Nolan Balke really can't complain about his past seven months. For this punter, everything has come off his foot just right. On Dec. 6, he shared in the first 6
Nolan Balke really can't complain about his past seven months. For this punter, everything has come off his foot just right. On Dec. 6, he shared in the first 6A Arizona football state championship for Casteel High School from the Phoenix suburbs.
On June 8, Balke received his first Division 1 scholarship offer, presented to him by the University of Washington. And, on Sunday, this Arizona kid committed to play in the Navy All-American Bowl on Jan. 9 in the Alamodome in San Antonio, an honor that suggests he is one of the top 100 players nationwide in some manner.
With San Diego State transfer and senior Hunter Green handling the Husky duties this coming season, Balke is the UW's designated punter in waiting for 2027. He's coming off a junior season for Casteel in which he averaged 42.6 yards per punt on 40 balls launched into the desert breeze for a 9-5 team, with a long of 64 yards.
In the title game against Centennial High, held at the former Sun Devils Stadium that now carries a generic sponsor label, Balke averaged 47 yards per punt, hitting one 50 yards and dropping a ball inside the 20, in the 42-27 victory. In recent years, the Huskies have found their punters through the transfer portal or their walk-on program, but Balke is the exception coming in as a high school recruit.
He currently carries a well-proportioned 6-foot-2, 190-pound physique for a punter that should fill out more. He's a dedicated weight lifter, as shown on social media with his recent 350-pound high-bar squats. In attending numerous Sailer kicking camps, he continues to move up the high school rankings, going from the No. 8 punter to No. 1, though it's not clear exactly what criteria is used to reach those conclusions.
No doubt, the various punters are judged on distance and hang time, with Balke keeping his balls airborne on the average of 4.6 seconds per boot. He's come a long way since he was a Casteel sophomore, when he appeared in three games and averaged just 27.5 yards per kick. Still he showed potential, rocketing one of his punts 52 yards back then.
A year from now, when the Huskies are preparing to open fall camp, Balke will be a big part of it, trying to lock down the starting job against whoever is brought in to challenge him. Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer.
His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.
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