As USC receiver Kyron Hudson lifted into the air in Las Vegas on Sunday, his right arm reaching for a reception that seemingly would defy the laws of gravity, Bruce Rollinson leaped up from the couch in awe.
The retired Mater Dei coach knew better than most what led to that moment. He’d watched Hudson work and work and work during their time together at Mater Dei, arriving early, leaving late, spending hours grinding film or drilling the same details over and over again until it was muscle memory. Never once did he drag or pout or complain.
“Just continue to trust the process,” he said. The refrain has become a mantra for Hudson, one that’s finally starting to yield results as a redshirt junior.
“Once you believe, once you trust that, anything is possible,” Hudson said.
That was how he’d been raised in a family of deep faith, by a father who was a former Marine. Hudson and his siblings were taught to work for whatever they got, always earning their keep. So when it came to football, the hard work was second nature.
“He was the model of what I believed you had to do as a high school athlete if you had aspirations of becoming a college football player,” Rollinson said.
Still, Hudson never could quite satisfy the college coaches or scouts or so-called recruiting experts who hoped his 40-yard dash time would’ve been faster. Rollinson heard all the patronizing insinuations, making a point of simply noting Hudson’s production.
“All I knew is that he caught everything that was close to him,” Rollinson said. “His hands were just unbelievable.”
Even that was a product of hours of repetition, as Hudson would stay late working on catching balls from every possible angle. Often, Rollinson would have to remind him to use a crash pad if he intended to try any diving, one-handed grabs on the practice field.
“He’d spend hours on the field, just taking passes that are thrown behind you, passes you gotta reach for, low balls,” Rollinson said.
Those long hours paid off Sunday on the biggest stage yet for Hudson. The show-stopping, one-handed grab, snagged between two Louisiana State defenders, was only the beginning of a career-best night that included five catches for 83 yards and a signature win over the Tigers.
“He was so big for us,” said fellow USC wideout Kyle Ford, Hudson’s roommate. “But he makes those all the time.”
Hudson earned that reliable reputation during three seasons in which he never quite broke through. He caught two passes during a limited freshman season, then 15 as a redshirt freshman and 17 as a redshirt sophomore, all the while trusting that eventually his time would come.
It wasn’t clear that moment would come this season, let alone in Week 1. In a stacked receiver room, Hudson didn’t seem like the obvious breakout candidate. He was surrounded by uber-athletic sophomores with overwhelming size or blinding speed or some combination of them.
But his years of grinding hadn’t been lost on coach Lincoln Riley. When USC lined up against LSU on Sunday, Hudson was among the Trojans’ starting receivers.
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“He’s one of those guys that you just can’t have enough of them in your program,” Riley said. “They just stay the course, they keep getting better. There’s not maybe always these massive jumps, but they’re always there.
“There have been times where he hasn’t played many snaps, where he’s had limited roles or most of the snaps have been on special teams or as a blocker, and he’s never once complained. He’s never once been up to my office saying, ‘Can I get more touches? Can I get more of this? How can I get better?’ It’s funny, when you do things like that, you get better really fast. You don’t worry about all the other BS on the outside that doesn’t matter, and all of a sudden you look up one day and the guy is a pretty good player.”
Down the stretch Sunday, Hudson proved essential. With 18 seconds left and USC tied with LSU, quarterback Miller Moss spotted Hudson sprinting down the left sideline, just past his defender, and let it rip.
Hudson could sense the safety sprinting toward him from the other direction. But he reached out both hands nonetheless, absorbing a helmet-to-helmet blow in the process.
Still, he held on to the 20-yard catch, putting USC in position to put LSU away. Later, Hudson conceded it was actually the harder catch of the two.
To his roommate, both were unbelievable.
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“I told him like five times that night that I still don’t believe he caught it,” Ford said.
Hudson watched it a few more times himself by Tuesday. But there would be no basking in his biggest football moment to date, no time taken to consider how far he’d come.
The process, in Hudson’s mind, didn’t allow for that.
“It was a great play,” Hudson said. “But I’m ready for this week.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.