Sekai Asoau-Afoa began his college football career at Central Washington University before the pandemic began and thereafter made a couple of junior-college stops.
The 6-foot-5, 255-pound edge rusher from Fife, Washington, has at least one more college destination in him after he committed on Monday to Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington coaching staff.
The Huskies are hoping he uses that Ellensburg football connection to elevate his football career similar to past players such as Tre Watson, James Hasty and Jon Kitna.
Watson transferred from Central to the UW as a defensive back in 2012 and flourished in Seattle, and is now a University of California defensive-backs coach.
Hasty played two seasons for the Wildcats in 1983 and '84 before transferring to Washington State University and later becoming a 14-year NFL player.
A prolific passer, Kitna quarterbacked Central to the 1995 NAIA national championship and leveraged that into a 14-year NFL career that included a lengthy stint with the Seattle Seahawks.
Here comes Asoau-Afoa, who spent the 2019 season with the Wildcats before the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted his career and he resurfaced last fall at two-year College of San Mateo, located 20 miles south of San Francisco.
He had a brief stop but didn't play for Dixie State, a two-year school in George, Utah, that sent NFL-bound running back Corey Dillon to the Huskies in 1996.
It's unclear how successful Asoau-Afoa will be with a Power 5 football team, but he'll rejoin his Fife High School teammate Ulumoo Ale, a junior defensive tackle for the Huskies and he could end up playing next to him coming off the corner.
Seventeen schools offered him scholarships, all FCS programs that included Alabama A&M, Buffalo, Campbell, Idaho State, Jacksonville State, Lamar, Lynchburg, Nevada, North Texas, Northern Arizona, Robert Morris, Southern Utah, Tarleton, UTEP, Weber State and Western Illinois.
Under DeBoer, the Huskies haven't shied away from the junior-college ranks. They earlier signed inside linebacker Demario King from Cerritos College in Southern California, and he enrolled and took part in spring practice.
Asoau-Afoa, 21, played for Central Washington during the 2019 season and left when the pandemic broke out and canceled all but one game of the following season, which was delayed to the spring.
He transferred to Dixie State but didn't stay long enough to play a season. He got back on the field for six games for San Mateo and collected 20 tackles.
In his season highlight, Asoau-Afoa separated a running back from the football with a crushing hit, picked up the fumble and raced 26 yards for a touchdown.
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