MORGANTOWN — When Tyler Anderson played his final game of football for Coach John Bowers at Morgantown High, a sigh of relief was released by John Kelley, the University High coach who had spent the last few years trying to figure out a way to stop him as a defensive end or tight end.
Anderson was gone and now could be forgotten, considering that he was headed off to Bowling Green, or maybe Akron. Let the MAC coaches worry about him, Kelley had to be thinking.
But, in the end, all Anderson did was go across town to prove he could play in the big time.
No Mid-America Conference for him. He was going to try his hand as a walk-on at West Virginia, passing up that scholarship from Bowling Green.
For all intents and purposes, that would be the last anyone would hear of Tyler Anderson, for surely this kid would be swallowed up in this setting.
Well, you can forget that thinking.
Marc Margro made it as a linebacker out of University High. Ben Collins made it as a linebacker out of North Marion High.
And, if the early indications of his first spring are anything, Tyler Anderson is going to make it out of Morgantown High.
On Tuesday afternoon, following practice on the field he came to know as the site of the Morgantown-University showdown, on the field where he impressed the WVU coaches in the first place during a camp, Anderson was having a ball.
If he used the word “great” once, he used it six or seven times, never in reference to himself, but in reference to how it was going and how he was finding life in the Big East and how he’s adjusting to linebacker.
Oh, and as for the thought of the first time he runs out on Mountaineer Field playing surface to play a college game, well, this is how he put it.
“It’s going to be ridiculous,” he said.
Indeed, if this was where he played his most memorable game to date, playing with quarterback Charlie Russell and teammate Junius Lewis, beating up on University as a sophomore in what he called “an amazing experience”, that will put everything he previously experienced to rest.
It hasn’t come easily. It wasn’t supposed to. He wanted to be challenged, something he didn’t think he’d get at Bowling Greeen.
"I went up there to their spring game and I felt like I was watching a high school game," Anderson said of a visit to Bowling Green. "I felt like I could be a bigger player than what I saw. I mean, the coach up there talked about how I could come in there as a freshman and he was going to start me and all. I just felt like I could be a better player than what I saw up there."
WVU had remembered Anderson from when he came here for a 7-on-7 camp, especially the performance he put on against a loaded Gateway team from Pittsburgh.
"I was playing tight end then and I guess there was supposed to have been the No. 2 corner in the country and I just lit him up for like four or five touchdowns in one game," Anderson said.
Hmmmm. Of course, at that time WVU was morphing into what it has now become and tight ends, well they weren’t quite as important as they are now. And besides, put a few pounds on a tight end and he becomes an outside linebacker who can become a monster.
That’s just what Anderson did, eating more, lifting more and working hard.
"Tyler's a 240-pound kid who moves pretty well,'' defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel said. "We saw him in our 7-on-7 camp, just competing like crazy. We really liked the way he competed. And I think once he gets his feet under him here and has a better idea of what's going on in front of him and around him, then he can start playing at that level.''
Ah, there’s that old bugaboo that jumps up and bites kids and keeps them off the field, trying to learn how to play the game in the style the defensive coordinator wants.
"We do like Tyler, but his head is swimming right now," Casteel said. "He was running our opponents' defense last year [with the scout teams] for the majority of the time so he's in our defense for the first time. But he's a big kid that runs, he's a quick learner and we're excited about him.
"Right now he can't play like he'd want to play because he's thinking a lot. But he's a kid who's always in there watching film. I go in to do something in the linebackers' room and he's in there studying. He's got a good work ethic.”
“I’m learning everything. That’s what spring camp is about,” Anderson said.
Anderson is gulping down every lesson as if it were a peanut butter sandwich, which was a staple in his weight-gaining program.
“It’s completely different than high school,” he said. “You learn what the offense does. You learn what the defense does. You have to be a player.”
That is exactly where Casteel believes he’s headed.
"We've had a lot of success with a kid like Tyler, a bright kid who is a pretty good athlete who will come in and do what he's asked to do to play for West Virginia,'' Casteel said. "If he does that, then we'll have found us a football player.''
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
