Analysis

Thunderbirds have been building for this season since last decade

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To many that follow the Big Sky Conference, the Thunderbirds of Southern Utah are one of the surprise stories in the league this season. For the T-Birds themselves, the results of 2015 are what a group of mature, veteran players have been building for since first coming to SUU last decade.

No. 18 Southern Utah enters Saturday’s crucial Big Sky title with No. 15 Portland State with a 6-0 conference record and seven-game winning streak overall. The Thunderbirds are chasing a second playoff berth in three seasons, something that seemed unlikely to outsiders after last season’s 3-9 misstep. With two more wins, Southern Utah would become the first team other than Montana and Eastern Washington to post 8-0 records en route to Big Sky titles over the last 25 years. Montana accomplished the feat five times between 1996 and 2009. Eastern Washington did it once, in 2013.

“We’ve been talking about getting here for a lot of years,” said Southern Utah defensive end James Cowser, a two-time All-America selection. “We feel like we deserve it. This second chance has been huge. It’s an opportunity to make something special happen.

SUU Thunderbirds

SUU Thunderbirds

“The 2013 team is our identity not the 2014 team so this is expected.”

Last week in a 34-23 win at preseason league favorite Montana State, Cowser notched his eighth sack of the season. The tackle behind the line of scrimmage set the Big Sky’s all-time mark for tackles for loss in a career, breaking a record formerly held by Buck Buchanan Award winner and Idaho State standout Jared Allen. The career record serves as an affirming accolade for a career that began long before Southern Utah joined the Big Sky in 2012.

Cowser is not atypical on a Thunderbird roster filled with members of the LDS church. Cowser, SUU senior quarterback Ammon Olsen, senior wide receiver Justin Brown and senior middle linebacker Matt Holley all played their final season of prep football in 2008 and graduated from high school in 2009. Nose tackle Fesi Vaa’ivaka graduated high school in 2004 and is the league’s oldest player at 29. Junior wide receiver Mike Sharp last played high school ball in 2010 and still has a year of eligibility remaining.

The sum total means that that core of Southern Utah’s league title run are older and more mature, physically and mentally, than the rest of the competition.

“It brings a calming influence to all the younger guys,” Holley said. “They don’t see us freaking out or super nervous. It plays a role in our success.”

In February of 2009, SUU head coach Ed Lamb signed a class that included Olsen, Holley and Cowser. Olsen was the 2008 Utah Gatorade Player of the Year after leading Alta High to the 5A state title. Cowser was the 5A Defensive Player of the Year in Fruit Heights, Utah. Holley was an athletic safety from Las Vegas. It would be years before the recruiting class would pay dividends. And each player would walk a long, unique path to his final season.

SUU quarterback Ammon Olsen

SUU quarterback Ammon Olsen

Olsen served as Brad Sorensen’s backup as a true freshman in 2009 before spending 2010 until 2012 on an LDS mission in Mexico City. When he first arrived in the largest city in the world, he was “convinced I was going to die.” But once he settled in, brushed up on his Spanish and began to acclimate to Mexican culture, he began to grow.

“The poverty there is just the craziest thing,” Olsen said in an interview earlier this season. “People go without anything. Yet they offer everything they have to their friends and family. When I got home, I was in shock. I couldn’t stop thinking about how we have way too much. I wanted to give all my stuff away. It was really cool to see the people and how they can be happy with such little material.”

When Olsen returned, he decided to see if he could play at the highest level in the Beehive State. He walked on to BYU in the fall of 2012 and redshirted. In 2013, he served as Taysom Hill’s backup.

“When I was up at BYU, I had a great experience, loved the program but I didn’t like the situation I was in,” Olsen said. “I was Taysom’s backup for the season he stayed healthy. I knew I wasn’t going to play unless he got injured. I knew Taysom was their guy and he was the same age as me.”

Following the season, Olsen talked to a few of his former and future teammates. Holley and Cowser and others convinced Olsen to come back to Cedar City.

“By then, I was married so I didn’t really have to worry about finding a wife down here in small town Cedar City,” Olsen said with a laugh. “And I love it. I haven’t had any regrets.”

A month into the season, Olsen was named the Thunderbirds’ full-time starting quarterback. By the end of last fall, he was named the Big Sky’s Newcomer of the Year. He threw for more than 3,000 yards and 21 touchdowns but the Thunderbirds struggled to win. This season, Olsen has thrown for 2,151 yards and 15 touchdowns. He has thrown just three interceptions as SUU has built a Big Sky and FCS-best turnover margin (+18).

SUU defensive James Cowser/SUU Media Relations

SUU defensive James Cowser/SUU Media Relations

Unlike Olsen, Cowser spent 2009 as a redshirt freshman. That following spring, Cowser left for an LDS mission to Hong Kong. On his mission, he lost nearly 40 pounds.

“It was an amazing experience, but learning a new language is ridiculously hard,” Cowser in an interview in 2013. “I loved it. It was so much fun. The people over there are so kind. They are so much more mellow than I am. Being so far away from home, it helped me mature too.”

