The Oregon offense experienced an offensive surge late in this year’s spring drills. The running game had been solid all spring, but the passing game was inconsistent at best.
But in the last week of practice and on through the spring game, things finally seemed to click for the aerial attack. Two passes of more than 50 yards were completed in the game, as well two touchdowns. The first score was from Justin Roper to well-known senior wide receiver Jaison Williams. The second and final passing touchdown of the game went to little-known freshman wide receiver Elvis Akpla.
“Chip Kelly had called this play about four times in the red zone, because he had noticed that the corner was playing cover two, he’d bump me and then sag off and there was a big hole right between the corner and the safety,” Akpla said. “Cody Kempt finally hit me on one of them and I made a good play. It felt good. It was definitely a good feeling.”
Akpla’s name might not be on the tips of Duck football fans’ tongues just yet, but the freshman walk-on receiver certainly turned the heads of his coaches in football practice this spring.
“Elvis, with his speed, intrigues me a little bit,” coach Mike Bellotti said.
Receivers coach Robin Pflugrad was also quick to recognize Akpla’s talent.
“He was able to come out … and run around with us and you could see that there was some athletic ability there,” he said.
Akpla played football in high school at Lincoln High in Portland and dreamed of suiting up for the Ducks, but he was better known for his abilities in track and field. He won the Oregon Schools Activities Association title as a senior in both the triple jump and the long jump and was recruited to Oregon as a jumper. He was, in fact, the top horizontal jumper in his recruiting class.
“Playing football in high school I watched the Ducks all the time and I always thought I’d be able to play there,” Akpla said. “It was just a thing I wanted, a dream I always had.”
So when receivers started dropping from the roster with season-ending injuries last year, Akpla seized the opportunity, walking on to the practice squad in November. His track coaches, knowing of his dream to play football for the Ducks, gave him their blessing.
“I had a premonition that he might come out earlier,” Pflugrad said. “We had a few injuries and that opened up some locker space, so to speak.”
Akpla said that it has been challenging making the transition from track to football, especially at the Division I level.
“Everything happens much quicker, everybody is much bigger … your athletic superiority is nullified because everybody is just as good an athlete as you are,” he said. “It takes a little bit to transition, but once you get used to it everything starts to slow down.”
Akpla is no stranger to transition. He was raised in Senegal, Africa, and at age 8 his mother moved him and his big brother Mike, 17 at the time, to Portland in search of bigger and better things for all of them. Akpla remembers a simpler life in Africa.
“I was a child but I could tell that it was more simple. People aren’t as ambitious,” he said. “Here it’s try to get what you want, in Africa it’s more trying to get what you need and you are just more satisfied with what you have.”
The biggest transition for Akpla was that schools taught in English here rather than his native French. Akpla is also fluent in Spanish.
“I went to private schools the whole time (growing up). It was pretty much the same as the private school I went to here,” he said. “The language was the only challenging part (of the transition), it was pretty much the same other than that.”
The transition from track to football was mostly a mental one for Akpla, and one he has made smoothly according to coaches.
“It’s tough, mostly mentally, because you have to go into practice in a different mentality in track and football,” he said. “You have opponents when you go to practice (in football), but in track it’s just you against yourself.”
For an athlete of Akpla’s caliber, the physical rigor of playing two sports isn’t really an issue. “Once your body gets used to it it’s pretty normal,” he said. “It’s been tough but I’ve managed it.”
And he isn’t satisfied with just making the team. Now that he’s managed to accomplish his dream of making the squad, the next phase begins.
“It’s a good feeling, but now I have more goals that I have to accomplish,” he said. “I’m just trying to move forward and see how well I can do.”
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