Derek Weisskopf of Williamsburg is The Gazette’s 2024 Male Athlete of the Year

CEDAR RAPIDS — He never has been known as a braggart. Never been an egomaniac, a look-at-me type of kid.

Despite almost always being the best dude on the football field, the basketball court, the track, it always has been ‘we’ above ‘me’ for Derek Weisskopf.

Just ask anyone at Williamsburg High School.

“An overall great leader,” said Williamsburg activities director Nathan King. “He wasn’t, like, a big show guy. He just led by example, always did the right things.”

“The thing about Derek is he’s just so great of a teammate,” said Williamsburg boys’ track and field coach Matt Matthes. “He was always trying to help other athletes and his teammates ... He was always there to build them up.”

Team oriented is a virtually unanimous description of the 2024 Gazette Male Athlete of the Year. So is humble, humble, humble.

Those are the things, above the myriad individual accolades he received, that are most important to his parents, Brett and Danielle Weisskopf.

“That’s the proudest thing for us as parents,” Brett said. “Humble keeps you in check. And humble gets you a long way in life.”

Consistent humility, with the possible exception of one instance.

It was Weisskopf’s freshman year at the school when he said something to Curt Ritchie that the longtime Williamsburg head football coach always remembered. Because it was so out of character, a moment of youthful hubris.

“He told me he was going to be the best player ever here,” Ritchie said.

“I do not remember that, no,” Weisskopf said with a laugh. “I mean, I might have said that. But I was a freshman at the time, so who knows what all I might have said.”

As it turned out, the soon-to-be Iowa Hawkeyes linebacker definitely was one of the best football players the school ever has seen. Definitely one of the best overall athletes Williamsburg ever has seen.

A multi-year all-stater in football and basketball, a two-time state champion high jumper. The Raiders won the Class 3A state football title this past fall, a 2A state track and field team championship two years ago and made it to the 3A portion of the state basketball tournament this past winter.

“I don’t know what he expected it to be when he came here,” Ritchie said. “But seeing all of his awards at his graduation party, I can’t think that he would have imagined or dreamed there’d be more than that. He just had an amazing career here.”

The legend of Derek Weisskopf

“Here” was Williamsburg, even though the Weisskopf family lives on a farm outside Victor, the HLV Community School District. Brett and Danielle Weisskopf were good athletes at the high school, played all the sports (Brett played football playoff games in the UNI-Dome), but made the difficult decision that their two sons (Dylan is a junior to be) would go to school elsewhere.

“I knew my parents were thinking about it,” Derek said. “They asked us if we wanted to try out another school district for a better opportunity from an educational aspect and an athletics aspect. They asked us before they made the decision. We were both set in stone and wanted to do it.”

Derek already knew some kids at Williamsburg, and Brett and Danielle met parents at the school, things that made them more at ease with the decision to open enroll their boys. It’s about a 20 to 25-minute drive one way from home to the high school

“We are very proud to be Raiders. It’s a great community,” Danielle Weisskopf said. “We didn’t know how anything was going to work out for Derek. But we love them, they are great people, we consider them family.”

“I think there was some (animosity) at the beginning,” Brett Weisskopf said. “But I think now that they’ve seen what he has accomplished ... I think everybody is proud of him as a whole. He’s still from Victor.”

The legend of Derek Weisskopf began in seventh grade, when he first was able to dunk a basketball in competition. By eighth grade, it was multiple dunks per game.

Word was out on this 6-foot-3 wunderkind.

“The way he competed from the get-go, you don’t see freshmen like that a lot,” Williamsburg boys’ basketball coach Brad Knoop said. “Just the way he played that first season, nothing scared him. He was just a really good, well-mannered, humble kid that was wise beyond his age. A special kid. You could tell that right away. You don’t get those very often, and when you do, you appreciate them.”

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Basketball was Weisskopf’s first love, and it was the route to college he thought he was going to take. He averaged just shy of 14 points per game as a freshman on varsity and ended up bumping that scoring average each season.

