Speaker 1: The fan.
Speaker 2: This is Cougar Sports on ko v O probo k
U D d H D two one O three nine
ninety eight three ESPN the Fan. Time for keeping up
with the Cougars. Brought to you by Odon Men'swear, proudly
outfitting young professionals, young adults, boys and missionaries across the
globe with quality suits and apparel. Find a location near
you or odeonmenswear dot com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back Gugar Sports one O three nine ninety eight
point three years being the fan, I've been prittal broadcasting
from our Banterwelth Studios Banterwell dot com. Get on a
free Q and A no obligation to invest Q and
A with our tax moret Wealth advisors want to save
money on your taxes. They'll combine forces with your CPA
to make sure you're saving money on your taxes at
the end of the year. Contact end today, Banterwealth, Banterwealth
dot Comedy is not for a little keeping up with
the Cougars. Get a welcome in my former teammate and
former BYU Cougar defensive backend wide receiver, also.
Speaker 1: The head coach of Snow Junior College.
Speaker 3: Here momentary, it's going to be brought to you by
Odeon Men'swear Odion Menswear dot com. If you want to
elevate your suit game with a sports performance at leisure
suit that provides ranger motion that looks like a traditional
suit but feels like that sports performance where that you'd
love to work out in, then head on over to
Odon Men'swear Odion Menswear dot Com. Utilize the Criddle fifteen
coupon code get fifteen percent off your order, or you
can schedule an appointment and mentioned myself in store for
VP products, VPP service, VP discounts. Head on over to
Odon menswear dot com. Let's get out to the hotline.
Speaker 1: Welcome in.
Speaker 3: The five foot, nine hundred and eighty six pounder out
of Mapleton, Utah was a all stater in three sports
here in the great state of Utah back in I
want to.
Speaker 1: Say, was I want to say? Was it? Was it?
Two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: Now he's the head coach for the Snow College Badgers
balling out down in e from Utah.
Speaker 1: Let's welcome in the one the only Zach Erickson to
the show.
Speaker 4: Was up, Zach, hey Ben, you must you must have
some really good producers pulling up all that info for you.
I mean, I know you know me well, but that
was pretty specific.
Speaker 3: Hey, look, I know you're an all state long jumper
and track and field. You're an all state baseball player
and an all state football player.
Speaker 1: I know this.
Speaker 3: I've done my due diligence on my teammates.
Speaker 1: I know how good you were.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it, Zach. It's great to have you on
talk some ball with you.
Speaker 3: Give us a little update on Snow College, kind of
level set force the state of the program down in Ephram.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're really excited. You know, we were coming off
of probably our first what I would call mediocre year.
You know, we went six and five, ended up losing
in a bowl game. But we're super excited about what's
happening with the future of the program. Since I got
here in twenty nineteen as an assistant, we've been competing
as an independent with the disillusion of the Arizona Junior
College football programs, and that is coming to an end.
Of this We've joined the Southwest Junior College Football Conference,
which will take us down to play with six teams
in Texas and then rejoin us with new Mexico Military again.
So we're super excited to be back into a conference
be able to compete not only for national championships, with
conference championships, and to be able to do it with
with you know what I would argue is probably gonna
be the best junior college football conference top to bottom
that there is in the country. I mean, we know that.
You know, Iowa Western is Iowa Western. They've got three
teams in a conference. We know Hutch is Hutch very
top heavy. But from top to bottom, you look at
you know Tyler who went eleven and zero this year
and beat us and lost in the national semi finals.
Navarro is always good. You have Blynn where Cam Newton
played in won a national championship. You've got New Mexico
Military who's won a national championship in the last handful
of years. And so I think it's gonna be one
of the best conferences in the country, and we're really
excited to get out there and start competing with some
of the best teams in the country.
Speaker 1: Man, yeah, it is. It is a robust conference. There.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the Arizona junior colleges. Do you think they
ever come back from the dead?
Speaker 1: Do you think the.
Speaker 3: Western States Football League day, both you and I competed
in by the way.
Speaker 1: I was at Easter and Glendale.
Speaker 3: You were at Dixie balling out for the ReBs once
upon a time. But do you think it comes back
from the dead at all?
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny because you get these you know,
you get these factions that really are pushing for it
from everything that we've heard and everything that we've kind
of been involved with. Because I would be a huge
component of it. Please bring them back. Yeah, but I
just I don't think where they are right now, that's
going to happen anytime in the near future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unfortunate. Man.