Cowser returned in the winter of 2011. He had nine months to prepare his body. He worked his 6-foot-4 frame back up to 245 pounds by the 2012 season. He went out and earned Freshman All-America honors that fall, notching 7.5 sacks and 13.5 tackles for loss. He’s been a standout ever since, entering this season as the preseason Big Sky Defensive MVP. His eight sacks and 12.5 tackles for loss are second in the conference as he’s in the conversation for the postseason version of the award.

Like Olsen, Holley played in 2009. As a safety, he intercepted a pass against Texas State and notched nine tackles against Northern Arizona. In 2010, he led SUU with three interceptions and earned All-Great West honors. The next spring, he left for an LDS mission in Monterrey, Mexico that lasted until the spring of 2013.

“It taught me self accountability because you don’t have people babysitting all the time,” Holley said. “You have one job to do and you dedicate your life to the Lord, put everything aside. I grew up a lot, that’s for sure. When these kids leave, they are 18 years old and when they come back, they are a totally different person.”

Holley returned in the fall of 2013, moved to outside linebacker and earned All-Big Sky honors as SUU posted an 8-5 record and went to the FCS playoffs for the first time in school history. He tore his ACL during fall camp last season, setting up his swan song season with Cowser and Olsen. This fall, he’s taken advantage and has been the leader of the unit from his middle linebacker spot. He has 79 tackles, eight tackles for loss and three interceptions.

SUU middle linebacker Matt Holley

SUU middle linebacker Matt Holley

Missionaries are commonplace in Utah. Almost 65 percent of the Beehive State practices the Mormon religion. Almost half of Lamb’s roster is either a former or future missionary any given season. Zak Browning, the Big Sky’s Freshman of the Year in 2012, is still gone on a mission. Chinedu Ahanonu led the Big Sky with 152 tackles last season before leaving on his mission earlier this season.

Vaa’ivaka’s tale is perhaps the most atypical of anyone on the Southern Utah roster or in college football in general. The 6-foot-3, 360-pound sophomore is a built like a house — “I think he’s actually just a couple pounds short of being a literal house,” SUU senior safety Miles Killebrew said — and his presence on the interior of SUU’s defensive line has benefited everyone from Cowser to Holley to Killebrew.

“Fesi is so huge for me,” Holley said. “He is so strong, so big and able to push people around. They have to double-team him. As a linebacker, when linemen don’t come up on you, it makes it so much easier. He knows it’s going to be tough. And being so old, I mean, I’m 25 and I feel it and he’s almost 30. The way he goes game after game is amazing and I really respect him for it.”

Vaa’ivaka’s story is not one of an LDS missionary. He graduated from Bingham High in South Jordan, Utah in 2004 after an all-state senior season as a fullback and a defensive tackle. He received light recruiting interest but then dropped off the map.

Southern Utah and Cedar City are home to what Lamb calls a “very substantial Polynesian population.” Many of the Thunderbirds come from the cultural background. Vaa’ivaka enrolled at SUU in the fall of 2013, some of the T-Bird players befriended him. Soon after, he joined the team as a walk-on offensive linemen.

Vaa’ivaka does not like to talk about what transpired between his final season of high school football and when he enrolled at Southern Utah as a student. He declined an interview request for this story. Whatever did transpire helped him realize the value of an opportunity to earn a college education and play football again.

SUU defensive tackle Sefesi Vaa'ivaka (51) and James Cowser (middle)

SUU defensive tackle Sefesi Vaa’ivaka (51) and James Cowser (middle)

“His physical and emotional maturity gives him an advantage,” Lamb said. “He’s seen a lot and lived a lot of life before he came to college. He recognizes the value of the academic piece and he works really hard in that way. He had some troubles as a young guy being on the streets too much and he lost his way for a while. He doesn’t tolerate a lot of that stuff amongst our team. If guys aren’t taking full advantage of their opportunities, he is not afraid to speak up and say, ‘What are you doing? You have this whole opportunity and it took me eight years to work for this.’ He’s a really good leader from that standpoint.”

Lamb has been the head coach at Southern Utah since 2008. In this, his eighth season, Lamb finally has a senior class 100 percent recruited by him and his staff. It’s culminated in surging to the brink of a Big Sky title. And it’s required a different but refreshing coaching technique.

“In a sense, it’s different because the communication level back and forth, there’s more maturity than what our younger players are like but really it’s the same opportunity we give all of our players and I think coaches most places are like this,” Lamb said. “We want to treat players fairly but not equally. We have favorites and the most mature guys who respond most positively to what we ask them to do are our favorites. Other guys, we give them the same opportunity but if the guy is going to be a goofball in the classroom or live on the edge of the society or always doubt what you ask them to do technically on the field, those guys get dealt with in a little different way.

“Our maturity has led to high expectations. We expect to win.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez or noted. All Rights Reserved.

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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