Muller excels at Hawaii Tiki Bowl

For the second consecutive year, a Lovell High School football player was selected for and played in the Hawaii Tiki Bowl, an all-star contest held in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Last year, then senior Davin Crosby played in the game, and this year senior Brody Muller was selected and played.

Muller, the son of Jennifer and Joe Bond and the late Steven Muller, was selected for the game months ago and made the trip to Hawaii on December 17, playing for a West and Midwest team called Hanohano, a team that included 10 players from Wyoming.

Each year, the Tiki Bowl organization works with college coaches to select players and coach teams for the event. This year St. Ambrose University head coach Vince Fillipp was selected to lead one of the six teams participating in the three-game “bowl.”

Fillipp saw Muller’s film on Hudl and X (Twitter) and “thought that I had what it took to play in the all-star game,” Muller said.

Once selected, Muller had to raise $3,500 from the community to pay for the trip and successfully did so. (See an ad in today’s paper thanking contributors to Muller’s experience.)

After practices on December 18-19, Team Hanohano played Team Alika on Saturday, Dec. 20, in the second of three games that started at 1 p.m. at Kamehameha Stadium in Honolulu.

An all-state and two-time all-state selection, Muller (6-3, 215) was able to practice and play at his natural position, defensive end for Team Hanohano. He said getting ready for the game was intense.

“I hit the field at least once a week doing football specific training leading up to the game, and the practices were a lot less physical than I thought, but a lot more intense,” he said. “Our coaches had sent us a defensive playbook beforehand to study, but for some reason, when we got there, they switched up the whole defensive playbook, so everything we learned was basically garbage. So it was just a bunch of mental reps and installing the defensive playbook for the first two practices leading up to the game.

“At the end of both practices, we live scrimmaged another team, not the team that we ended up playing, but a different team, and that really put it into perspective that this isn’t Wyoming football. It’s bigger than us here, and the competition was extremely good. There were no easy reps, no plays off. You had to bring it 100% of the time.”

Muller started the game as one of three defensive ends, and he had to face off against some huge tackles from Team Alika, a team composed of mostly players from Texas. He faced tackles that were 6-5 or 6-6 and anywhere from 250 to 285 pounds.

“They were big boys,” Muller said, adding that the other two ends were from Star Valley, Wyoming, and Chicago.

Team Hanohano lost the game 57-31, Muller said, but he more than held his own, finishing with five tackles, two tackles for a loss and three quarterback pressures.

“Statistically compared to a high school game, I didn’t do as good, but relative to the competition, I’d say that was my best performance game of my career up to this point,” Muller said.

Muller said his footwork, speed and technique served him well in the game against larger opponents, and he hopes to take his game to the next level. He said he would love to play for Weber State in Ogden, Utah, and though he has scholarship offers from smaller schools, he wants to play for and will walk on at Weber State, helped by academic scholarships.

“I love the location,” he said. “It just supports my goals for the future.”

College football is definitely in his plans, though he is also considering a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Looking back, Muller said he had an amazing experience in Hawaii.

“The weather was extremely warm and humid, and I loved it,” he said. “It rained quite a bit the first couple days we were there, which was unique. I wasn’t expecting that, but it was like warm, tropical rain. The friends I made there were friends of a lifetime. It felt like I had known those boys for years, even though I’d only known them for a few days.

“It was so much fun, so much competition. It kind of felt like low stakes, high reward, people giving it their best shot, just for the love of the game.”

Muller is now playing for the state champion LHS basketball team and enjoying that sport, though he would love to play in the Wyoming Shrine Bowl all-star football game this June.