Meet Cottonwood Colts WR Inoke Lotulelei
JimmieChesh 07/12/2012Recently, I was able to interview Cottonwood High School Wide Receiver Inoke Lotulelei, cousin of current Ute defensive stud Starr Lotulelei. Inoke, who goes by Enoch, is entering his senior year at Cottonwood and has high hopes for the Colts 2012 season.
As a junior in high school, Lotulelei had 74 catches for 1184 yards and 15 touchdowns for the Colts. Looking forward to his senior season, I asked Enoch about what it was like to catch passes from soon to be quarterback for Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide, Cooper Bateman:
It was a huge privilege. He was able to make everyone look good with his passing, especially me. He got the ball to where it needed to be when it needed to be there. He made being a receiver seem easier with his precision passing. I always joked around saying that I never got any sick catches because his passing was too accurate.
Q: Do you have any favorite moments of certain games or catches, with Bateman as your teammate?
Definitely the Brighton game last year. I was originally supposed to go to Brighton and had a ton of friends that went there. I had 200+ yards and 3 touchdowns that game.
During this offseason, the Cottonwood High School football program has been surrounded by some adversity. Their head coach Josh Lyman resigned due to some legal allegations against him. I asked Lotulelei what he and other players are doing to say focused on the upcoming season amidst this adversity:
We work even harder. With so much drama the team has kind of gotten used to it, so it doesn’t really bother us. We really just leave the coaches to deal with it and focus on what we need to do. With the loss of several coaches, everyone has come closer and we are striving to work harder than ever and win that state championship.
Q: That leads me to my next question: What are your personal and team goals for the 2012 season?
Our team probably has the hardest schedule in the state of Utah, so nothing is going to be easy. We just need to get everyone healthy and win one game at a time and eventually be the first team in Cottonwood’s football history to win a championship.”
The first opportunity for the Colts to begin to begin their journey to a state title will be Friday August 24th, as they start the 2012 season traveling to face Logan High School.
Q. What is it like having Starr as a cousin and how has he helped you with your game?
Its been awesome. He’s someone I can look up to and he has learned through experience that education comes first and to focus on school before football. That’s what he told us younger cousins coming up, work hard and represent the Lotulelei name with pride.
Enoch has verbally committed to play football for the UCLA Bruins. He plans on serving an LDS church mission after his senior year as a Colt.
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