Kansas running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. is a healthy eater by nature.
His favorite food is salad, which he says he eats almost every day, generally with a vinaigrette and toppings like salmon and avocado -standard enough, save one off-kilter addition.
“I know a lot of people don’t throw no hot sauce,” Hishaw said, “but I douse my salad in hot sauce.”
What you won’t find quite as often atop Hishaw’s salads these days is Caesar dressing, even if it is admittedly his “go-to” option: “I can’t eat that all the time because Caesar dressing got all the fat in it. I do got some light fat-free Caesar dressing, but it’s still not the same.”
That’s responsible dining, as befits a recent recipient of KU’s weekly “Nutrition MVP” honor — something Hishaw received as, now a sixth-year senior, he has an eye toward playing next season about 15 pounds lighter than he was in 2024.
“I’m starting to feel like — I don’t like looking at the past, but kind of like my older self,” Hishaw said on Tuesday. “Because the past two years I was getting heavier. I’m pretty sure you could see it on the camera … I just got away from eating healthier, going to sleep at the right times every night.
“I like that type of (nutritional) process. I’d rather do that process my whole life than just chill and have it good.”
Katie O’Connor, KU’s director of sports nutrition, describes Hishaw as the type to “make the best choices that are going to only help him the next day at practice.”
“He’ll be the type of the guy that he’ll call me at 7 o’clock at night, be like ‘Hey, I’m really craving this, but what should I get instead?'” she told the Journal-World. “Or … ‘I’m going here, can you kind of walk me through the best options?'”
“I just listen to her,” Hishaw said. “Some days I might be like ‘You know, can I get a little bit more mac and cheese?’ She (is) going to tell me no, whatever, and I just got to accept that.”
The physical transformation, however, is just one facet of Hishaw’s overall development into more of a team leader and a model member of the position group that lost all-time leading rusher Devin Neal to graduation.
“Most importantly, he’s one of the first ones in the building, he’s one of the last ones to leave,” strength coach Matt Gildersleeve said, “he’s cleaning the racks after the training sessions, he’s getting guys to take their supplements, he’s calling guys to do their recovery and their regen, and those things just haven’t necessarily been priorities in the past.”
Multiple coaches have remarked upon how Hishaw appears to be in a great headspace this spring, following a season in which he battled injury and illness, missed the last two games of the year due to a family matter and ultimately ran for just 376 yards and three touchdowns.
“I think at the end of the day, one thing that I love that Daniel talks about, even for himself, is deciding that today is going to be a good day every day that he wakes up,” running backs coach Jonathan Wallace said.
Head coach Lance Leipold said he’s “pulling for him as much as anybody for a lot of different reasons” and hopes Hishaw, who missed nearly two full years with injuries, will be “rewarded for his patience.”
“I want Daniel to be healthy, happy and do what Daniel does,” offensive coordinator Jim Zebrowski told reporters, “in the simplest term, which is run really hard with I guess violence is the best word.”
KU running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. stiff-arms an Iowa State defender while running down the field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.
By this point everyone in and around KU is familiar with what Hishaw looks like on the field when he is at his best.
The 5-foot-10 running back, now about 218 pounds and hoping to reach 215 after playing last season close to 230 (“I felt cool, I felt like I was moving good, but at the same time I knew I could be moving better”), runs defenders over and makes himself incredibly difficult to bring down.
He got to do that for the most extended stretch of time during the 2023 campaign, when he carried the ball 121 times for 626 yards and scored eight touchdowns, including 134 yards and two scores in a career-best showing against UCF.
The most iconic play of Hishaw’s career to this point, though, remains a 73-yard receiving touchdown against Duke in 2022, in which he bounced off a series of would-be tacklers, a play Zebrowski still recalls fondly as “like one of those video-game runs.”
All that Hishaw has accomplished to this point, though, was as a complementary back to Neal. Now KU has Iowa transfer Leshon Williams in the fold and retains a couple young talents in the backfield, but Hishaw sits atop the position group.
“When established veteran players have graduated and moved on, and (returning players) truly see that it’s their job for the taking and they get to line up with the first reps and stuff,” Leipold said, “you see a different side of them, you see a little more confidence and all those things.”
Teammate Johnny Thompson Jr. has witnessed Hishaw’s development firsthand.
“Ever since Devin has left, Daniel has been there as a big brother, as a mentor to all of us in the room, helping us every day,” Thompson said, “as well as letting us critique him and the flaws that we see out of him, and help him.”
Hishaw said he understands that he needs to take on a more active role, particularly with so many new players on the team.
“My biggest thing as a leader is making sure every single person feels like we’re on this type of level as a team,” Hishaw said, placing his two hands right next to each other. “It’s not one person over them, whether status or popularity, any of that. Everybody should feel the same on the team.”
On the field, meanwhile, Hishaw wants to ensure that his coaches can trust him with the ball in his hands.
To that end, Wallace noted that Hishaw has placed a significant emphasis over the course of the spring on his ball security (a nagging issue earlier in his career), that his vision has continued to improve each year and that he still wants to improve as a pass blocker.
“He’s really done a really good job of taking what we’re teaching in the classroom, what we’re teaching on the field and applying it in 11-on-11 football,” Wallace said.
Hishaw may be a different sort of player when he takes the field for real in August, but not an unfamiliar one to KU fans.
“You’re going to see me do everything,” he said. “I’m going to block, I’m going to run around, I’m going to run over people for sure. You’re going to see me do everything — encourage (people), you’re going to see me lead everyone. You’re going to see me do a lot.”
AP Photo/Darryl Webb
Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World