It started with a sticker.
When he was a kid in Renton, Nate Kalepo shared a church with Danny Shelton — a star UW defensive lineman and future first-round pick. Kalepo and Alphonzo Tuputala, Shelton’s distant cousin, would watch the Husky star sit in church on off hours with his MacBook, grinding through homework between practices and games.
The laptop was adorned with a UW sticker.
“We used to see him doing homework and say, ‘I want to do that. I want to be where he’s at,’” said Kalepo, whose mother also dated Shelton’s brother. “I used to come to all the games, used to wear his little jersey, No. 71. That’s why I wear it now.
“I used to sit right there in those stands (in the northwest corner of Husky Stadium), man. I’d go in the locker room with him after the games. I knew where I was going before I even started getting recruited, to be honest.”
But make no mistake: Kalepo had options. The 6-foot-6 offensive lineman from Rainier Beach High School was ranked as a four-star recruit by 247Sports and earned offers from Washington, Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Oregon State, Tennessee, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington State and more.
Unsurprisingly, he signed with the hometown Huskies in the 2019 class.
And he sat, and he waited.
And he sat, and he waited.
“It was humbling,” said Kalepo, who appeared in 13 games with zero starts across his first three seasons. “Because coming from high school, you think you’re this, you’re that. You have four stars, five stars. But right when you get on campus you get humbled, because these are grown men you’re playing against.”
Kalepo was growing in all the wrong ways. During spring ball, the fourth-year sophomore said he weighed close to 340 pounds. Roughly four months later, he’s down to 310.
He attributes that transformation to running the same stairs where he watched Shelton excel, and adopting a disciplined diet. Specifically, he says “I had to chill out on the McDonalds.”
Chilling out, in this case, meant abandoning his established order: “two double quarter pounders, two McChickens, a large fry, an Oreo McFlurry and a large coke. Every time. Every time.”
Now, his time has come.
Kalepo — who also added 100 pounds to his squat this summer, from 405 to 505 — is set to make his first career start on Saturday, when Washington hosts Kent State inside Husky Stadium.
Tuputala — a 6-2, 238-pound sophomore linebacker — will make his first career start as well.
“Whenever I talk to him about it, it’s not really a deep talk,” Tuputala said. “It’s like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s get it.’ But I know that talk is going to come probably before or on the day of the game. I know all of those emotions and thoughts and memories are all going to build up, and it’s going to be exciting.
“(I remember) being little kids talking about it, our parents telling us, ‘This is going to be you guys. This is going to be you guys.’ And now that the day has come, being patient, waiting for our time, it’s going to be so exciting. But it’s time. We’re ready.”
Almost.
Kalepo can see the Husky Stadium tunnel, gate closed, Dawgs barking, purple smoke billowing and dispersing in the air. He can see the gate opening and hear that explosion of sound, a stadium ungluing as he sprints across a familiar field. He says “you can’t even put that feeling into words. It’s just an adrenaline rush. It goes straight to your head and it feels kind of fake, if that makes sense. It feels like a dream.”
He knows, right around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, it will finally feel real.
“It’s going to be surreal, seeing my name pop up when they announce the starting lineup,” he said. “Because it hasn’t really hit me that I’m going to play this Saturday. I feel like when my name pops up, that’s when it’s going to hit me.”
He’s not alone in that regard. Besides sixth-year senior right guard Henry Bainivalu, UW’s other four offensive line starters — left tackle Troy Fautanu, left guard Kalepo, center Corey Luciano and right tackle Roger Rosengarten — tout a combined three career starts. This is also an offense that ranked 11th in the Pac-12 in rushing offense (98.42 yards per game) and last in yards per carry (3.19) in a 4-8 season last fall. (Sixth-year senior left tackle Jaxson Kirkland is not available against Kent State as a condition of his NCAA reinstatement.)
From left to right, there’s plenty to prove.
“Really, we’re just trying to prove it to ourselves, that we can be out here with anybody,” said Fautanu, who called Kalepo “my best friend.” “Because last year we came out and there was a lot of talk about (the offensive line) being really good, and some things just didn’t work out. But this year we’re not listening to any outside noise. We’re just coming to work. We’re coming to put it out on the field, regardless of who we play.”
Kalepo, for one, waited three years — or a decade — for Saturday. He chilled out on the McDonalds for Saturday. Despite two coaching changes and a humbling depth chart, he stayed for Saturday.
“When coach Pete (Chris Petersen) left I had a couple conversations with my family (about exploring other options),” he said. “But mostly what kept me here were the players. These guys are my brothers for life and beyond. That’s honestly what’s kept me here, them and (offensive line coach Scott) Huff.”
It started with a sticker, and Kalepo has stuck.
But the last decade has changed him.
When Saturday arrives, the 6-6, 310-pounder will think most of his mother, Kim, who died in December 2019.
“I actually wear a little chain with a picture of me and her when I was a baby,” said Kalepo, sporting the same No. 71, but a different sense of purpose. “I’d trade all of this to see my mom one more time, for sure.”
Extra points
- UW co-defensive coordinator Chuck Morrell was asked Monday was his defense will do best. “Just attacking,” he said. “That’s been our focus the entire time. Credit to our offense. Our offense challenges us in a lot of different ways from a formational standpoint and a lot of their actions and the plays that they run. So we’ve asked our guys to be able to be assignment sound while being aggressive. The No. 1 thing is we’ve got to be playing on the other side of the line of scrimmage, and I feel like we’ve got some guys up front that can definitely do that.”
- UW named six team captains last week — senior left tackle Jaxson Kirkland, senior safety Alex Cook, senior edge Jeremiah Martin, graduate student running back Wayne Taulapapa, senior linebacker Cam Bright and junior quarterback Michael Penix Jr. “I really have to credit our team,” UW coach Kalen DeBoer said Monday. “They 100 percent voted; the coaches didn’t even have any votes. Normally I would try and keep it at four captains, but these six guys were clearly above the rest of the team.”