It was a perfect spring day in Seattle, clear and sunny — the kind of day you wished you were hosting football recruits to experience the very best the Pacific Northwest has to offer.
Zion Tupuola-Fetui and the rest of the Washington football team were in shells — shoulder pads and helmets — at Husky Stadium going through a normal team period of practice.
The play called for Tupuola-Fetui to blitz off the edge, which he had done to perfection the previous fall in a COVID-19-shortened season in which he made seven sacks and forced three fumbles in only four games to earn All-America status.
Like every other time before it, Tupuola-Fetui waited and waited for that ball to move so he could explode off the end of the line.
When the moment came, the Pearl City graduate went to fire off the ball and immediately fell to the ground. At first, he thought someone had stepped on his foot.
If only he were so lucky.
“I remember it as if I was filming a movie of myself,” Tupuola-Fetui recalled Monday about that day in April 2021. “I could tell my foot was weird. I went to get up and I was fine and then as I went to take a step it was like my foot never planted and I fell back down.
“By the time I made it to the training room, I had this eerie feeling.”
It wasn’t long before his worst fears were realized. A torn Achilles tendon had a recovery timetable of six to 10 months.
This, on the heels of playing just four games in the entire 2020 season, was another blow. Tears were shed on the phone call home to mom and dad later that day.
But if Zion Tupuola-Fetui has learned anything during his four-year tenure at UW, in which he has played for three different coaches, “sometimes (expletive) happens,” he says.
Life doesn’t always follow the timeline you want.
“Going into that season, I had aspirations of making it to the next level, and to kind of have to press the brakes on that a little bit, to put your dream on hold, it’s tough,” Tupuola-Fetui admitted. “But it’s also the motivating factor for all of the work you’re putting in for this dream. It might mean another year to add on to your college, but your dream is a dream.
“And that dream is still within reach.”
Five years ago, the dream was a bit different. Playing for Division II Pearl City, Tupuola-Fetui stood out with his 6-foot-4, 240-pound frame.
But your physical frame only meant so much.
Midway through his junior year, he had yet to receive a Division I football offer. Then a phone call came from another local boy, Ikaika Malloe, who at the time was UW’s defensive line coach.
After a long conversation, the offer was finally made.
“I just started tearing up because it was my goal throughout my whole football career,” Tupuola-Fetui told the Star-Advertiser in 2018. “For it to come to fruition was crazy.”
The offers started rolling in, but when signing day rolled around, Tupuola-Fetui was in the parking lot at Pearl City High using his dad’s back as leverage to sign a letter of intent to send to the University of Washington.
The college football dream was achieved. Now came the tougher part.
It took only a practice or two for Tupuola-Fetui to realize he belonged at this level. Playing time, however, would be hard to come by.
He started his college career playing behind Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, who was eventually a first-round pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021.
Tryon-Shoyinka elected to opt out of the 2020 COVID-19 season and start preparing for the 2021 NFL Draft, but Tupuola-Fetui was still playing behind another talented rusher, Laiatu Latu.
Latu suffered a neck injury that forced him to medically retire from football, and he missed the 2020 season, opening the door for Tupuola-Fetui to take the college football world by storm.
In only four games, Tupuola-Fetui did enough to be named second-team All-America by two publications and third-team All-America by the Associated Press.
He led the nation averaging 1.75 sacks per game, and after three of the four games he played, he was named the Pac-12 Defensive Lineman of the Week. His name was flying up NFL Draft boards, but UW was then forced to cancel a rivalry game against Oregon and then pull out of a spot in the Pac-12 championship game because the team was hit with COVID-19.
It set the stage for last season to be the true test of where Tupuola-Fetui would end up on NFL Draft boards, only for the torn Achilles to derail yet another full season of football.
But like he said all along, the stage is still set for Tupuola-Fetui to achieve everything he’s ever wanted. It begins Saturday at home against Kent State in the UW head coaching debut for Kalen DeBoer.
“We’re all just ready to play, man. I’m healthy and I’m back now,” Tupuola-Fetui said. “It’s been a long-winding journey and Saturday can’t come fast enough.”
Tupuola-Fetui is one of 85 players who graduated from high school in Hawaii iisted on a FBS roster for this season.
ZION TUPUOLA-FETUI
Name: Zion Tupuola-Fetui
School: Washington
Class: Junior
Height: 6 feet 4
Weight: 249 pounds
Position: Edge
High school: Pearl City (2018)
