Strike 2: Jack Hestera grew up dreaming of playing for the Colorado Buffaloes. This season he gets a “who’d have ever thought?” kind of second shot to do so.

It’s been a long, strange full-circle trip for Hestera, a product of Ralston Valley High School and two other college football programs. Even though he’s transferred four times now – including for his senior season of high school football – the Buffs senior wide receiver is back home, back in silver and gold. Right where he started, and right where he wants to be.

Hestera comes from a Buffaloes football family. His father Dan and his uncle Dave were both Buffs in their playing days, with Dan being a part of the Buffs 1990 co-national championship team and Dave, an All-Big Eight tight end, getting drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs. The household has always been all about CU football, not that their loyalty didn’t get tested just a bit a couple years ago.

As a high school junior at Ralston Valley, Jack was a two-way player and earned all-conference recognition as a defensive back. Then COVID hit, and CHSAA (temporarily) cancelled Colorado’s fall 2020 football season. Jack was desperate to play, so he transferred to Cedar Park High in Texas to play his senior year, and put up stellar numbers in the lone star state: 1,156 all-purpose yards, including 16 touchdowns. He set multiple school records and ended up fourth in career receiving yards after playing just a single season while earning All-District 11 5A honors.

Following that standout season at Cedar Park, Hestera turned down a handful of Division II scholarship offers to walk on for Karl Dorrell’s Buffaloes in time for the 2021 Pac-12 season. He didn’t see any game action as a true freshman, but just a few games into the 2022 season, he’d earned a starting spot.

That season went famously bad for the painfully young Buffs, with just a single overtime win over Cal to show on their ledger. While 1-11 looked terrible, and prompted a massive change in the program, the fact that Hestera was one of 90 underclassmen on the 115-man roster wasn’t taken into consideration much when the Colorado administration loosened transfer restrictions and welcomed Deion Sanders in as the new head coach.

Then came The Purge.

Had he not been one of more than 70 players who were unceremoniously shown the exits at the Dal Ward Center, Hestera – as a sophomore – would have been CU’s leading returning receiver for the 2023 season.

Instead, after being swept out of Boulder, Hestera landed at Charlotte. As a sophomore, he caught 28 passes for 349 yards and three touchdowns, catching the attention of the staff at Utah State. He transferred back west. Last season as an Aggie, he caught 24 more passes and four more touchdowns.

Then the strangest, most unpredictable thing happened. He got a call from Colorado. Chandler Dorrell – the son of Hestera’s former CU head coach – played a big role in getting Jack back to Boulder. At the time, Arizona State, Southern Miss, Utah and others were also in play. But with CU in his heart, the decision was not a difficult one.

As it stands now, with 31 collegiate games under his belt, Hestera has become an elder statesman in the CU wide receiver room. Most Buff followers are expecting big things from junior Omarion Miller, and senior transfer Sincere Brown (who has also played at two other schools before landing in Boulder) is also seen as a potential big play guy. But by and large, the receiver room is raw, especially compared to a season ago when four CU pass catchers were ticketed for the NFL.

Hestera will be counted on to provide some leadership and a grind it out mentality.

This year is going to be about blocking as much, if not more, than receiving for the CU wideouts. Sanders has made it clear that CU will be shifting to a run-first style of offense with fleet Kaidon Salter taking the snaps. There will be a lot of zone-read plays and a lot of quarterback keepers behind a big Buffs offensive line. All Buffs receivers should expect limited opportunities to get the ball in their hands.

For his part, Hestera just wants to be part of a CU bowl team. That will make the full-circle trip well worth it.