High School Sports
KingCo 3A: Bellevue linebacker E.J. Savannah unleashes wild side

By Matt Peterson
Seattle Times staff reporter

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES E.J. Savannah was a hyperactive handful for his mom when he was growing up, but now grabs the attention of football opponents.

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BELLEVUE — Susan Savannah might have seen this day coming, when her little boy, the self-described "wild child," would find the perfect outlet for the energy that kept her constantly on the run.

And then everyone would see that those unbelievable stories she told were true.

Stories like how she had to use bungee cords to keep the boy in his room, only to find him later climbing out the window. Or how she'd sometimes look up and see him suddenly 40 feet in the air, screaming gleefully from one of those big, swaying trees. Or how at age 2, he once sneaked out and wandered down to busy 148th Avenue, where he tried to board a city bus.

"He was quite the handful," Susan Savannah says of her son, E.J. "He wasn't bad, he was just busy."

Thankfully for both, somewhere between childhood and adolescence, football intervened. And all that energy, daring and verve found a home under a helmet, the boy's saving grace.

E.J. Savannah, now 17, sits on the concrete stairway that leads to the field at Bellevue High School, his linebacker arms stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt, football season only days away. He stands 6 feet 2, weighs 218 pounds, runs 40 yards in 4.5 seconds and now everybody knows. College coaches call. Internet recruiting geeks rave. And scholarship offers pour in, eight and counting, from Arizona, Arizona State, California, Duke, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State.

Thank heavens for football.

"My mom had to keep me busy, so she kept putting me in sports," he says. "She says she's lucky to see me at this age because I was going crazy."
 
These days, the mayhem is mostly confined to the field, where since transferring to Bellevue from Interlake during the spring of his sophomore year, Savannah has blossomed into one of the top football recruits in the state. He'll pull double duty for the Wolverines this season, starting at running back and linebacker, where he is ferocious hitter.

Last season, he hit an opposing quarterback so hard that the kid got his own elbow stuck under his own facemask. How that was physically possible, nobody seems sure, but a Bellevue coach says it's right there on the videotape.

"He's a kid who plays sideline to sideline for 48 minutes, a kid that gives everything he has," said assistant defensive coordinator Calvin Clements. "Each play he's involved in is a high-adrenaline, high-impact play. You won't want to take your eyes off No. 22."

Coming off three consecutive Class 3A state championships, the Wolverines open their season Saturday against De La Salle of Concord, Calif., the four-time reigning mythical national champion and winner of 151 straight games.

Savannah, like the rest of his teammates, can't wait. They've been preparing for eight months, taking their workouts to new levels, studying more film than ever, and committing themselves like no other season in recent memory.

"This whole summer it wasn't really summer," said Savannah, whose initials stand for Edward and Junior (his father also is named Edward). "It was basically football camp."

Savannah has a videotape of the Spartans in his hands right now, and above it, on his left wrist, wears a rubber band. He snaps it whenever he catches himself entertaining negative thoughts, a reminder, he says, to always stay positive, and to keep focused on the dream.

"I always saw this happening," says the former wild child turned football star. "I always saw this in my future, doing things like this and having (college) coaches after me. I expected to do these things ... and nothing was going to stop me."

Matt Peterson: 206-515-5536 or mpeterson@seattletimes.com