JUMP TEXAS MAGAZINE

BY DON WILLIAMS
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

More than half the Pac 10 Conference and a few schools in the Big 12 wanted Bryce Lamb to play for their football teams. For the time being, Lamb appears content to forego the adulation of big crowds.

The Chandler, Ariz., high school standout said Sunday that he plans to sign with Texas Tech when the national signing period begins on Feb. 4. It’s a track and field scholarship that he’s going to sign.

Lamb said he hasn’t closed the door on the possibility of playing football. But in track, he should be talented enough to contend for trips to NCAA national meets his first year on campus, so that’s where his focus is going to be.

“I do like to play football, but if the track season goes good enough, I don’t think there would be too much more thought about it,” Lamb said.

In competition, Lamb has career bests of 52 feet, 2 inches in the triple jump and 25-9 1/4 in the long jump. During the 2008 high school season, his junior year, Lamb had two of the top six triple-jump marks in the nation and long-jump marks that ranked third and 15th nationally.

He also played running back and safety for his high school football team and said he has football offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, UCLA, Colorado, Colorado State, Nebraska, Washington State, Oregon State, Air Force, Texas-El Paso and Minnesota. Lamb, who is 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, said most of those schools recruited him to be a defensive back.

Asked whether he preferred one sport over the other, Lamb said, “I don’t think I enjoy one more than the other. I just think I work harder for track than football maybe.”

By NCAA rule, an athlete on track scholarship can’t play football his first two years on campus. To do so any sooner, he’d have to give up the track scholarship.

To put Lamb’s personal records into perspective, a 25-9 1/4 long jump would have been second at last year’s NCAA Midwest Regional outdoor meet and would have tied for first at the 2007 Midwest Regional. A 52-2 in the triple jump would have been sixth at last year’s Midwest Regional.

Tech’s Anthony Flemons, who was an NCAA outdoor qualifier in the triple jump in 2007, went a career-best 52-9 1/4 to win the prestigious Drake Relays two years ago and finished third in last May’s Big 12 outdoor long jump with a career-best 25-3 1/4 — shorter than Lamb’s personal best.

Lamb hasn’t been recruited by Tech football coaches. However, he said he had the blessing of Tech’s track staff to try football in the future if he wanted.

“When they told me that, that kind of reasoned it all up for me,” he said. “It’s a good place to play football, and that’s where I wanted to go run track.”

Lamb is a cousin of Terra Evans, a freshman sprinter from Phoenix on the Tech women’s track team.