His final high school TD was a receiving touchdown in a 42-35 loss to Bountiful in the 5A state championship game on Nov. 21, 2024. The figurative distance from there to his next touchdown ended up being a lot like the physical distance he traveled to Utah in the first place.

In Hawaii, Young looked stateside to find what he and his family might bring more opportunity for his sports dreams.

“In Hawaii, it’s harder to get recruited, especially from my island of Maui. It’s not really a big football island,” Young said. “So I just came out here to create more opportunities for myself.”

Landing in Roy about 3,000 miles away, Young soon found himself part of a winner. In his three seasons, the Royals went 28-9 overall and 17-3 in region games, culminating in 2024’s 12-2 campaign that left Roy on championship’s doorstep.

Robert Casey, Weber State Athletics

Young was the key cog in that final season. He scored 18 rushing touchdowns, 12 receiving, three on kickoff returns, and threw two passing touchdowns while adding four successful two-point conversions. He returned five kickoffs for touchdowns over his three seasons, plus one interception return.

He was named Standard-Examiner All-Area Co-MVP (with now-Oklahoma-bound Bode Sparrow) and was the Deseret News Mr. Football.

“His versatility, he just has so much he can do,” WSU head coach Eric Kjar said. “Tough player. He’s strong and explosive, especially off the ball in change of direction. He’s been really coachable and durable.

“It’s what we saw out of him in high school … and he’s continued to do that, make big plays. It’s fun to see him do that. A lot of shorter-in-stature guys, maybe you think they can’t do a lot, football-wise, but he’s pretty dynamic.”

After the crushing state-final loss, it soon looked like there was no next touchdown for Young. Even with the cross-ocean move and an eye-popping senior season, recruiting was slow. Young is listed at 5-foot-8, after all.

BRIAN WOLFER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

“It was really hard, just because of my size,” Young said. “Throughout my high school years, showing I could play against bigger opponents, it was hard. I was just undersized and overlooked, all the time.”

Smaller, non-Division I schools did start expressing interest, but Young says going to camps that you sign up for, rather than being invited to, means you’re probably not getting time to speak with coaches or any real perks.

Initially, Young was planning to go to an NAIA school in Montana Tech. Then the receivers coach at Idaho State offered him a walk-on spot, but soon after, that coach left Pocatello.

“The whole thing just fell apart,” Young said. “I thought I wasn’t going to play anywhere.”

He got into things any graduating high schooler with no immediate plans might do, Young said — a lot of golfing and goofing off with friends. But well into the summer, he got a call from Skyler Ridley who said if Young wanted to come join the team at Weber State, he had the invitation.

“I said, ‘Sure, I’m not doing anything,'” he said.

He went from zero football, to all football. Young had to flip a switch and learn a better work ethic than he’d ever had.

“I just got thrown into the fire after months of not doing anything,” Young said. “It was a lot. It was exhausting.”

As a walk-on freshman, Young carved out a rotational role, catching seven passes for 57 yards, returning 10 kickoffs, and returning 12 punts for 102 yards.

If the quick switch back to football gave him any hesitation to keep going, the hire of Kjar ended that.

“The guys who were here and stayed on the team, with what (Kjar) ran in high school, we were all just thinking a lot more receivers are going to play,” Young explained. “So we all just locked in, put in the work throughout the offseason, trained our butts off and that’s what got me to be able to contribute in this offense.”

His touchdown drought ended in Week 3 at Colorado, a first-quarter receiving touchdown of 13 yards. Through eight games, Young has 20 receptions for 301 yards.

Among all those touchdowns in high school to now, though, was nary a punt return to the paint.

That was until last week, when Young’s individual effort kept WSU afloat in the first half until the offense could put together three touchdown drives in the second half to beat Idaho State.

Young fielded a high-arcing punt at the WSU 32, made the first man miss, then simultaneously broke two tackles from the next two ISU defenders. That gave the rest of the unit time to block up the right side, and Young won the race to the tape for a 68-yard punt return touchdown.

It was typical of what Young expects on a return.

“When you’re back there, you just have to have no doubt you’re going to catch the ball, and if you do catch the ball, you’re always going to have to make the first guy miss,” he said. “I think I’m pretty good at that, so I have all the confidence in the world to catch punts.”

He had some extra motivation against Idaho State after a play three weeks earlier, a 65-yard catch-and-run in which a Portland State defender ran him down just shy of the goal line.

“When I got into the open field (on the punt return), I was like, “Yeah, I’m not letting a big lineman catch me,'” Young said. “So I just tried to run hard, and I beat them.”

Young’s reliability in punt return is a key to Weber’s success, Kjar said.

“It’s huge to have somebody you can trust, that situationally he’s going to make a good decision, not going to put you in a bad spot,” Kjar said. “You want a guy who will catch the ball and not lose field position, but if you get a guy who can do that and be a threat in the open field and make guys miss, it’s extra on top. And he does all those things.

“It’s a perfect scenario as a coach to have a punt returner like that.”

Young also hauled in a 38-yard seam pass that sparked WSU’s final-minutes touchdown drive to win the game.

Young echoed the same thing many of his teammates have described about this team and the season so far, saying he’s glad he came back to play for the Wildcats again.

“Our team came together. I feel like we’re a lot closer as a team than we were, like in our position groups,” he said. “There were definitely divided groups but now, I think everyone can just be with everyone, we’re a lot more like a family, which gives us more confidence to win games.”