K-M’s Walker realizing his vast potential

He flew under the recruiting radar on the football field last fall.

Now, Isaiah Walker is doing everything in his power to fly well above the radar.

“I’ve always been fascinated with space,” the mild-mannered big man said. “I want to be the first man on Mars. Becoming an astronaut always has been a dream of mine.”

For the time being, however, the 6-foot-4, 255-pound Kent-Meridian High product has his feet firmly planted on the ground and with a very distinct goal sitting in front of him.

That goal?

To make an immediate impact on the football field at the collegiate level.

Walker, a defensive lineman, will be heading to Pocatello, Idaho, on Friday. He hopes to be suiting up as a true freshman for the Idaho State Bengals come Sept. 5, when they open their 11-game schedule in Tempe, Ariz. against the Arizona State Sun Devils.

To make sure he realizes his goal, Walker is working out religiously at Imperial Fitness, an underground training facility in Kent.

“It’s the best thing I could be doing for myself right now,” Walker said. “It’s amazing. I’m doing stuff I’ve never heard of … hitting (500-pound) tires with a sledge hammer, flipping tires, stacking up 500 pound tires … it’s crazy stuff.”

Add it up and the one-time “chubby” Walker, the kid who didn’t start playing football until he was a freshman in high school, now is blossoming into the kind of lineman who makes Pacific-10 schools drool. However, the physical specimen Walker is today isn’t quite the same as the one who took the field for the Royals as a junior, the pivotal year in the recruiting process.

“His junior year (2007), he didn’t prove anything,” Kent-Meridian coach Trevor Roberts said. “He came in his senior year and really became a dominant lineman.”

Indeed he did.

Matter of fact, there weren’t many more imposing or unstoppable defensive lineman in the South Puget Sound League North Division last fall than Walker, who led the league with nine sacks and was among the leaders in tackles.

“I don’t know if it was partly because we had a newer staff at K-M and a tradition of not being successful, but the recruiters just didn’t come (for Walker),” Roberts said. “I couldn’t figure it out. We sent out massive amounts of tapes and made phone calls, and Idaho State and Eastern Washington were the only ones who were all over him.”

Off the radar?

“Completely,” Roberts said.

The big season, however, did earn Walker a spot on the All-SPSL team, though it didn’t draw any more recruiters to the East Hill school.

Part of that has to do with filling in to his big frame, Walker conceded.

“When I was growing up in (Billings) Montana, I had a lot different body type,” said Walker, who also was a standout thrower for the K-M track team this spring. “I wasn’t as tall, I was chubby and not nearly as muscular. I was soft.”

That softness has since been transformed into muscle, much of it during the last several months. In fact, during football season, Walker toed the line at 235 pounds.

That was 20 pounds ago.

“He’s huge,” Roberts said. “If he looked that big during the recruiting months, he would have been a Pac-10 kid.”

Not being recruited by a Division I school is a bit frustrating, Walker admitted. But the burly lineman is plenty content taking his full-ride scholarship to Idaho State, where he is considering studying mechanical, nuclear or astronautical engineering.

“I just fit (at Idaho State),” said Walker, who also had a full-ride offer from Eastern Washington and an invitation to walk on at Washington State. “It was my kind of climate. It was laid back, they had good structure and I was really impressed with that. As a team, they really seemed like family.”

A family where the big kid from K-M isn’t likely to fall off the radar any time soon.