Speaker 3: I still keep in contact with my head coach at
Glendoe Community College. He was He was a tremendous coach
and we had tremendous football players come through that conference
for many years. Rix and Snow and Glendale and Dixie.
So many great football team, so many great football players
and great coaches that went through those those programs as well.
We got Zach Erickson, head coach of the Snow College Badgers.
You're on your Utah ESPN Radio network. Let's talk a
little bit about Snow College. Here how many guys did
you produce put into Division one or D two this season?
Speaker 4: This season we ended up with twelve guys signing out
the Division one schools. Probably the headliner in that group
would have been to Kope Wallace are starting left tackle.
He narrowed it down between Mississippi State and UTSA. Actually,
and in this world of nil and money UTSA, you
know that Texas money showed up and ended up going
to UTSA, we probably would expect to see him competing
for a starting spot down there right away. Kept a
lot of kids in state. You know, Tayson Reid, our
starting middle linebacker, signed up at the University of Utah
Weaver State. When they got their staff together. You know,
former assistant of mine, Tanner Jacobson snuck down here and
stole our starting safety and starting running back. I say stole,
I say stole, but I mean good for them, And
so they're up at we were now we had two
tight ends get out, one going to San Diego State,
another one going to Central Michigan. So it was a
really good year for us. I mean we we normally
you know, this is probably the lower end of the
number that we usually put out in a year. Where
we had twelve. Normally we're kind of in the sixteen
to eighteen range, but we were pretty young last year.
You know, three of our five starting old linemen are
coming back. You know, we've got some guys in the
secondary that are coming back. So we were really young.
We had a lot of freshmen playing for us, so
we would like to see that number kind of jump
back up into the high teens even low twenties. But
we have a great income a recruiting class. I think
we did. I think our staff did a heck of
a job in the state of Utah. If you look
through who we signed. I mean we signed thirty nine
of our forty eight incoming players are from the state
of Utah, which which I think is amazing. I mean,
we're building this thing from the inside out, and so
we're excited to see what some of those guys can do,
as they're going to be asked to probably play right
away and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there were a ton of players too in
college football that were playing at high level institutions. Kiante
Scott was at Miami. They're starting Nickel. He had a
great season. I mean, whoether what other guys from the
Snow College alumni ended up playing some big time football
this season.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think Keyante is probably the most visible,
and obviously he had a fantastic season making it all
the way to national championship. I know, you know Isaiah
Jadas somebody who our viewers will be you know, really
familiar with, uh starting left tackle there at BUYU this
last fall. Dallan Bentley starting tight end at University of
Utah who had a fantastic year. I think he was
in that top five of top graded tight ends right
there behind our tight end from from the coops this year.
Carson Carson's that name, Ryan, Yeah, who was number one.
And so you know, those three guys were probably the
top guys that performed this year. You know, Seth Wilfrid
was the number two tackle at Auburn still this fall.
You know, we had a handful of guys playing up there,
seeing a lot of time for coach Menden Hall up
at Utah State, and so you know, it was it was.
It's been a good it has had a good showing
of former Snow College Badgers. I mean Garrett Bowles was
playing well and and you know probably had the best
season of his NFL career, you know, and so it's
good to see the Badger alumni performing well once they
leave Snow College.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Buy you mentioned Isaiah Johna. There's a few other guys
that are from uh, from Snow JT.
Speaker 4: I can't forget JT. I mean, you know John.
Speaker 1: This year he was great. John Tell.
Speaker 3: He was like a little silver back guerrilla man. He
kind of reminded me of Travis tweet Loma back in
his prime.
Speaker 1: He was looking great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, exactly. So yeah, good see. You know, I
got to I can't remember who we were playing. I
got to sneak down there on the field in pregame
and it was great to get to see. You know,
we had those four guys. We had Reggie, Jada, j T,
and Ethan Wood that you know my staff while I've
been here, we all recruited those four guys in here.
They all got to play for me. So, uh, it's
great to have a good relationship with those guys and
still be able to get out there and see them, uh,
you know, achieving their dreams and doing what they want
to do, whether whether or not it started how they
wanted it to start. They put the work in to
get to where they want to be, and we just
love seeing them achieve their dreams and be able to
move on and be able to play high level football,
especially when it's in provo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, b Y, you just picked up another snow College
Badger for the twenty twenty sixth class. Raydon Heinz long snapper.
Came down and saw what they liked. Justin Enna, it
sounds like needed a long snapper to replace Garrison Grimes.
