Idaho senior safety Tom Hennessey is living his childhood dream of playing football for Idaho, but the journey wasn’t easy.
He wasn’t highly recruited coming out of high school and the only scholarship offers he received were from small schools, which he had no desire to play for. So Hennessey took the unconventional, difficult path to achieve his dream, and walked on the Vandal football team.
“Of course you’re always trying to get a scholarship, but that didn’t work out for me,” Hennessey said. “My dad played up here, so I grew up a huge Vandal fan and wanted to come to school here. So that all worked out the way I wanted it to.”
Around this time each year, when fall camp ends and school is back in session, college football programs across the nation have walk-on tryouts.
Teams are limited to 85 scholarships, but can have a maximum of 105 players participating in fall camp. When camp ends, however, schools are allowed to add even more players to their rosters.
“Some teams have up to 120, 130 guys on their roster,” Idaho recruiting coordinator Jason Shumaker said. “When school starts, you can add another 15 plus guys to your team. That’s where we’re at now — we’ve gotten through fall camp, now we can add a few more guys.”
While the argument for student athletes to be paid on top of their scholarship goes on, walk-on players continue to pay for their education in order to play the sport they love.
Hennessey said walk-on players start at the bottom on scout team, but get opportunities to work their way up the roster.
“You come in with a huge chip on your shoulder, if you don’t then you’re not going to make it,” Hennessey said. “Being a walk-on, you have to come in with the mentality that you’re going to work harder than everyone else, every single day. You can’t show any signs of weakness or have any self doubt.”
Shumaker said the coaching staff usually rewards walk-ons if the player works hard on the field and in the classroom. In his two years with Idaho, he said they have added six or seven walk-ons to scholarship.
“That’s the hope and dream for everybody that comes out,” Shumaker said. “If you’re willing to come in and work hard, then there’s no doubt you can climb up and be a contributor for the Vandals.”
Hennessey said he found his niche on special teams, but only played sparingly in his first three years.
Last season, with Paul Petrino and the new coaching staff, Hennessey said his role started to grow. He earned a full-time role on special teams and was the backup safety. He also earned a scholarship.
“It was a very rewarding feeling to finally get that scholarship,” Hennessey said. “You feel like you’re overlooked coming out of high school not getting one … To finally get rewarded for that, it’s one of the best feelings ever.”
Now a senior, Hennessey has been named the special teams captain for the first game of the season.
“Just keep a positive attitude no matter how hard things get,” Hennessey said to potential walk-ons. “If you really believe in yourself and believe in what you’re doing, it’s going to work out.”
The Vandals had a meeting 4 p.m. on Monday and have a tryout at 6 p.m. on Tuesday for potential walk-on players. Shumaker said usually around 20 players tryout, but he hopes for a bigger turnout this year. Students need to be enrolled at UI fulltime in order to tryout.