Roll Tide Greetings

WASHINGTON - There is a college campus in the south of the United States where people don't greet each other with a wave or a friendly hi or a hello. Instead, the greeting is 'Roll Tide.”

Washington senior Braedon Duwa will have to work on that greeting because he signed a letter of intent Saturday to shoot trap for the Crimson Tide.

'It's like a family,” Duwa said. 'When I went down there every body treated me like I was already part of their family.”

The Duwas traveled to the campus in January.

'Once I got down there, it was pretty much straightforward in my mind that that was where I was going to attend college,” Duwa said. 'Just since then things have really happened.”

He shot with the Crimson Tide team while he was there.

'The trapshooting program is extremely well-rounded,” Duwa said. 'The coaches are awesome. It seemed like I was already part of the brotherhood from the moment I got there.”

Duwa also considered Iowa State.

'Alabama has a great engineering and business program, one of the top in the United States, he said.

He will get help paying for the schooling.

'Right now it is a 75 percent academic scholarship,” Duwa said. 'They are just now setting up scholarships for the trap team, so that holds the possibility of a full ride.”

What he wants to be when he grows up is undecided right now. 'Hopefully it is something to do with finance or management.”

The information age of technology contributed to Duwa's recruitment as well as the good old-fashioned way - word-of-mouth.

'I shot with one of the kids that is on the Alabama team this past summer and he let the coach know about me,” Duwa said. 'The coach reached out to me via Facebook. He commented on one of my posts and said, ‘hey get a hold of me.'”

Now Duwa has a hold of a path to his future.