Who's Raydon Heinz And why did b Why you come calling?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Rado was really good for us as we go
through and we kind of you know, when you do
your film study and you go and you are doing
self scout and all of these things. One thing has
really jumped out with us is that Redo didn't have
a bad snap all season. He handled both the long
snaps and the short snaps on pat field goal and
did not have a single bad snap. He's also a really,
really good athlete. He he came and wanted to play linebacker,
and as we kind of toyed with that, we identified
him as our best long snapper probably pretty early. But
he's He's the type of athlete that you could put
out there and play in a different position, and so
having that athleticism and the guy that's gonna be able
to snap the ball and then run down and hopefully
make a tackle something that Cougar fans should be excited
about because I think given you know, the right opportunity
and for him to be able to go in and compete,
I think he can win the job because A he's
a great long snapper, short snapper, and b he's a
really good athlete that just adds to that special teams
unit being able to do, you know, some of those
other things as opposed to somebody who may not be
as athletic running down the field. So we're excited to
get Rado up there and then see what he can do.
Speaker 3: So interesting hometown is Brighton, Colorado High School American Leadership
Academy in Queen Creek. Did he did he move to
Arizona at a high school? Like, give me a little
bit more detail on the six foot ye two pound
or out of American Leadership Academy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sour, Our whole contact with Rado came while he
was in Arizona. So that's funny because I would have
thought he was from Arizona. I didn't even know him
hometown on Colorado. Every yeah, everything that we you know,
I believe that he spent all of his high school
there in Arizona, down there at a LA And you know,
obviously we have a good connection with former teammates down
there or that had been there previously, and so usually
when they have guys that they think can play at
a high level, they they'll give us a call and
it's worked out pretty well, especially for Rado in this instance.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing that stands out to be about number
forty eight Raydon Hinz. Like I grew up in a
generation of of you know, the traditional video games and
the arcade video games, Mortal Kombat. I've never seen anyone
named Raydon before. I'll be honest, I never This is
my first time I've seen Braydon. I'm like, you know
what I mean, the electrocuting, you know, hat wearing, I
don't know, jiu jitsu, karate master, Raydon.
Speaker 4: I love it. I'll have to ask him. You'll have
to ask you whoever talks to him next.
Speaker 1: Like dad was dad of video Gamer. He's like, I
love Mortal Kombat. Finish him.
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 1: I mean like, or is this like a familial name?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know if it's a familial name or what I'm
gonna go with you. I think I like I like
the Mortal Kombat reference. I think that's what we'll go with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it too.
Speaker 3: Man, what combat that may be banned you know, that
may be banned of the day tomorrow. In fact, they're
gonna have that as our intro theme tomorrow. Zach Erickson,
head coach, Snow College. You guys are always putting out
great great great football right, great football team, great football players.
Speaker 1: Uh, there's a tryout.
Speaker 3: I believe you guys have a lot of people like
trying out for college football right now.
Speaker 1: Snow college football. It's been pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: Explain the impact of nil transfer portal on the JUCO
ranks right now and the quality of player you're getting.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, I think what you've seen is especially at
the high level power for schools, they just aren't really
recruiting high school athletes like they used to. And I
mean I was even listening to Bronco on his signing
the press conference, and I think they told me that.
I think if I remember, right, they only signed four
high school players in this entire class, and so that's
kind of I think what we're seeing with the current
landscape of college football. And so I think what that's
done is that's allowed us at the junior college level
to really get in and recruit high school players that
formerly probably would have been going to these divisions in schools.
Because now I see us where we used to have
one or two recruiting battles with maybe the FCS school
in state, over the last couple of years, almost every
kid we're identifying and wanting to recruit, we're having to
beat out Utah Tech, SUU Weaver in an effort to
try to get those kids. And sometimes that works in
our favor and sometimes it doesn't. But where you know,
the FCS schools can kind of break up their scholarships,
sometimes we might be in a position to give the
kids a better scholarship than they can at the SCS
school and sometimes when that comes into play, that really
can help us, you know, win on a kid. But
ultimately what that means is there's I think there's hundreds
and hundreds of thousands of high school kids that aren't
getting recruited that should be. And so while we can't
see everyone in a single cycle, we try our best.
