When Thunder Keck ’17 stepped on the football field in the fall of his senior season at Hotchkiss, head coach Danny Smith knew that he had an athlete with special potential.

“I knew we had something here with great possibilities athletically,” said Smith of Keck. “He just came in here with an attitude like, I am 100% committed, I am going to work my rear end off, and I’m going to ask you questions.”

Keck had many questions, because senior year was literally the first time he had played organized football. Few players and coaches on Sprole that day probably envisioned where he would find himself five years later – having earned an athletic scholarship for the remainder of his football career at Stanford University.

“For me it feels weird,” said Keck, although he follows up by saying that once he had been recruited onto the football team at Stanford, he began working towards earning a scholarship from the beginning. “It was something that was always in the back of my head – a goal to work for.”

The rocket-like trajectory for Keck from football newcomer to D1 athlete begins, unusually enough, with computer science. Keck had taken programming classes in his upper mid year at Hotchkiss, and enjoyed the experience enough to seek out a summer program in cybersecurity at Dartmouth College. The school was in Keck’s home state of New Hampshire but too far from home to commute, so he made arrangements to stay with fellow alumni David Parsons ’17 and Preston Parsons ’18.

Both Parsons brothers were planning to attend the football showcase at Dartmouth, and knowing Keck’s skill in track – he was a two-year varsity athlete and captained the team as a senior – they encouraged him to come along.

“One of our guys texted me from the Dartmouth summer camp and said things are great but Thunder’s really killing it out here,” said Smith. After Keck ran a blistering 40-yard dash time, several football coaches in attendance began to take notice.

But being able to run fast would not a football player make, as Keck discovered when he came back to practice in the fall. At first, Smith thought to make use of his speed as a receiver, but they quickly ran into some hurdles. “He didn’t really know where to stand. I told him to run a post pattern, and he didn’t know what I was talking about,” said Smith.

After a switch to the defensive secondary proved similarly challenging, the Bearcats quickly found a home for Keck on the defensive line, where he could unleash his strength and speed on a singular focus – meet the ball at the point of attack.

And the results came quickly and memorably, with the first standout moment coming in the team’s first win of the season, a surprise 36-27 upset of powerhouse Salisbury. Keck recorded a tackle in the backfield for a big loss, drawing a huge cheer from the Hotchkiss sideline, recalled Smith.

Keck recalled the following Monday’s team meeting. “On Monday at film they said, ‘Here they made a mistake no team should ever make, which is to run a sweep to Thunder’s side.’”

His evolution as a football player at Hotchkiss has mirrored his growth at Stanford – in both cases, Keck has been willing to take on whatever role the coaches feel best uses his skill set. In addition to defensive play, Keck has also grown steadily in usage on special teams.

“He was tremendous on covering a kickoff,” said Smith. “With his speed and size and physicality, that really set him apart on film. A lot of college guys really recognized that.”

Perhaps no single play elevated Keck more than at Avon, a tough 20-12 loss. As Smith recalls, “He rushed the passer and just missed the kid and got bumped to the ground at some point. The kid took off and started running. About 30 yards downfield, Thunder caught him from behind.”

Keck also remembers that play well as the moment that contributed the most to his being recruited to Stanford. “At that point, I didn’t know enough to make really good plays, just hustle plays, so I wound up catching him pretty far downfield.”

Perhaps the reason the play stood out to Stanford coaches is the player caught by Keck was Taisun Phommachanh, who is currently on the quarterback roster at Clemson.

Arriving at Stanford with great potential, Keck was still far from earning his scholarship, and so he needed to rely on another one of his innate strengths, his focus and self-confidence.

“It’s something you can’t really think about when you walk on somewhere. You have to overcome the mentality that you are working from a disadvantage,” said Keck. “You have to think that a scholarship is something that you deserve to get. You have to pretend that you have a scholarship. You have to fake it till you make it.”

Although he did not see any playing time as a freshman, his role on the team grew steadily through his sophomore and junior years, where he saw some action in nearly every game in both seasons.

When the moment came, it was a special experience for Keck, doubly so because he had seen his good friend on the team Noah Williams earn a scholarship previously. “To see him so happy and be really excited that he had achieved that goal was one of my best moments at Stanford,” said Keck. “To go through that myself was really cool.”

The scholarship couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for Keck, who is finishing a four-year academic scholarship this year. With two more years of eligibility left due to red-shirting and COVID, Keck still has plenty of football left to play.

Still passionate about computer science, his major at Stanford, Keck said he hoped to use the extra class time to pursue an accelerated master’s degree in either computer science or symbolic systems through Stanford’s five-year program.

Thus far, Keck says that college athletics has brought with it considerably more demands but also an equivalent increase in support structures. “The playbook has 100-200 times as many plays. The time commitment is a lot bigger, the weight room is a lot more important, and so is nutrition,” said Keck.

Keck attributes his success thus far at Stanford to staying committed and staying hungry, and credits his coaches for providing him with extraordinary support. “A lot of times, I would just write down a list of questions during meetings and then they would answer them all at once after the meeting. They saw that potential in me and helped me succeed,” said Keck.

He added that his time in the Hotchkiss classroom made him more confident about speaking up in meetings and seeking private help from his coaches.

Even though Smith did not see the top tier of college football during his trips to introduce Keck to smaller schools like Williams, he is not surprised with the result. “He was so grateful for everything that we did,” said Smith. “He took to coaching, positive reinforcement, and instruction. I think that’s carried over to his college career at Stanford. He seized on an opportunity in both cases and ran with it.”