But ironically his performance in an AAU game the summer after his freshman year caught the attention of college football coaches, and the recruiting in that sport began hard.

“It came out of nowhere,” Weisskopf said. “I was at an AAU basketball tournament in Wisconsin, and I had a crazy dunk on a kid. It got reposted all over on Twitter. A Wisconsin coach then reached out to me and asked me to come to a camp. So it all started with my first love. Basketball got me started being recruited in football. It was cool how the football coaches liked guys playing those other sports as well, it seemed like.”

“There has not been a player who has done what he’s done here, for sure,” Knoop said.

Same thing in track and field, though you could say that from a state perspective, too. He went 6-foot-7 to win the 2A high jump title in 2022 and 2023, and finished second in 2023 in the shot put and top 10 in the discus.

Matthes has researched it and believes only one other competitor in state history has placed in the high jump and a throwing event: a young man in the 1990s from Prairie City-Monroe.

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“Whatever we asked him to do, he was willing to do it. Whatever was best for the team,” Matthes said. “In track and field, he came in as a high jumper and a hurdler, and as we went along, he grew, and it was one of those things where it was ‘Maybe we should try shot put and discus.’ It just turned out great for that. His athletic ability is one thing. Then he’s so powerful.”

Williamsburg’s state football championship was another example of Weisskopf doing whatever he was asked. He was his usual impact self on defense, caught some passes on offense as a receiver, punted.

And played quarterback when teammate Kellen Cockrell was injured part way through the season. Despite not playing that position since he was a freshman, Weisskopf completed 58.2 percent of his passes for 1,123 yards and 20 touchdowns.

He can throw a football about 70 yards, though he never played baseball because of his summer AAU hoops schedule.

“It’s just two things with him,” Ritchie said. “One, he just extremely thrives in competition. Some kids kind of rise up when it gets competitive, while others go the opposite direction. He lives for it. The bigger the game, the better he is. Then he’s just a great, great teammate. He is unselfish, accepts everyone for who they are, yet pushes them to become better. Just a great team guy when it’d be easy for him not to be.”

So excuse him for that one cocky comment way back when.

“I’ve always tried to be super humble when it comes to talking about myself, and I think that’s the thing that has gotten me the furthest way throughout my high school career and stuff,” he said.

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Weisskopf already has moved into his dorm at Iowa, is taking a Foundation of Entrepreneurship class this summer, lifting weights each morning with his Hawkeye teammates, getting used to college and college football. Playing time this coming season likely won’t come at the linebacker position since Iowa has all three of its starters back.

But he wants to see the field in some capacity.

“Just figure out what I can do for the team,” Weisskopf said. “Figure out if I can fit in somewhere. We have three veteran linebackers back at the three linebacking spots, Mike, Will and Leo, so (linebackers) Coach (Seth) Wallace has pretty much said no freshman is going to start there. They just want us to learn the whole playbook and start to develop into the players they want us to be.

“But, yeah, special teams is a goal for me. If I can fit in there, whether it’s punt return, kick return or anywhere in there, that’d be great.”

Derek Jason Weisskopf: The Gazette’s 2024 Male Athlete of the Year

School: Williamsburg High School

Birthdate: Dec. 5, 2005

Family: Parents, Brett and Danielle Weisskopf. Brother, Dylan.

High school accomplishments: Class 3A IPSWA all-state football team captain and Gazette Co-Player of the Year in 2023. All-state player in 2022 and 2021 as well. Helped Williamsburg to the 3A state championship as a senior. First team all-state basketball player in 2022-23 and two-time Wamac Conference division player of the year. Four-year letterwinner in that sport. Helped Raiders to the state tournament in 2024. Also a four-year letterwinner in track and field. Was Class 2A state high jump championship as sophomore and junior. Also placed second as a junior in the shot put. Three-time Drake Relays qualifier.

College: Will play football for the University of Iowa and study exercise science.

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