But we feel it's hugely important for the success of
our program to be able to have these tryouts because
there might be some kids that didn't you know, maybe
they grew on a mission, or they were a late bloomer,
or who knows. I mean, perfect example of that is
Dallon Bentley. Dallon Bentley showed up here coming out of
Taylorsville High School, goes on a mission, wasn't a great
football player coming out of high school, shows up to
our January tryout. He grew four and a half inches
on his mission, gained thirty pounds, gained another twenty five
pounds in the off season, and became a six foot six,
two hundred and sixty pound tight end that every school
in the country wanted. And so I think it's usually
important for us to have those tryouts. And so you know,
we had one here in January, and that one is
usually just for kids that are enrolled in school, and
then we'll have another one, usually the Monday before the
fourth of July. So usually right there at the beginning
of July, we'll have that open tryout and ever since
I've been here, we've had anywhere from one hundred to
one hundred and fifty kids show up to the tryout.
And again that's just a testament to these kids that
are are getting under recruited or not recruited at all,
that you know, maybe have a future in college football.
And so we love being able to get them out
and if they're good enough, if they are you know,
or if we have a need. Uh, it's good to
be able to get those guys out here and hopefully
see what they can do and add to our program.
Speaker 1: You got a JV squad you're cooking up down there
because of all the.
Speaker 4: Guys we do. Yeah, so we just finished up our
second year of JV football. Funny story, we had a
running back uh this last year Kennon Boswell played a
little bit of varsity football for us, but was our
starting JV running back. Got a scholarship the Southwest Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And and so that's just another way for us to
continue to get opportunities for these guys.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: And in two years that jam team has gone what
are they eleven and one? And so they're they're still
really really good and we've had some guys that started
on the JV program that obviously moved up and became
starters for us the next year, and we're looking to
do that again this year. We'll have that JB squad
and they'll play six games again this year and another
just trying to fill a need, right as you and
I know, I mean, kids love football and they want
to play football, and if we can provide that opportunity
for them, then we want to be able to do
that as best we can.
Speaker 3: How many scholarships annually do you have allocated in your
budget for these football players?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, so we have seventy scholarships. It's pretty easy
for us to kind of be fully transparent about that.
So our scholarships down here at SNOW cover all of
your tuition and all of your core class books, and
then that total number is seventy and then it gets
broken up. We have thirty five in state scholarships. We
have twenty five what they call WUI scholarships, which is
the Western Education Exchange the Western United States, So that's
pretty much any state that touches us to the east,
and then anything west of US, including the Dakotas, and
so we have twenty five of those scholarships, and then
we have ten what we call true out of state scholarships,
which is pretty much anything east of like New Mexico, Colorado,
anything that's that way. We have ten of those scholarships. So,
you know, like I said, we want to build our
team from the inside out. We think there's great high
school football here in the state of Utah, and as
we are able to kind of compete for those kids,
and you know, we have we call it our housing
money pot right where you know, if kids are a
deserving or in need, we can also in some cases
help out with housing and try to help them as
best we can in their attempts to be a good
What term we don't hear very much anymore is student
athlete because down here that's still kind of what we're about,
is being a good and successful student athlete and then
being able to get them to get their education taken
care of and be able to move on and hopefully
be able to develop into good husbands, good fathers, good
young men, young people that can go out and be
productive in society. Because as you and I know, it's
way different from when you and I stepped foot in
the locker room twenty years ago to what it is now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's truly it's truly changed, right, And and for
some things, I think it's for the better. Some things
maybe not for the better, right, And you know, you
try to navigate it all and trying to set these
kids up for success long term rather than just short term.
Speaker 4: Right exactly. And that's you know, that's kind of what
we're looking at is hopefully when the kids come here,
you know, and we've talked about this before, you know,
when I've been on we have kind of two kinds
of kids that come here, Kids that don't qualify and
they have to go to Junco route or their recruiting
wasn't what they wanted it to be, and so they
chose to come this way. And so we've really got
to build long term vision. Uh. We've spent a lot
of time in this offseason, uh, talking about goal setting
and teaching these young men how to set goals and
the process of achieving those goals and how that can
really help them long term. And so you know, it's
just really exciting to be able to get to work
with those kids and and and these are guys that
still love football, right, they're they're not getting paid, they
don't got some big nil deal. They're here because they
love it. They're here because they want to work. And
you know, and we're super excited about that. We've got
I Before I you know, you kick me off, I
got to put a little plug in for one of
our players. So a lot of your listeners will probably
recognize this name. Uh Mode Taime Longa from tim View
a couple of classes ago, ended up having some clearing
house issues. Uh. You know, he came over from Tongo
when he was a freshman to Timbu and and b
Yu didn't catch it till he was you know, only
had like two months left on his mission, and so
he ended up ultimately being a non qualifier. Uh. And
he showed up here and and this kid, Ben, I've
had some really good football players down here. This kid
might be the best I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I am hoping and praying. And what's awesome about
this kid is forget the forgets the football talent and
that type of stuff. The leadership that he has brought
to our football team over the last two months that
he's been here. He got home in late July from
his mission in Florida and then has been here. Uh
he got here in January, and the leadership that this
kid brings. He stepped foot on campus and it was like,
oh my gosh. And so here's what I'm saying. I
really hope we can get him back to BYU. But
I but as you as you know, there might be
a certain staff that is now in the Upper Midwest
that has already called and ready to you know, try
to get him to go wear yellow, blue and yellow
instead of blue and white. You know, Coach Frank Miley
showed up here offered him on the spot. You know,
he's gonna he's going to blow up and I think
he could be the defensive player of the Year this year.
