By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Josh White has three years of eligibility left and will
play football at the University of California.

---

No Joshin’:
White’s for real

The former all-state running back
is headed for California with
a full scholarship

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Josh White is a minor mountain who can run the 40 in 4.6 seconds, pull a crossing pattern pass out of his ear or chug into the endzone with a defensive back attached to his belt.

With 38-inch thighs, 19-inch biceps and a 25-inch neck, he looks even more intimidating now than when he was a Star-Bulletin first-team all-state performer for Farrington High, scoring 24 touchdowns in 12 games.

At 6 feet, 240 pounds, he's playing with 30 more pounds of muscle than he ever had playing prep ball here, and he's bench-pressing 355 pounds.

So it is not hard to figure out why the University of California is giving him a full scholarship for his last three years of eligibility. White is a fullback who can make the defense pay.

Defenders who have tried to bring down White have often come up limping.

"We don't want a dancer," said Golden Bears running backs coach Ron Gould. "We want him to punish people.

"He has great balance for a big guy, is elusive like a halfback and physical enough like a lineman to deliver a blow with velocity."

In short, Gould and the Bears' offensive line coach, Tom Cable, concluded after watching videotape that White had everything they could ask for in a fullback.

"We ran in to (head coach) Tom Holmoe and said we got to recruit this guy," he said. "We have a chance to win a lot of ball games with him around."

Arizona State thought so, too and gave the Bears a run for White's services. The University of Hawaii, which was White's first choice due to the fact he is married locally, did not pursue him.

"We want him to run the ball and catch it but blocking will be the first thing he does for us," said Gould.

The very fact that a Division I school can say that about White is testimony to a remarkable accomplishment for the quiet-spoken young man.

He lost vision in his left eye at the age of 1 when he tripped and fell on a sharp toy.

"I've never known what it's like to see out of two eyes," he said in a 1992 interview.

It's a handicap that has become part of his mystique, but it has never been an alibi.

White said he asked both the Cal-Berkely and Arizona State coaches if they were aware of his sight handicap.

"I said, 'You guys know I'm blind in my left eye, right?' and they said, 'And ... your point is?' They still wanted me. That's great but I wanted everything to be on the table."

White refuses to cite restrictive vision as the reason for his academic struggle as a Farrington senior. "I just didn't apply myself," he said.

At the end of the 1994-95 school year, White graduated from Farrington without being able to achieve enough of an SAT score to take advantage of a scholarship Brigham Young had offered him.

He took a job as a security guard for the next several months and finally got a call from Allen Salanoa, the Snow (junior) College running backs coach who urged him to come out to Utah.

So, in January 1996, White began charging after an associate degree in science with the same determination he'd display in a goal-to-go situation.

Eager to make up for lost time, White went five straight quarters and finished with a 2.5 grade point average.

In September, when Cal opens at Houston and then hosts Oklahoma, White will have a lot of things on his mind.

His wife, the former Ginger Lau, is expecting the couple's first child that month.

They were married in Hawaii in December by his father-in-law, the Rev. Leonard Lau.

"I got lots of support from my wife's family," said White.

But there's one thing that could make him even happier.

"I haven't seen my mom in North Carolina since 1995," he said. "Maybe when we play at Louisiana Tech Oct. 4 she can come down."