Meet Wyatt Tucker, one of the few University of Hawaii football players who hopes you don’t see his name in the headlines this season or quickly learn his No. 44 jersey.

Tucker isn’t shy, you understand, it is just that he will be the Rainbow Warriors’ long snapper for field goals, extra points and punts this season. And the credo at the highly specialized position is that if you don’t know the player’s name then he must be doing his job well.

Anonymity and excellence are their goals.

It is a legacy perpetuated by a long line of long snappers, the most recent of which have included the Ingram brothers, Jake and Luke, Brodie Nakama and Noah Borden.

“Usually you only know the special teams players if they make a mistake,” said Nakama, a graduate assistant coach.

Tucker’s immediate predecessor is Borden, who had no flubs in three years. Which means all Tucker, a redshirt sophomore from Chino Hills, Calif., has to do for the next three seasons at UH is be perfect in zipping the ball to punters in a tight spiral in under a second. And being part of a well-aligned three-man process that gets field goals off, from snap to kick, in two seconds or less.

“Noah was a complete class act and trying to follow in his footsteps is a challenge,” said Tucker who worked alongside Borden as a redshirt transfer last year. “That’s what I look to live up to. If I can be as good as he was, I’ll know I’ve made it.”

Tucker was originally an offensive lineman whose father Jeff, a former college football player, suggested he take up long snapping at age 11 as an additional tool on his belt.

As a 5-foot, 10-inch, 205-pound center, Tucker came to understand early on in high school that if college football was to be in his future, then establishing himself as a long snapper would have to be his ticket there.

Three years without an errant snap in high school, where he was known as “Money Man,” and showings in camps on the West Coast helped him land a spot on the Whittier (Calif.) College roster and an academic scholarship.

But after a season at the Division III level with the Poets, Tucker went looking for wider opportunities and bigger challenges, drawing the interest of UH special teams coordinator Michael Ghobrial. “Coach Ghobrial set it up for me to visit and when I got out here (to Hawaii), I decided this is where I wanted to be,” Tucker said.

Tucker arrived as a preferred walk-on, paying his own way to attend UH, with the hope of demonstrating being worthy of being awarded a scholarship.

“He’s got good form and is not afraid of work,” said Chris Rubio, a former UCLA long snapper who runs the RubioLongSnapping.com camps. “I’ve seen his progress and how hard he works to improve himself. He listens and he wants to learn. He wants to be great.”

Nakama said Tucker “has done a great job in the offseason and has really dedicated himself in the weight room and in working on his form. If something in his technique gets tweaked, he fixes it himself.”

Like the long snappers before him at UH, Tucker said he hopes to make a name for himself by being anonymously efficient at his craft.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.