Tackling the Odds

A high school senior is more likely to be struck by lightning during his lifetime than to play football in the National Football League.  A scant .09 percent of high school seniors make it to the NFL. In fact, only 5.6 percent of high school seniors even play football at an NCAA college, let alone make it to the pro level.

When Max Unger lined up at center for the Seattle Seahawks in the 2009 NFL season, he did more than defy the huge odds stacked against him.  He put an exclamation point on one of the most notable—and improbable—athletic careers in the history of HPA.  

Max came to HPA as a freshman in 2000.  He’d never played organized football, had no skills as a player, and sat on the sidelines for the first season.  “It was pretty ugly,” Max recalls.  “I’d never played football.  I got thrown into it.  I had to learn pretty quickly.”

Max did have a couple of things going for him.  First, he was big.  Very big.  He also backed up his imposing size with a powerful work ethic, which, by his senior year, had propelled him to the forefront of high school football in Hawai‘i.

It was no surprise when Max received a football scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he soon discovered that HPA had prepared him well, both on and off the field.

“When I got to college, it was easy compared to the workload and what was expected of us at HPA” he said.  “I had essentially been doing a college-style program for four years.  I lived in the dorms for four years.  Study hall time—it’s the same.”

Of all those who play football in college, only 2.6 percent go on to a career in the NFL. Seattle selected Max in the second round of the 2009 NFL draft—the 49th player taken overall that year.  In 2010, he’ll play his second season with the team, continuing to defy the odds and carrying the banner of HPA for the first time in a place it had never been before.