Hard work pays off for EWU safety Zach Bruce

Zach Bruce’s favorite football moment? That’s easy.

Three years ago, with half the Eastern Washington safeties felled by injury, the redshirt freshman from Spokane Valley got his first collegiate start. At Montana.

In the Big Sky Conference, that’s considered the ultimate baptism of fire.

Then Bruce poured gasoline on the flames with a sideline hit on a Griz receiver, igniting the emotions of 25,000 fans even as the officials disdained a penalty.

“It really could have gone either way,” said Bruce, now a starter and a team captain. “But that was one of the best feelings in my college career, getting booed by 25,000 fans.”

The Eagles won that game and eventually a second straight Big Sky Conference title, and the Bruce family has rekindled the memory ever since.

That moment was built on dreams, the outsized ones that Bruce acted on as a standout athlete at University High School. He was a first-team all-Greater Spokane League defensive back and second-team running back - which was nice, but didn’t bring a single Division I scholarship offer.

“To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of options,” said Bruce, who consulted with former U-Hi coach Bill Diedrick and found his way to Eastern as a walk-on.

The path was paved with highlight film spliced together with help from friends and family, and it caught the attention of Eastern coaches.

“We knew he was a good player, a late bloomer,” said EWU assistant Jeff Schmedding, a fellow U-Hi grad who saw Bruce’s potential and also that a roster spot was open for a walk-on in the fall of 2012.

It didn’t matter where. “I would have played receiver, safety, whatever it took. I actually long-snapped in high school, so I put that down too,” Bruce said with a laugh.

But he wasn’t joking. “I just wanted to play,” he said.

What followed was an up-by-the-bootstraps evolution, from redshirt freshman to emergency starter to one of the key players on Eastern’s defense.

“He’s living proof that hard work pays off,” said Schmedding, now the Eagles’ defensive coordinator but still Bruce’s position coach. More tangibly, Bruce was rewarded in with paid tuition in 2014 and a full scholarship last year.

Adds Schmedding: “He’s worked his way up the ladder … and he’s earned the respect of the guys.”

Life’s pretty good these days for Bruce. Those same guys picked him as a team captain. When the season is over, he plans to pursue a career in education or coaching, perhaps following Schmedding back to U-Hi and then a graduate assistant’s job at Eastern.

It gets better. For the last two years he’s been dating EWU basketball player Delaney Hodgins; in the longterm, his future “depends on what Delaney is doing,” he said.

In the meantime, there’s unfinished business on the field. As he walked out of Martin Stadium last weekend, Bruce saw room for improvement despite the Eagles’ 45-42 win over Washington State.

Fewer penalties, surer tackles. Better communication. Bruce puts the latter on his own shoulder pads.

“I’m just trying to get everybody on the same page,” Bruce said.