By BRAD BOURNIVAL

Staff Writer

Eighth-grade yearbook pictures are never anything to write home about. The buck teeth, wild hair and onset of acne can make anyone run and hide.

Tyler Houska would give anything to relive those days, however, because that’s when the two-time all-state linebacker grew not only into his body, but his position on the football field for Highland.

“In pee wee football he was this tall, lanky, goofy looking kid,” said Brandon Warner, who has played alongside Houska since third grade. “I remember kids picking on him that were half his size.”

Houska was always the tallest in his class, so it made sense to put the senior at the most important position on the field. While intimidating to look at, he wasn’t hard to get around as a seventh-grader. That is, until it all clicked a year later.

Playing Revere in a Suburban League contest, Houska, who now stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 234 pounds, put a hurting on a Minutemen running back that people remember to this day.

“There was a play where he knocked an ear hole out of a kid from Revere,” Warner said. “An ear hole! Ever since then, we expect things like that out of him.”

Houska has certainly responded with bone-jarring hit after bone-jarring hit, highlighting a Hornets defense that is giving up just 189.9 yards per game as it prepares for a Division II, Region 6 semifinal with Powell Olentangy Liberty on Firday.

Opposing coach’s game plan around Houska, who has gotten looks from Ohio University. They run to him. They run away from him. They clog the middle. They run outside.

Yet there he is, time after time making the play.

“He’s such a smart defensive player,” fellow linebacker Chris Snook said. “He always knows what’s coming. He’s always had that natural nose for the ball.

“He just has talent that is god given, a natural linebacker. He doesn’t pay attention to how much they key on him. He doesn’t care. He just flies to the football. It’s hard to stop someone with the instincts he has.”

Those instincts have Houska leading the Hornets again in almost all defensive statistics. His 118 tackles are nearly twice as much as the second-leading man in Jerrod Serafin (60).

But that’s nothing new for Houska, who led the Hornets as a sophomore with 108 tackles and then repeated the feat as a junior with 89, adding 3½ sacks.

“He’s one of those linebackers that will find a way to get to the ball,” Highland linebackers coach Tim Snook said. “He’s got power in all ways, from his hips to his nose.

“He’s knows all the x’s and o’s of the position. Nothing fazes him. He comes across as always smiling, but he’s never nervous.”

Some of that has to do with Houska’s wrestling background. A returning state runner-up in D-II for the Hornets, Houska needs just 26 victories to pass Jesse Leng as the winningest grappler in Highland history.

His 111-30 mark on the mat proves he’s a winner. But then again, so does his drive.

While working through a rugged wrestling schedule last season, Houska still showed up every day at 6 a.m. to lift with the football team.

He worked on his technique and foot skills, but most of all hit the weights, making him the strongest on the team. So strong that Chris Snook isn’t a big fan of getting lit up by his senior teammate in practice.

Then again, neither is Avon Lake’s Joe Gaydosh. The senior was cruising downfield on a punt last week in Highland’s regional quarterfinal tilt when Houska welcomed him to Highland with a crushing blow.

That single hit showed the Shoremen what the Hornets were about and left an impression on the 6-225-pounder from Avon Lake, who had to be helped to the sideline.

‘He’s probably the third- or fourth-fastest linebacker on our team,” Warner said. “But he has something on the football field no one else has. When he steps out there, he’s a different person.

“He put a hit on that kid in the punt return and it looked like the kid was in seventh grade.”

Bournival may be reached at bournival929@sbcglobal.net or 330-721-4045.