Living Up to His Name : Ventura High Safety Elan Walshe Demonstrates the Verve and Dash His Moniker Suggests

In Hebrew, the name “Elan” translates to impetuous ardor, a person marked by force, violence, speed and zeal.

His parents could not have foreseen it at his birth, but the name has proved to be an apt description of how Ventura High’s Elan Walshe plays football.

“Once you get the pads on, there is nothing like football,” said Walshe, who earned a reputation last fall as a big-hitting free safety. “You have to make up your mind to be suicidal as a hitter. When you see the other guy lying around hurt and you’re not, it means you got the best of him.”

Walshe will display that defensive ferocity at Larrabee Stadium in Ventura on Saturday night when he competes for the West in the Ventura County Lions-Coaches all-star football game at 7:30.

Walshe helped Ventura High compile a 9-2 record and win a share of the Channel League championship. Walshe (5-foot-11, 180 pounds) intercepted 10 passes to tie for the county lead, returned punts and kickoffs for more than 400 yards and caught 35 passes for 800 yards (22.9 average) and five touchdowns as a wide receiver.

“He comes across as being real confident,” Ventura Coach Harvey Kochel said. “Others might think he is cocky, but he is just confident. He wants to excel at what he does and he works hard to do it.”

Walshe’s confidence and work ethic have earned him a scholarship to the Air Force Academy this fall, but the 17-year-old senior remembers a time when he didn’t think he would play football at all.

“My mom didn’t want me to play, no matter what,” Walshe said. “It was quite a controversy in our house. For a while, people were not even speaking to each other.”

Walshe developed an interest in soccer because of his mother Sarah, who became a fan while growing up in Israel. She transferred that interest to her son, who played three years on the Ventura varsity. But she decried the violence of football and said she was worried about her son’s safety as a skinny, 150-pound freshman.

With his father’s intervention, Elan talked his mother into allowing him to play. But there was one final hitch. Elan forgot to have his father Murph sign the insurance papers and on the last day of sign-ups--with his father at work--he had to ask his mother for permission. “I was in tears,” Elan said. “I was begging her to sign and finally she did.”

Walshe excelled as a soccer and baseball player from the time he took up those sports and also in the classroom (3.8 grade-point average), but his success in football was much slower in developing.

He noticed early that “the guys who hit were always respected more,” but Walshe admitted he was scared when he first began playing. “I was considered one of the wimpy guys out there, like the quarterbacks, who don’t want to be hit.”

It wasn’t until after his junior year that Walshe finally decided to use a more physical style of play.

“My junior year, I hadn’t made up my mind that I was going to be a big hitter,” he said. “I was trying to just do my job, rather than excel at it. As a senior, I told myself, ‘If I want to keep playing, I better become a hitter.’ ”

Kochel was one of many to notice the transformation. “As a junior, he was mostly a defensive player who didn’t really want to be there. But he improved on both sides of the ball as a senior . . . it was just a matter of confidence.”

It should have been expected. Elan’s name said it all along.