Bartlett Wrestled With Decision, But Ultimately Picked Football And UW

By Rich Myhre

By Washington Huskies

September 5^th, 2018

In his years at East High School in Cheyenne, Wyo., Tevis Bartlett was an elite athlete. So good, in fact, that he had multiple college scholarship offers by the time he graduated in 2015.

But before he could choose a school to attend, he first had to decide on a sport.

During football season, Bartlett was an outstanding two-way player. A quarterback on offense, he threw for 4,112 yards and 34 touchdowns in his high school career, while rushing for 3,613 yards and another 46 touchdowns. He even played a little wide receiver, which allowed him to score three more TDs through the air. Bartlett was also a defensive back, and played well enough to be a three-time all-state selection, just as he was on offense.

But in the winter Bartlett was a wrestler, and he was no less exceptional on the mat than on the football field. He ended up with four state individual championships, and he even claimed some national championships in both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling.

Drawn by his obvious talent, a lot of schools were recruiting Bartlett for either football or wrestling. Some schools had recruiters for both sports pursuing him. And at least one – the University of Wyoming in Laramie, just a short jaunt down I-80 from Cheyenne – wanted him to be both a football player and a wrestler.

Among the schools wanting him for wrestling were Oregon State, Stanford and Arizona State from the Pacific-12 Conference. Another school, Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va., even offered Bartlett (who had a 4.0 high school GPA) the equivalent of a full scholarship – one-half for wrestling and one-half for academics.

“For a long time I was getting heavily recruited for both football and wrestling,” Bartlett said. “It was probably the summer going into my senior year that I finally decided, ‘You know, I want to play football in college.’ I love both sports, and they’ve both taught me a ton about being an athlete and about life in general. But football was a little bit more of a calling for me.”

Bartlett Wrestled With Decision, But Ultimately Picked Football And UW

With that decision out of the way, he then had to pick a school. After narrowing his list, he had a top three of Utah, Iowa and Washington, with Utah and Iowa being nearer to his Cheyenne home and likewise offering similar environments. Seattle, though, was quite unlike Cheyenne in size, culture, most things socioeconomic, and pretty much everything else, too.

And those difference were appealing to Bartlett, who ended up choosing Washington.

“My dad and I always talk about how you grow the most when you make a change … and when everything is different,” said Bartlett, a UW senior and starting inside linebacker. “And this is so different (from Wyoming).”

In addition, he was persuaded by the genuine connection and trust he felt with the Washington coaches, and particularly with head coach Chris Petersen.

“Through the whole (recruiting) process, Coach Pete and his staff were telling me the same type of stuff that my parents had always said when I was growing up,” Bartlett explained. “When you have people (recruiting you) who have a similar vision to the people who raised you, for me that sounds like a good place to be. And they’ve been all about that since I’ve been here.”

Still, there is nothing easy about being a Washington student-athlete. School and sports both require a lot of time and effort, and the daily demand “is hard,” he admitted. “(Football) is a fulltime job on top of your other fulltime job, which is school. … School can be tough. But if you’re serious about it, you just attack it and go get it done, just like football practice.”

The good news, of course, is that a city the size of Seattle has plenty of opportunities for relaxation and fun. In that respect, Bartlett said, “Seattle is an awesome place because there’s always stuff to do. There are always concerts, Seahawks games and Mariners games, and there’s also tons of great food here. … This is a great place to be spending your college years.”

In his first three Washington seasons, Bartlett played in all but two of the team’s 40 games. He became a starter a year ago and played well enough at outside linebacker to earn honorable mention All-Pac-12 recognition after the season.

In 2018 he has moved to inside linebacker, where he pairs with returning starter and fellow senior Ben Burr-Kirven in the middle of the UW defense.

As a tandem, Washington co-defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski said, Bartlett and Burr-Kirven “can be as good as anybody. We have to go play the season, but we expect those guys to be lights-out.”

What stands out about Bartlett, Kwiatkowski added, is “his leadership. He’s a steadying influence on the defense. He’s a very poised guy. He’ll play with some fire, but he keeps it under control. And whenever we’re facing adversity, he’s one of the guys that gets the other guys rallied. So his leadership is the biggest thing.”

It helps, too, that Bartlett is “super smart,” Kwiatkowski went on. “That’s really important for our linebackers and our secondary because they have to be smart guys since we put a lot on them. We have a lot of stuff that those guys have to process fast, so (intelligence) is a big part of what we’re looking for out of our linebackers.”

And speaking of smarts, Bartlett continues to shine academically, having been named to the Academic All-Pac-12 team a year ago while also receiving the team’s 101 Club Scholarship Award. Though he first hopes to give the National Football League a shot, Bartlett expects to use his undergraduate education degree and a subsequent master’s degree to pursue a career as a teacher and coach. Later on, he might transition to athletic administration.

“Hanging around high school athletes and being able to impact them and their lives, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “I’d like to give back in that way.”