Lakes, links, legend Lakes, links, legend Lakes, links, legend
Everything former Husky and Seahawk star Jermaine Kearse touches in life seems to turn into gold.
When viewed solely through the lens of objective statistical analysis, former Husky wideout Jermaine Kearse, ’12, had a rather pedestrian NFL career, catching just 17 touchdown passes in a seven-year span.
But Kearse had a knack for making enormous postseason catches that proved pivotal to the Seattle Seahawks—with whom he spent his first five seasons in the league—either winning or making Super Bowls in 2013 and 2014.
In any other city on any other team, Kearse’s exploits might be a nothing more than a pleasant afterthought. Yet because he was a local who reached his greatest heights just as the Seahawks reached theirs, he is remembered as a franchise legend, an honor the Seattle NFL team recently bestowed on Kearse in naming him its 2024 Legend of the Year.
It’s Kearse’s off-the-field achievements, however, that really sealed the deal. The Tacoma Lakes High School grad grew up on Joint Base Lewis-McChord (then Fort Lewis) south of Tacoma, and he has launched charitable and community endeavors to enrich the lives of military families and their children.
Jermaine Kearse, now a husband and girl-dad of three, is known for his clutch football performances, including a jaw-dropping catch at the end of the 2015 Super Bowl with the Seahawks.
Kearse’s mother is German, and he spent a couple of his formative years going to preschool there. It made sense, then, that Kearse was recently tapped to travel to Germany as a Seahawks ambassador, with the NFL now staging multiple games there annually.
“There are tons of Seahawk fans in Germany,” he told University of Washington Magazine. “From a lot of conversations I’ve had with them, football started to pick up in Germany during our run. That’s when a lot of fans started to get into it.”
In Kearse’s freshman year at UW, the Huskies finished 0-12 in Ty Willingham’s final season as head coach. In Kearse’s standout junior and senior campaigns, with Steve Sarkisian in charge, UW finished 7-6 and went to consecutive bowl games.
“Going winless in a season isn’t great, but it’s kind of cool to be part of a class that hit rock bottom but was also able to change the trajectory of the program,” said Kearse. “It had been a while since we’d been to a bowl game.”
After his NFL days were over, Kearse served as a program assistant with UW football from 2020 to 2021. “I try to stay involved as much as I can,” he said. “Justin Glenn, who now works with the Big W Club, was my roommate in college. D’Andre Goodwin, another receiver, he’s a firefighter in Bellevue. I talk to those guys quite often.”
Because he was a local who reached his greatest heights just as the Seahawks reached theirs, Jermaine Kearse is remembered as a franchise legend.
These days Kearse is just as involved with the UW’s golf program, having taken the sport up in his post-collegiate days. Now, it’s his career, as Kearse is the co-founder of Evergreen Golf Club, a massive, state-of-the-art indoor training operation with locations in Redmond and Tacoma.
A three or four handicap, there’s no telling whether Kearse could have lettered in two sports at UW had he taken golf up sooner. But looking at the current state of college football, he said, “The landscape has definitely changed. I think there are some positives in there and a lot of things that could improve. It’s a different playing field with NIL [name, image and likeness] and the transfer portal.
“Things are always bound to evolve and change. You just have to keep up if you want to have a seat at the table, and I think UW has done a pretty good job in continuing to grab a seat at the table and evolve with the times.”