NINE HUSKERS PLAYED AT COLO. HIGH SCHOOLS
BOULDER» Before we go back to snarling at one another from either side of the Sedgwick County line, a quick word about that mullet. The one with the lightningbolt Z cut into the side of Jack Stoll’s head. The sweetest party to hit the back of a Power 5 skull north of Stillwater.
The one that doesn’t shock Bob McPhee in the least.
Because even when Stoll was at Regis Jesuit, the dude marched to the beat of his own drum. At double time.
“As a sophomore, he couldn’t line up right,” McPhee, the Regis Jesuit offensive line coach said, chuckling, when asked about Stoll, the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ well-coiffed tight end. “As a sophomore, he was always on the wrong side and the wrong place. I always kid him, ‘You’re going to have nightmares (about this).’”
The lining-up part. Not, you know, the mullet part.
“Looking back at him now, I’m just like, ‘Geez, dude, you’ve got to cut that thing, that thing is dirty,’ ” laughed CU Buffs center Tim Lynott, another former Jesuit standout and McPhee acolyte. “I’m like, ‘You’re like one of those pitchers in Major League Baseball who’s just let it grow out.’”
Beneath the din and aluminum cups milling about Franklin Drive, they’re getting the band back together at Folsom Field on Saturday morning. Stoll was a junior
and Lynott a senior on the 2014 Regis squad that went 10-2 and reached the Class 5A quarterfinals, the first of four straight quarterfinal berths for the Raiders under McPhee and head coaches Mark Nolan and Danny Filleman from 2014-17.
“We used to work out with our D-line coach, (Hank) Hasselbach,” recalled Stoll, the 6-foot-4 Lone Tree native, one of nine Huskers who played high school ball in the state of Colorado on the current Big Red roster. “(Lynott and I) used to go bowling. It was one of those things where we just ended up hanging out with each other.”
And hitting it off, the kind of opposites that meshed well: Stoll, the loquacious one, rolling with the more quiet, thoughtful Lynott, popping over to the McPhee pad for movies and wings, seeing which one of them could pound the most of the latter in one sitting.
The two Regis alums still compare scars and talk shop on the rare occasions that schedules happen to whisk them home at the same time. Although when Lynott last Christmas brought up CU 33, Huskers 28, the Buffs’ biggest victory of 2018, Stoll came away — no shock — unamused.
“He was pretty (expletive) off,” the CU center and Parker native recalled with a laugh.
“Man, I think I just tried to erase that one out of my head, let’s put it that way,” Stoll said. “He was talking a little trash.”
And the Huskers would love nothing more than to return the favor this time around, especially with friends, family and former Regis classmates heading north for the first BuffsNebraska showdown at Folsom since 2009. Stoll, who had just one grab versus CU last September and notched three for 66 yards last week against South Alabama, says he ran drills at Folsom for a CU camp once, but that Saturday will be the first time he’ll suit up for an actual game there.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” said McPhee, who’s been on the Regis staff for nearly three decades. “I’ve liked all the guys I’ve ever coached, but there are always a core group of 10-12-15, they just kind of worm their way into your heart and they don’t leave.”
Stoll, whom McPhee used to crack was “two sandwiches short of playing offensive line,” never left. Neither did the 6-3 Lynott, who last week led a Buffs front that didn’t allow a sack in the opener against Colorado State while rushing for 243 yards against the Rams.
“I’ve been blessed to coach some good ones,” McPhee said with a voice as soft as it was earnest. “Those two are some of the good ones.”