Haven Henningsen grinding out every yard for Cedar Rapids Washington

CEDAR RAPIDS - With every lunge, shoulder drop and stiff-arm, Haven Henningsen makes up for lost time.

Cedar Rapids Washington football coach Maurice Blue calls his production 'the quietest 1,100 yards I've ever seen in my life.”

'He hits some big runs,” Blue said. 'But he is the king of the 6, 7, 8-yard run. He just keeps doing it over and over.”

At 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, Henningsen touts fighting for extra yardage - 'seeing the light” on every play - as his biggest strength. You have to imagine part of that is Henningsen fitting two seasons into one.

The Warriors' senior running back was poised for two years of significant varsity carries. That was before he injured his ankle playing pickup basketball the night before practice began his junior year.

'I kept thinking I was going to come back from it and I was going to be fine, but it was a lot longer process than I wanted it to be,” Henningsen said.

Instead, he had to focus on physical therapy, then regaining strength and speed in the weight room. By the time practice started this year, Blue was joking with his assistant coaches that Henningsen might be getting 30-plus touches a game for a Washington team coming off a state semifinals appearance.

He wasn't far off.

In his first game back, Henningsen carried 32 times for 173 yards and a touchdown in a 21-20 loss to Cedar Rapids Prairie. Washington (5-4) has given him 30 or more touches in three other games this season.

'At first, I was a little nervous and I was scared because I didn't want the same (injury) to happen again,” Henningsen said. 'Once I got out there and ran a couple plays I felt really good.”

Henningsen ranks fourth in Class 4A with 211 rushing attempts, while his 1,167 yards on the ground is good for 10th. Another heavy workload against No. 1 Iowa City West (9-0) and Iowa linebacker commit Dillon Doyle is likely coming in Friday's first-round playoff game at Trojan Field.

'He's just that guy that says, ‘give me the ball. Just keep giving it to me,'” Blue said. 'We feed him and he doesn't complain, he just does his job. There's times where you can tell, yeah, he's tired, but he's not going to let anybody know it.”

Of course, running behind a pair of future Division I linemen in Nolan Potter (Northern Illinois) and Andrew Todd (Miami, Ohio) helps, too - 'a dream,” Henningsen calls it.

Clearly, this is a talented Warriors team that may feel underachieving at this point. A 38-35 loss to Waterloo West ended the regular season on a sour note and would have left Washington out of the playoffs had the Wahawks not dropped an overtime stunner to Mason City.

But Henningsen doesn't sound like someone conceding the end of his prep career. As you'd expect with a guy who savors every last yard.

'I felt like losing that game almost made us more prepared for this game, because that was a game we probably should or could have won,” Henningsen said. 'I feel like this game, we're going to go into it and we're going to feel like we have something to accomplish here and we have a chance to make something huge happen and beat a 9-0 team.”

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