Oklahoma State football can benefit from what QB Hauss Hejny showed at Aledo High School
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
STILLWATER — Hauss Hejny hadn’t yet begun to learn long division the first time coach Tim Buchanan took note of the little guy’s ability to throw the football.
“He could throw the ball like a sixth grader when he was in the second grade,” Buchanan told The Oklahoman.
It would be another eight years before Buchanan would get to coach Hejny — pronounced Haney — at Aledo (Texas) High School, but the wait was worth it.
The two won a state championship together in 2022, when Hejny was a junior and Buchanan was finishing up the final season of his legendary coaching career, announcing his retirement a few weeks after the win.
One of the key connections on that team was Hejny throwing passes to standout receiver Jalen Pope, and now, the duo is back together at Oklahoma State.
Hejny, who played the 2024 season at TCU, committed to Oklahoma State out of the transfer portal, The Oklahoman confirmed Sunday. It was initially reported by 247Sports.
A 6-foot, 190-pound dual-threat quarterback, Hejny seems like the ideal candidate to fit the style of offense new OSU coordinator Doug Meacham has succeeded with in the past, which relied on mobile quarterbacks.
Meacham and Hejny were together at TCU last fall, with Meacham coaching inside receivers while Hejny redshirted as a backup quarterback. Hejny appeared in four games, rushing 15 times for 65 yards, though he did not attempt a pass.
Yet if history is any indicator, Buchanan says the learning experience of Hejny’s first season of college football likely set in motion the growth needed to prepare him to be a starter in short order.
But before Buchanan witnessed the quarterback’s rapid development in his junior season at Aledo, the coach watched Hejny prove his commitment to helping the team above all.
Though he grew up in Aledo, Hejny attended a nearby private school for most of his youth. But before his sophomore football season, he decided to join his hometown friends at Aledo High.
“We had a Division I quarterback in Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, who is starting at Colorado State right now,” Buchanan said. “I told Hauss, ‘Listen, you’re not gonna beat this guy out, but what I want to do with you is move you to slot receiver. I’ll still get you quarterback reps. You’ll still get to play some quarterback, but you’re gonna be the starting slot receiver.”
Hejny’s response was exactly what was needed — but the action that followed was far more important.
“He said, ‘Coach, I’ll do whatever helps the team,’” Buchanan said. “You know, you hear a lot of kids say that, but then when it happens, they’re unhappy.
“Never was Hauss unhappy.”
Like Buchanan had promised, Hejny got to play some quarterback, but he also had 648 receiving yards and seven touchdowns.
The next year, when Hejny was a junior, he had to beat out a talented senior quarterback to win the starting job, and he never looked back.
“He’s an unbelievable football player, but the improvement he made from Week 1 to Week 16 in the state championship game, honestly, I didn’t know a quarterback could make that much improvement in one season,” Buchanan said.
“In the beginning of the year, if his first read wasn’t open, he pulled it down and took off running. Then in the quarterfinals, he made a throw for a touchdown that was his fourth step in the progression.”
Hejny’s numbers show his growth over the final two seasons. As a junior, he completed 62.6% of his passes for 2,094 yards with 20 touchdowns while rushing for 1,276 yards and 15 touchdowns.
As a senior, he bumped his completion percentage to 66.1%, throwing for 2,773 yards — nearly 700 more yards on just 46 additional passing attempts. And he rushed for 1,041 yards and 13 TDs, leading Aledo to another state title.
“As good as he was his junior year, he was 10 times better his senior year,” said Buchanan, who watched from the stands in Hejny’s final season. “It’s just like he’s going to do from his true freshman year to his second year in college.
“He’s gonna go from the game going really fast in his mind to slowing down tremendously and him making plays. He will be special.”
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