Vanderdoes pushes for football success at UCLA

It took Eddie Vanderdoes all of five minutes to master a double backflip into water.

It’s this memory in particular – of a camp diving board – that sticks with Placer High School football coach Joey Montoya when he thinks back on his star defensive tackle.

“He hadn’t done anything on a diving board before,” Montoya said. “To see a guy that’s 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds doing double backflips and looking like an Olympian, it’s pretty special to watch. Obviously, he’s a pretty incredible athlete.”

No matter the field, no matter the venue, for Vanderdoes, sports have come naturally. As a pitcher for the Placer High Hillmen, he overpowered hitters with a 93 mph fastball and a devastating cutter, striking out 83 batters in just over half as many innings.

At the plate, his big, powerful frame propelled him to a .406 batting average with four home runs his junior season, numbers that earned him a scholarship offer from UCLA baseball coach John Savage.

UCLA defensive line coach Angus McClure saw that same natural athleticism the first night he ever watched Vanderdoes play football two seasons ago.

Making the trip up to Auburn, Calif. for one of Placer High’s early-season matchups, McClure quickly realized Vanderdoes’s blue chip potential.

“I was so impressed that we offered him the next day,” he said.

Dozens more liked what they saw, too, and pretty soon, Vanderdoes became a nationally sought-after football commodity, a must-get for any coach on the class of 2013 recruiting trail. Initially flattering, all the attention quickly became draining.

“Oh, at first it was cool and fun, and then it got so stressful,” Vanderdoes said. “I stopped opening my mail probably four months from signing day. I just didn’t open it.”

With his top five narrowed to Notre Dame, UCLA, USC, Washington and Alabama as national signing day neared, the buzz surrounding Vanderdoes turned up to a roar. Fans and football staffs alike wanted a piece of Vanderdoes through just about any medium possible. When NCAA scheduling rules barred programs from speaking directly to him, it was Montoya who was bombarded as a potential avenue to the consensus five-star recruit.

Vanderdoes slipped a Notre Dame snapback on his head on national signing day in February, and at the time, it was more of a relief than anything.

“It was nice being done, because it was so stressful, especially the last week,” Vanderdoes said. “Everybody was calling me. I was getting texts from people here, people there, fans, Twitter, all that.”

About a month into his commitment, though, Vanderdoes realized South Bend, Ind. wasn’t for him. It was also not the right fit for his Sacramento-area family, including his grandmother, who has breast cancer and is unable to travel long distances.

Still under written contract with Notre Dame, Vanderdoes went from March to June unable to talk with any of the other schools that recruited him, by NCAA rule. He worried that even with a resume that included a U.S. Army All-American Bowl selection, the ordeal of his recruitment with Notre Dame would leave him without a permanent football home for his freshman season.

“I was scared,” he said. “There was a chance I was going to have to go to a J.C., which scared me because the more it dragged on, I was thinking nobody was going to take me. It was hard.”

Once he received his recruiting uplift, however, all the regulars came calling once more, and Vanderdoes decided to enroll at UCLA. The fight to earn a release from his national letter of intent, however, caused frustration to mount.

Notre Dame’s fan base seethed and speculated, and it seemed everyone was able to voice his or her opinion on Vanderdoes’ situation and his reasons for departure, except for Vanderdoes himself.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions with what happened with (Vanderdoes) and I could tell you, as a matter of fact, that he is 100 percent a phenomenal kid with great character,” Montoya said.

It took two additional months for him to finally get on the phone with the NCAA and explain himself, and an hour and a half later, the National Letter of Intent Steering Committee felt it had heard enough – covering its bases and releasing Vanderdoes from his national letter of intent the following day.

Now in his fourth month with the UCLA football program, having endured a grueling recruitment and back pain throughout much of fall camp in San Bernardino, Calif., Vanderdoes is showing the same strength, pursuit and hand-fighting ability that made him a household name in recruiting circles across the nation.

While Vanderdoes has had starting reps in several of UCLA’s defensive packages, it’s the company of freshman defensive linemen Kenny Clark and Kylie Fitts that has him hopeful for the line’s future.

“We eat together, we walk together,” Vanderdoes said. “It’s just kind of what we do because we know that we’re going to be playing with each other the next couple years. It’s crucial that we all have that connection together to play as one. They’re my homies.”

Clark said that for as talented of a player as Vanderdoes is, he is equally hungry to improve his craft.

“He’s a real explosive player, but he’s eager to learn, too,” Clark said. “If we stay on the same path and just keep pushing each other, I think it’s going to be a done deal.”

For Vanderdoes, much of that pushing comes from within. Even when reminded of his nine tackles, two for loss, in just his first two collegiate games, he is hypercritical of himself, recalling the misses long before the takedowns.

As if reviewing flashcards of timetables, he spouted off in rapid-fire fashion what he considers his on-field errors so far at UCLA. At Nebraska, he trailed Taylor Martinez by a step as he threw for a touchdown. Against Nevada, he bull rushed a guard into Cody Fajardo but didn’t complete the tackle, allowing the quarterback to break free.

“I feel like I have a lot more potential and I could be doing a lot more,” he said. “Like there’s a lot more I expect of myself that I haven’t done yet.”

Even away from Spaulding Field, those expectations ring true. As far as a UCLA baseball career, he said he’s thinking about it. Vanderdoes wants to see how his arm feels this offseason, but said coach Jim Mora is “all for it.”

Vanderdoes doesn’t know his major yet either, but on the football field his path has been etched out confidently and clearly in his mind.

“I see myself as an All-American,” he said. “I want to be a first-round draft pick. I want to be one of the best defensive linemen to ever play here. Hands down.”