “real home,” he said. There, Tucker feels like he’s part of a family.
“The best thing is being out there with the brothers,” he said. “I turned down Nevada, which had a nicer facility and all the hookups, but I got a brotherhood here, where we’re playing for each other. Everyone’s not just playing for themselves, looking for their shine.”
Tucker lives with sophomore quarterback Chris Brown. The two are housemates, teammates and best friends.
“We pretty much feed off each other’s energy on and off the field,” Brown said. “We share the same religion pretty much, our families are really involved with what we do academically and athletically, and we share a common goal — we both wanna make it to the (NFL).”
Tucker’s hoping his focus and determination will get him there — and if that doesn’t, his natural instincts just might.
‘The Natural’
“Oh, look, it’s ‘The Natural,’” fellow wide receiver Keishawn Rowe yells out, as he passes by Tucker in the Julian A. McPhee University Union Starbucks.
One of the coaches nicknamed Tucker “The Natural” when he effortlessly picked up new drills. The title stuck.
Despite a triple-option offense that runs more than it passes — the Mustangs averaged more than 323 rushing yards per game this past season — Tucker has stepped up. His quick feet and physicality, particularly his ability to block, make him a standout role player even when he doesn’t have the ball.
Although opportunities have been limited, the Mustangs ranked No. 1 in the Big Sky in passing efficiency with a 175.7 rating last season. Tucker averaged fewer than three catches per game in the 2012 season, but he scored seven touchdowns.
“I go into a game with an attitude like, ‘This is war. This is for my family. This is it. I know what your job is, and I’m not gonna let you do your job,’” he said.
Tucker’s high school coach, Mark Watson, said Tucker has had that mentality since his early career.
“He’s always been a really heady player,” Watson said.
Tucker loves watching film and really understands running the correct reads against opposing defensea.
“He’s so instinctual on the field,” Watson said. “He just gets the game which makes him a great competitor. For the really good ones, they have to be passionate about it, and Willie’s passionate.”
It’s a passion that Tucker wholeheartedly admits.
“I’m trying to get to the next level,” he said. “I’m ready to play until they steal my pads and kick me out of the locker room.”
But until it’s time to move up to the professional level, Tucker is taking college ball seriously.
“I consider this my job, and I want us to bring this school a national championship,” Tucker said.
Although some consider him a rarely used talent in Cal Poly’s triple-option attack, Cal Poly wide receiver and quarterbacks coach Juston Wood said fans will see Tucker get more passes this year.
“He was better out of high school than probably anyone I’ve ever had come out here,” Wood said. “Guys either have it, or they don’t, and Willie is one of those above-average guys. If the balls in the air, he’s gonna find a way to make a play on it, but that chemistry needed to be demonstrated for us to have confidence.”
As last season progressed, Tucker matured as a player, Wood said.
“He had to get the game experience to grow from a good player to a great player,” Wood said. “Receiver is one of those positions that, historically, people think is for guys who don’t want to get dirty. But Willie is both physically and mentally tough. By the end of the year, we walked away like, ‘Willie’s not just a good player, he’s got the ability to be a playmaker for us.’”
After a season in which he led the Mustangs with 28 catches, 517 yards and seven touchdowns, the team is “going to try to continue to get him the ball more,” Wood said.
This season, the team seems to be moving toward a more efficient, hybrid offense, but which quarterback will be throwing the ball to Tucker is still up in the air.
“I ain’t even mad about it,” Tucker said, with a half-smile and a shrug. “It’s not my job to worry about that.”
Tucker still admits that it’s easier creating a partnership and managing timing when “you know who your guy is.”
Redshirt freshman Tanner Trosin, sophomore Dano Graves, junior Vince Moraga, senior Kenny Johnston and Brown, Tucker’s roommate and best friend, are all vying for the position.
“I think it’d be fun,” Brown said, of working on the field with Tucker. “He’s my roommate, so I feel like, to be honest, it’d be a major help because we’d get to hear the critiques, and then have a chance to talk about things and work on them at home too.”
But no matter who will be throwing him passes, Tucker expects big things out of his team, and himself, this year.
“People haven’t seen what I can do yet,” Tucker said. “I had haters saying ‘Cal Poly wasn’t a good enough school to play for.’ But I said, ‘Screw that, then we’ll change it.’”