It certainly helped Kansas’ cause in Kory Amachree’s recruitment that Amachree grew up around wide receivers coach Terrence Samuel’s family when Samuel was at Michigan State, and that his older sister Kaema was friends with Samuel’s daughter Brooklyn, and that he himself was friends with Samuel’s son Draven, and that they all went on vacations together.
But even despite that, Amachree said he would have come to KU regardless.
“Great team, great culture,” he said. “Definitely just fired up about how everybody interacts here. It’s exciting to play for Kansas. It’s something special.”
The KU coaching staff is excited to have him, too. Amachree is from Haslett, Michigan, and picked the Jayhawks over nearby MSU, among other choices like Duke, Indiana, Pitt and Harvard. And through a combination of his own merits and injuries in his position group, the running back has garnered a great number of opportunities right away as an early enrollee.
“He shows all the abilities to help us as a true freshman,” head coach Lance Leipold said.
That’s high praise considering that KU has rarely had true freshmen take on significant roles in the last several years under Leipold, with Jalen Todd and Tate Nagy among the recent exceptions.
“Physically, he’s developed where you’re not sitting there having to wait for a guy to put the weight on in the spring,” Leipold said of Amachree, listed at 6 feet tall and 203 pounds. “He’s in (position coach) Jonathan Wallace’s office all the time asking questions. He’s got a great work ethic, a great skill set, he’s understanding what the offense is about, learning pace and tempo and expectations of certain running plays, and I’m really excited about what Kory’s going to give this program, not only this fall, but in his career.”
There are, of course, obstacles to immediate playing time for Amachree — prominent ones, in transfers Dylan Edwards (Kansas State), Yasin Willis (Syracuse) and Jalen Dupree (Colorado State).
Dupree has been out recovering from an offseason surgery, but Edwards and Willis have seen firsthand the capabilities of their young teammate.
Edwards said that “K2,” as he called him, is advanced for such an early stage of his career: “He knows protections fully already and just the route tree on how to break down defenders.”
“He’s very talented,” Willis said. “Week by week he’s been getting better, especially this spring ball. It’s still little things that he has to work on, but you know, we’re constantly teaching him. The good thing that I like about Kory is that he likes to learn. He want to listen, he know he got vets in the room with him, so he’s going to take the time out to really learn the game.”
There are a number of reasons why Amachree has made a strong impression early. One is the physical readiness to which Leipold alluded.
“I’ve always been more of a stronger kid, physically inclined,” Amachree said, “because growing up with my brother, he’s two years older than me, he plays at Bowling Green, and I’ve always just done the same thing that he did, so when he started working out for football for real, for real, like back in eighth grade, I was doing it in sixth grade. I tell people I started early. That’s one big thing I would say for that.”
(His older brother Nakai, by the way, isn’t the only other athlete in the family; his older sister Kaema played soccer at Toledo, his mother Karen was a gymnast and his father Opuene played football at Michigan State.)
Amachree also said that when he knew he was going to enroll early — something he did out of sheer enthusiasm for the sport, he said — he made a point to treat every rep he took during his senior year at Haslett High School like he was already in college.
That may speak more to his mental strengths. Wallace said he has the ability to move on quickly from previous plays, and that he has done well with retention in the early stages of his college career.
“We’ve thrown a lot at these guys, and he’s really been able to pick up a lot of it,” the running backs coach said. “But you also see just the time that is spent outside of time with me, and he’s really studying a lot, all the different teaching tools that we have, he’s utilizing every piece … Just kudos to him for utilizing those pieces that we’ve provided, but also coming and spending time with me, and watching film and studying and learning more of the offense and getting the bits and pieces, just the minor details of every play.”
Amachree said that being at KU for spring football is everything he could have dreamed of since he was a kid, and now that he’s arrived it’s “all about putting in the work.”
“I’m super excited to see how he continues to develop just different little fundamental pieces that we’re continuing to work on right now,” Wallace said. “But super impressed with how he’s picking it up, and honestly, it gives young guys a chance, right? Being an early enrollee, allowing us to be able to work with him early, he’s putting himself in position to be able to take the field for us. I’m really, really proud of the work that he’s put in so far.”
