Editor’s note: The Star is counting down the top high school football players in Tucson. Our top player: Salpointe Catholic edge rusher Elijah Rushing.
Name: Elijah Rushing
Rundown: Rushing is a 6-foot-6-inch, 245-pound junior defensive end for Salpointe Catholic.
Who he is: As a 12-year-old playing youth football in Tucson, Rushing was already in a class of his own.
Since then, he has blossomed into one of the top players in Southern Arizona and arguably the best prospect in the state for the 2024 recruiting cycle.
“I’ve seen the rewards of playing football,” Rushing said. “When I was new to it, I was a nameless player in the community, then through hard work and having fun with it, I started to make a name for myself. I ended up making a name for myself and becoming who I am today. … Then I understood the game more and it slowed down for me, and so I saw that I was ahead of a few of my peers. Once I saw that, I just had confidence in myself and my abilities to play this sport.”
Rushing has two brothers and one sister. An older brother, Cruz, is a freshman walk-on at Florida. It was easy for the Rushings to stay motivated.
“We always worked out together and pushed each other to get where we’re at,” Rushing said.
The Rushing brothers shared the field on defense last season for a Lancers team that went 11-3 and lost to Scottsdale Horizon in the Class 5A state playoffs. Elijah Rushing played in every contest, racking up 75 tackles, nine stops for loss and 7.5 sacks. He enters his junior season close to the “1,000-pound club” — meaning his bench-press, squat and hang-clean workouts combine for 1,000 pounds or more.
“He’s strong. He’s benching strong, he’s cleaning strong, squatting strong. He’s almost in that 1,000-pound club,” said Salpointe coach Eric Rogers. “It comes down to Elijah embracing the process. We hear it all the time and it’s kind of a cliché, but he loves the process. He loves the daily habits to become great. A lot of the time, it’s not about the final outcome; it’s the daily grind and daily process of waking up every day with a purpose. For Elijah, that’s just part of his nature.”
Rushing’s hard work is paying off. This offseason, he received scholarship offers from Clemson, Georgia, Miami, Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, USC and Tennessee, among others. Assistant coaches from Notre Dame, USC, Stanford, Michigan State and Texas A&M have attended Salpointe football practices over the last year to scout Rushing. Both Arizona and Arizona State have offered him, too.
“We’re fortunate enough that a lot of really good players in town want to come play for Salpointe. The colleges come through every spring during the recruiting periods,” Rogers said.
In May, Rushing and his father George visited Florida — the program that George played for in the 1990s. Elijah said the trip was “definitely exciting” and “nostalgic” for his dad.
“And just the Gainesville area, I got to go around there with my brother, which is where he’s currently at now, so it was a good time,” Elijah Rushing said.
Although Rushing could be the latest member of his family to play at “The Swamp,” his father has taken a hands-off approach when it comes to recruiting.
“He doesn’t make it personal, because he knows wherever we go, it’s our decision. … It’s never, ‘You should go here, you should go there.’ He cares about the university, what the academics are and what it takes to do that,” Rushing said. “He’s always kept it from an objective standpoint, and that’s how I like to think about it, too.”
Of all the offers Rushing has received, the one from Arizona was among the most meaningful. The UA offered him a scholarship hours after ASU did the same.
“It’s my hometown, so it’s definitely important to me,” Rushing said.
Proof he’s good: Rushing is listed by 247Sports.com as a five-star prospect for ’24, while Rivals.com rates him as a four-star recruit.
Rushing said he realized he might be climbing as a recruit last year, when he visited Notre Dame.
“If Notre Dame is willing to fly me out from Tucson, Arizona, then I’m a Power 5 player,” Rushing said. “That was something I was excited to see and I’m blessed to have that opportunity.”
He said it: “I don’t know what else is out there, but I feel like when it’s all said and done, he’ll be a top-10 player in the country. … Every day, he’s trying to get better. He won’t do anything if he feels like it won’t make him the best defensive end in the country. That’s the bottom line. If you told Elijah, ‘If you eat spinach every day, you’ll be the best defensive end,’ he’ll eat spinach every day.” — Rogers
