MARQUETTE, Mich. (WZMQ) – A high school with 120 students that doesn’t even have its own football program isn’t somewhere you would expect your average NFL offensive tackle to come from. But Jake Witt isn’t your average offensive tackle
“We co-oped, we were such a small program we had to co-op,” said Witt about his high school team.
His highschool teamed up with a nearby school to field an 8 man football team, which Witt played for all 4 years in highschool. When it came time to move on to college sports, Witt had offers to play at multiple schools. He chose to attend Michigan Tech, but even standing at 6-7 and weighing 280 pounds at the time it wasnt to play football.
“Basketball at that point was so much more natural for me, so that’s what I opted to do,” remarked Witt.
Witt spent one year playing basketball at tech before he transferred to nmu for academic reasons, saying “they had a perfect program for me, applied health and exercise science, it happened to be in the upper peninsula as well.”
He didn’t join the football team at Northern until some players saw him working out at a local gym and told him he had to come out for the team. witt then spent the next year training to play at the collegiate level.
“I wasn’t ready to play at this level of physicality, coming from 8 man, so it was a good adjustment year,” Witt said.
The hard work has paid off. Earlier this month he broke records in the vertical and broad jump at Central Michigan University during his pro day. He beat the all time combine record in the broad jump and tied the all time record for the vertical.
He’s proud to come from the Upper Peninsula and he hopes to inspire athletes coming from small schools like he did, “I wanna wear the U.P on my back and show younger generations we can do it.”
The NFL draft is on April 15th, and Witt says he’s going to watch with family downstate.
