Sophomore Jake Fischer has caught the eye of coaches since his sophomore year at Ironwood Ridge High School. The linebacker spoke with the Daily Wildcat about his recruiting process and what it’s like to play for Mike Stoops.

Daily Wildcat: So you were named the Pacific 10 Conference Special Teams Player of the Week for your 29-yard run on a fake punt. You played running back in high school, were you recruited for offense at all?

Jake Fischer: Always defense. As you can see, the guys on our team, that’s why they got recruited as a running back. I think it was fun in high school, but I think I was better on defense.

You’re a local guy, did you always plan on coming to Arizona?

I started getting interested the first time I came to a camp here before my sophomore year, them and Colorado were pretty much the schools that I was picking between because they stuck with me the whole time.

So why Arizona?

Arizona was on the rise, coaches made me feel at home, so why not come here? It’s a great place, close to family and I felt at home.

You’re an outside linebacker now, but in high school you played inside. Did you know they’d switch you?

They kind of told me when they recruited me harder in my senior season they told me that I would probably have to be an outside so I worked on my speed and those things. I knew I was going to have to play outside because they thought I was a little too small to play inside.

Did you have to deal with being deemed “”too small”” a lot when you were recruited?

(Laughs) Yeah, by everyone. I just used it as motivation. Arizona and Colorado were the only two schools that stuck with me because they didn’t really care about height.

How has your perception of head coach Mike Stoops changed from the recruiting process to now?

He is all business, man. He knows his football, back then it was one of those things like ‘wow, Stoops is interested,’ and now, you realize how in depth he gets and how much you need to study for this caliber of football. It’s a big change (from high school).

When he is screaming and jumping around on the sidelines, do you listen or do you tune it out and nod your head?

(Laughs) Well, while he’s screaming at me he’s giving me pointers, and he knows his football, he’s one of the smartest football minds, so you listen to him. You don’t want to get yelled at, but you listen.

Back in the spring the big question around your team was that there would be three new starters at linebacker, yet throughout the speculation the coaches were adamant in how confident they were in you. What does that mean to a young guy entering his first season as a starter?

That gave me confidence. I’m just trying to work hard. All the linebackers, we work hard and we came together and we knew we were going to have to replace three great linebackers that played here for a while. We all came together and we had to gel and we gelled during the spring and then we gelled even more in the offseason and in the summer, and before our first game we really mended our defense.