Hewitt Believes He Can Do It -- Federal Way Jets Receiver Sets His Sights On The NFL

Three and a half years ago, Dave Hewitt gave himself a second chance at life. Today he lives in hope that someone will give him a second chance to play professional football.

Hewitt, a star receiver at Ingraham High School in Seattle in 1984, realizes he blew his first chance when he started using cocaine and smoking marijuana while attending Shoreline Community College in 1985. College recruiters, turned on by Hewitt's performance on the football field, were turned off by his performance in the classroom.

Instead of going to a community college that offered football, Hewitt elected to attend Shoreline to improve his grades, with intentions of moving on to a four-year college on a football scholarship. But he made all the wrong moves.

"I started hanging out with the wrong people," said Hewitt, 25, now in his second season with the Federal Way Jets semipro football team. "I got involved with some people I shouldn't have gotten involved with. I got involved with drugs pretty heavily - marijuana, coke, that kind of stuff. But then I cleaned up my act and decided it was time to go back out and play. I know there's a future for me in football. I've just got to take the long road in semipro."

On Feb. 9, 1989, with the prompting of his grandmother, Hewitt checked himself into the chemical dependency care unit at Ballard Community Hospital.

"We talked about me going into the program," he said. "I wanted to go, but it took her driving down to my work and taking me there. She picked me up, and the next thing I knew I was in the care unit."

Hewitt, who grew up living with his grandmother, completed the three-month program successfully and has been "clean and sober" since. In the summer of 1989, he turned out for the Seattle Express team in the Minor League Football System and played two seasons (the team became the Tacoma Express in 1990). The league, which offered more travel than the Northwest Football League the Jets play in, folded after the 1990 season and Hewitt needed a new team.

Enter Kenny Austin, owner and coach of the Jets and currently Hewitt's agent. Austin was a regular customer of Hewitt's at the Mutual Fish Company in South Seattle.

"I noticed he was wearing a football (charm) around his neck and I asked him about it," Austin said. "One thing led to another, and I agreed to work with him as a representative to try to get him some tryouts."

After Hewitt led the Jets and the NWFL in receiving with 21 catches for 539 yards and seven touchdowns last season, Austin landed two tryouts for Hewitt earlier this year - first with the Sacramento Surge of the World League of American Football, and then with the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League. Hewitt was especially disappointed to not make it with the Lions. He was the final cut at mini-camp.

"It's kind of hard to see people make it in front of you who aren't as good," said Hewitt, who has eight receptions for 237 yards and two touchdowns for the 2-1 Jets, who play the Pierce County Bengals tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at Federal Way Memorial Stadium.

Austin, too, was miffed.

"That was very political," he said. "I felt he could have made the team. I thought he did real good (in camp), but in the end (the Lions) didn't feel the same way."

Hewitt's lack of college experience is his biggest drawback, but Austin believes he can play professionally.

"He definitely could play at another level," he said. "He's killing everyone in this league right now . . . It's just going to take someone looking at him as the athlete he is as opposed to the fact he didn't play college football."

Ron Sidenquist, an assistant coach at Ingraham in 1984, remembers Hewitt as "a fine high-school athlete" who led the Rams in receiving his senior year. Sidenquist became Ingraham's head coach the following season and won the Class AAA state title in 1988. He now is head coach at Lake Washington.

Hewitt's attitude is his No. 1 attribute, according to Austin.

"He's a very, very coachable individual," he said. "And as far as his ability goes, he's got good speed, and he goes up for the football when he has to, and dives for the football when he has to. He's a well-rounded athlete and well-rounded wide receiver."

Hewitt, 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, is confident he'll soon get a shot in professional football.

"If I have a good year this year and my agent hooks me up with the right people, I know I'll be in there somehow," he said, adding that if he doesn't make it by the time he's 28 he'll get on with the rest of his life. "I know I could play in the NFL right now. I know I can play with the big boys. You've just got to know the right people."

Getting to know the wrong people stalled what he is certain would have been a promising career.

"If I hadn't got hooked up with the wrong people doing the wrong things, I wouldn't be here right now," Hewitt said.