Another big day for BBK

Even for University of Washington senior linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven, that’s a lot. The former Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division Defensive Player of the Year out of Sacred Heart Prep and the Daily Journal Football Player of the Year his senior year, wreaked havoc Saturday in the Huskies’ 27-20 win over Arizona State, totaling 20 tackles (14 solo and six assisted) along with two strips and one fumble recovery.

“It was like he was in high school,” said Frank Rodriguez, SHP assistant principal of athletics. “He was just everywhere.”

In three varsity seasons at SHP, Burr-Kirven reached 20 tackles in a single game just twice — totaling a career-high 24 against Sequoia in a 33-3 win Nov. 1, 2013; and 20 in the CIF Division III state championship Dec. 21, 2013, a 27-15 loss at Corona del Mar-Newport Beach.

Twenty is a big number in the Pac-12 as well. Burr-Kirven’s feat is the first time the total has been reached in 2018, one of the reasons he currently leads the conference with 53 tackles and 13.3 tackles per game on the season. It is also the first time in 22 years a Washington player has tabbed 20, going back to John Fiala’s performance Sept. 7, 1996 at Arizona State.

Two weeks ago in the Huskies’ 21-7 victory at Utah, Burr-Kirven reeled off 11 tackles and earned Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week honors in the process. More important to Burr-Kirven in his follow-up performance — for which he earned his second consecutive Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week award — wasn’t his landmark tackle total, but that the triumph over Arizona State marked Washington’s third straight win of the year.

“I wasn’t really focused on doing anything super coming off the award last week,” Burr-Kirven said. “I just wanted to go out and try to do everything I can to help us win games. It just so happened this game that they tried to run the ball a lot and our D-line did a good job of beating up the block. So it was a good opportunity to make a lot of tackles.”

It was a big night for Huskies history as senior quarterback Jake Browning surpassed the 10,000-yard career passing mark. And early on, Washington’s first home conference game looked as though it might be an offensive shootout. Arizona State held two early leads of 7-0 and 10-7.

But as Browning and company started hammering away on offense, Burr-Kirven started leading a charge in holding the Sun Devils to 268 total yards of offense.

Near the end of the first half, Burr-Kirven was already celebrating with fist-pumps after stepping up for consecutive tackles. After the Huskies took a 17-10 lead into halftime, Burr-Kirven returned as a ball hawk in the second half, forcing two third-quarter fumbles, including a fumble recovery with 4:30 remaining in the quarter.

Perhaps his most impressive stand came in the game’s final minutes. Washington was leading 27-13 when, with Arizona State snapping on second-and-goal from the 1, Burr-Kirven produced a stuff on a dive through the middle to stop the run for no gain.

And while the Sun Devils got into the end zone on third down on an option dive by quarterback Manny Wilkins, Burr-Kirven nearly made a play that — had Wilkins opted to hand off to running back Eno Benjamin — would have resulted in a defensive highlight that would have likely been playing on a loop around the viral-verse as Burr-Kirven hurdled the line with great alacrity to corral Benjamin as Wilkins was in the midst of an option exchange, wisely choosing to take it himself.

The victory worked as payback for last year’s matchup when Arizona State won a defensive battle 13-7 in Tempe, Arizona. Burr-Kirven said the objective is for the team to put those games behind them. But the reality is that isn’t always possible.

“You try to ignore that stuff but it definitely was a frustrating game last year,” Burr-Kirven said. “You always have bitter memories from any loss, so I think you always try to come out and play your best ball, especially against a team that beat you the year before. And I think we did a good job of coming out and responding, not letting last year carry over into this year.”

While Burr-Kirven has already been recognized as a legit NCAA linebacker — he was named to the watch list for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy that honors the best defensive player in college football — these past two weeks have taken his prospect star into another stratosphere.

Now, a question that has followed Burr-Kirven throughout his football career again begins to circle: Does he have the size to play at the next level? As a high school senior in 2013, he listed at 6-1, 200 pounds, and garnered minimal interest from elite Division I programs.

Burr-Kirven currently lists at 6-1, 221 pounds, approximately 20 pounds under the average weight of NFL linebackers. The collegiate senior certainly has one believer in The King’s Academy head coach Pete Lavorato, Burr-Kirven’s former head coach at SHP.

“I think he can play in the NFL, and I’ve always said that,” Lavorato said. “And it’s because of who he is.”

Lavorato referenced one of the most famous undersized players in football history, quarterback Doug Flutie, whom Lavorato coached against in the Canadian Football League in 1995. Like Flutie, who at 5-10, played over 20 professional seasons between the USFL, NFL and CFL, Burr-Kirven possesses the tool that doesn’t register at NFL combines — desire.

“The great thing about Ben, he made everybody better,” Lavorato said.

That’s a great compliment considering the strength of SHP athletics during Burr-Kirven’s generation. Not only did he lead the Gators to the first of two straight Northern California championships as a senior two-way standout in 2013, he was also a sprinter on the school’s track-and-field team, reaching the podium at the West Bay Athletic League championships in boys’ 100-meter as sophomore.

Being a multi-sport athlete is the norm at the small Atherton private school, but Burr-Kirven’s graduating class spawned one of its great eras. From 2013-16, Gators athletics won 29 varsity league championships, 12 Central Coast Section championships and three state championship appearances, including two by the football team.

“It was a really special time,” Rodriguez said. “That … window, we won in every sport.”

The list of next-level talent SHP produced during that time is astounding. As impressive as Burr-Kirven’s Washington career has been, he has some tough competition as to who is the crème de la crème.

Stanford junior Tierna Davidson, a reigning Pac-12 Women’s Soccer Defender of the Year for the national champion Cardinal, not to mention a starter on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is surely a contender. Swimmer Ally Howe went on to win a national championship at Stanford in 2018; Andrew Daschbach an All-Pac-12 baseball player; and Sean Mayle, a three-year starter for the University of Denver’s men’s lacrosse national championship team are all products of SHP’s golden era.

“I think the class before me, my class and the class after me were pretty stacked athletically across the board, whether it was water polo, baseball, soccer, football, pretty much everything we were pretty darn good,” Burr-Kirven said. “Those couple years it was definitely special to be a part of. We won a couple CCS championships in a row, went to state a couple times. It was pretty wild. There was a lot of talent that came out of those couple years.”

Only one of those players, though, has 20 tackles on the back of his baseball card.

“That’s what Ben’s all about,” Lavorato said. “He just wants to play football.”

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