But again, just the different type of people that are here,
it's just such an awesome thing because they love it.
They they love what they're trying to accomplish, and for them,
they still have these big dreams and these big goals
that hopefully, in some form or fashion, we can be
a small part in helping them achieve in their time
here at Snow College.
Speaker 3: Last thing, Zach, appreciate you hopping on Reggie frishnett ethan
Wood still on the roster officer. We're gonna be looking
at raid and Ayden could be the starting long snapper
for BAU this next season. What are your expectations for
Reggie and Ethan this year? Do you think they can
play a big role in ba's offense.
Speaker 4: You know, I really do. I know that in talking
to Ethan, Ethan's now back to being fully healthy, and
Ethan is a special athlete with his size and his strength.
I would I would really hope that Ethan gets an
opportunity throughout springball UH to be the guy that replaces Ryan.
I think I think he has the skill set. I
think he has the ability. I know he has the
work ethic. So I'm really excited to see what Ethan
can do this year. Reggie, I mean, I I may
be biased, but but I think Reggie will be one
of the starting three receivers come fall. I think I
think Reggie is I think you know, when he came
into camp and and had the hamstring injury early, I
think that kind of set him back a little bit.
But I think, you know, we saw him progress and
develop throughout the year. You know that changed a little bit.
I don't know if you know this. In the Bowl game,
Reggie came down and made a block on an outside linebacker,
broke his jaw and played the rest of the game
with a broken jaw. He had surgery the next day.
And that's the kind of that's the kind of toughness
that like. Reggie is a tough kid. And you couple
that with the athleticism that he has. If he stays healthy, right,
if he doesn't tweak a hamstring or break a jaw,
I think what we'll what we'll see out of him
in the spring is gonna be I mean, the way
Reggie works, he's gonna make it really hard on festis
to not put him on the field. And that's all
you can hope out of a player, right is as
a coach. As a coach, you say, make me keep
you on the field, right, And I think I think
we're gonna see that out of Reggie. His catch radius
is insane. I know, we you know, we didn't get
many balls thrown to him this year. I think he
only had one catch actually, of the one ball that
was thrown to him. But I think once he gets
an opportunity to get some more balls coming his way,
we'll see that his natural catching ability is pretty dang good.
And we know how good Chase was, and I'm not
I'm not ready to say that he's on that level,
but I truly believe that that's his projection. Right if I
was to say, you know, this kid can be a
lot like so and So, I mean, he had a
great role model this last year of what that looks like.
And I know, if I'm not mistaken, I think he's
a little bit taller than Chase. I think he is
maybe a little faster than Chase. I'm not exactly sure,
but I just think I think Reggie has a huge,
huge future in front of him as a BYU Cougar.
So I'm really excited love.
Speaker 1: Chat and ball with you.
Speaker 3: For those that are listening, come on down try out
it Snow College. Live out your dream. You got football
players within the walls of your home. Go and try
out down at snow Zach. We scloot you man. We
appreciate you. Thanks for talking some ball with us here
on Cougar Sports. Let's get you into an Odeon men's
wear suit too. Gotta get you hooked up with an
elevate suit.
Speaker 4: I love it, you know me. I love suits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, buddy, I'll text you. I'll put you on a
text thread with the CEO. We'll get you dialed in.
Speaker 4: There we go. Sounds good.
Speaker 1: Appreciate me, bad, love jumping on, Hey, love you man,
Appreciate you.
Speaker 3: That's our segment, brought to you by Odeon menswearodiomnswear dot com.
Crittle fifteen, Crittle fifteen, Crittle fifteen, get you fifteen percent
off your Odeon Men's Wear Suit, Odeon Men's Wear Attire
for all your missionary wear, your