Tyler Uken to play football at University of Sioux Falls
By FRED KRONER
Families are there for one another.
They are supportive, encouraging, understanding.
Good times or bad times, their faith is unwavering.
Tyler Uken’s recruitment to play college football followed an unique family pattern.
The Mahomet-Seymour senior offensive lineman was off to a banner season when a knee injury during practice abruptly ended his prep career in October after six games.
Also stopping abruptly was the communication from some of the college coaches who had been actively pursuing the 6-foot-10, 260-pound tackle.
In his third year as a varsity starter, Uken was disappointed.
“Some schools that talked to me everyday, ghosted me,” he said.
M-S coach Jon Adkins saw the effect the experience had on Uken.
“He was crushed a few times,” Adkins said. “He thought he had a chance to get a (scholarship) offer. He had to grow up a lot.”
The good news for Uken is that while some schools suddenly lost interest, others did not.
The University of Sioux Falls (S.D.) didn’t back off. Quite to the contrary.
“After the injury, they were the first school to contact me again,” Uken said. “They said it wouldn’t affect the recruiting process with them.”
When it was time for Uken to finalize his college choice, he remembered how he was treated.
“At Sioux Falls, it was about the people,” he said. “They preach family and they showed they were family.”
It wasn’t just the words. It was the actions.
Uken followed up by taking action himself. He committed to the Cougars program. He will join a Sioux Falls program that was 8-3 this year and is a university that has an enrollment of about 1,350 students.
Sioux Falls is a Division II program, and in 2019, had an offensive tackle taken in the third round of the NFL draft.
Part of the maturation process that Adkins has seen in Uken during recent months involves what is difficult for many teen-agers: to do an honest self-appraisal of themselves.
All along, Uken’s goal was to play for a Division I program.
“My dream, at first, was to go to a Big Ten school,” Uken said, “but that’s not what’s best for me right now.
“The guys going D-1, I’ve watched them on Twitter and YouTube, and they are on a different level.”
Some colleges were still deciding whether to offer Uken a preferred walk-on opportunity. He knows what the odds are for those invitees to gain a roster spot.
“Not many preferred walk-ons ever get on the field,” Uken said. “My mindset is to go somewhere that I can play, compete and win.”
Sioux Falls offered all that, even though his collegiate career might not start immediately. Uken may be a candidate to be redshirted in the fall of 2022, preserving his four years of eligibility.
“That’s what I’m assuming,” he said, “so physically I can fill out my frame. A year lifting, conditioning and watching film could pay dividends for me.”
The knee surgery on Oct. 26 was a success and Uken said his recovery is moving along at an accelerated pace.
“They originally said it would be March, but I’ve managed to move the timetable up,” he said. “Every time I go to physical therapy, I push it to the max.
“I should be 100 percent by February.”
If Uken is ultimately redshirted, it will have more to do with COVID-19 than with his injury.
Because the 2020 collegiate season was interrupted by game cancelations and programs opting out due to the pandemic, the NCAA granted every athlete an automatic fifth year of eligibility regardless of how many games their schools wound up playing that fall.
That decision will continue to have a trickle-down effect on prospective recruits for three more years.
A college player who was a junior in the fall of 2020 and a senior in 2021 is allowed to return in the fall of 2022 as a super senior. The fall season of 2024 will be when the players who were freshmen in 2020 will actually complete their collegiate eligibility.
Adkins can relate to the thought process of some coaches.
“If I’m a struggling college coach, will I take the chance on bringing in a freshman or having a fifth-year guy come back,” Adkins said. “If I need to win now to save my job, do I risk it on a high school kid?
“That has changed the game for a high school kid trying to get recruited. It is extremely difficult now.”
Uken possesses first-hand knowledge.
“COVID didn’t help as (college) rosters got bigger,” he said. “COVID came and shut everything down.
“I couldn’t go to any camps. Most of my recruiting stemmed from going to a school’s camps. When we played (high school) last spring, most of the coaches were in spring ball and couldn’t get out.”
Uken’s promotion to the varsity in football at Mahomet-Seymour coincided with Adkins’ arrival as head coach in the fall of 2019.
What stood out early for the Bulldog mentor was what could be observed by looking.
“It’s hard to miss 6-foot-10,” Adkins said.
He quickly learned, however, that Uken had more than size.
“He had the skillset to go with it,” Adkins said. “He had good footwork, he knows the game and is extremely coachable.”
Uken said he was about 6-foot-3 as he entered high school, but his stature has grown along with his legacy.
Adkins said Uken wasn’t one to rely on his size to get on the field.
“He put in the work to get bigger and add weight, and then he turned the weight into muscle,” Adkins said. “It’s a testament to who he is and how he was raised.
“He put in the work, and then some. He has had a great career.”
Uken’s injury occurred as he was reaching his peak.
“His last game, at Quincy Notre Dame (a 41-0 M-S victory), was the best game of his career,” Adkins said. “If he had been able to continue with six more games of highlight film, I could see him being All-State caliber, and he would have had bigger-time offers.”
M-S was 6-0 at the time Uken went out of the lineup. The Bulldogs finished with an 11-1 overall record and were eliminated from the Class 5A playoffs in the quarterfinals.
Uken began playing football as a third-grader in the Mahomet Youth League, but he wasn’t enamored by the sport.
“Going into high school, basketball was my No. 1 sport,” Uken said.
He was good enough to move up to the junior varsity team as a freshman in basketball and to dress for the varsity games during the 2018-19 season.
Before the basketball season arrived in his sophomore year, Uken had a new favorite sport.
“As a sophomore, I got my first taste of varsity football and basketball couldn’t compare to how much fun it is,” Uken said. “I was always more excited about basketball season until my sophomore year.”
Unlike many sophomores who break into the football lineup, Uken’s transition wasn’t a traumatic one.
“To go from freshman football to starting varsity as a sophomore is a game-changer,” Adkins said. “You’ll have growing pains, but Tyler’s were limited.
“He wasn’t making as many sophomore mistakes as other sophomores might make.”
The improvements never slowed down.
“He took his game to the physicality level of finishing and getting some of the nastiness that college coaches want to see,” Adkins said. “Off the field, he became a leader.
“When he spoke, people listened. He knew what to say and when to say it. He is one of the most grown-up and mature leaders I’ve ever seen at the high school level.”
Uken, who will major in business management, is joining a Sioux Falls Cougars program that won their final three games of the 2021 season and has a 24-11 overall record in Jon Anderson’s three years as the head coach.
When he moves away from his family in Mahomet, Uken can take comfort in relocating to a location where those with whom he will be closely associated place an emphasis on being supportive, encouraging and understanding.
It will be like having a second family.
