LIGHTS, CAMERA, A
s a boy growing up in Menlo Park, Calif., Ben Burr-Kirven lived only a mile or two from the campus of Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto. Given the school’s proximity and his love of sports, Burr-Kirven was often at Stanford Stadium for Cardinal games. “I went because I liked watching football,” he says. “But I was never a big Stanford fan.” By his senior year at Sacred Heart Prep in Menlo Park, Burr-Kirven was drawing recruiting interest from a number of college football programs, including Stanford. A 6-foot, 200-pound running back and linebacker at the time, and a good student as well, he was
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Ben Burr-Kirven has found the spotlight at UW
BY RICH MYHRE eager to give the Cardinal a look because “you obviously want to get offered by your hometown team.” The problem was, Stanford had doubts. “The way they play defense,” he says, “I was kind of a ‘tweener’ for them. (The Cardinal coaches thought) I was too small to play inside linebacker for them, and they didn’t think I was fast enough to play safety.” Given their uncertainty, there was no scholarship offer. “They wanted me to walk-on,” he says, “but I wasn’t interested in doing that. It was just a situation where we didn’t fit.” Enter Washington. Under second-year
head coach Chris Petersen and defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, the Huskies had no qualms about Burr-Kirven’s size, speed or anything else. They saw a young player of considerable talent — not to mention desire, commitment and heart. In other words, the kind of player who excelled under Petersen in his previous tenure at Boise State University, and then at Washington. As Kwiatkowski explains, “We just looked at the way he played football. (All) the plays he made and how hard he played. … All the stuff we evaluated him on, we loved about him.”
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GoHUSKIES
