Sumner’s Wing came out of nowhere to win 4A SPSL MVP in spring. He’s the tone-setter for undefeated Spartans
When the coronavirus pandemic brought high school athletics to an abrupt halt, Peyton Wing and a few of his friends had to get creative. The weight room was closed. The school was closed. Outside of a run around the neighborhood or some push-ups, there wasn’t a way for the football players to work on their strength.
So they took matters into their own hands, setting up camp at the home gym in linebacker Eric Buck’s house. They practically lived there while things were shut down.
“It was like our sanctuary,” Wing said. “With (the 2020 fall) football season getting taken away, it really just showed, ‘How much do you love the sport?’ … We worked every single day, sometimes two times a day. We took it super serious. We never took days off.”
Usually, when a player wins league MVP honors, you kind of see it coming. They were probably on the all-league first or second team the prior season. There’s probably a buzz surrounding them before the season starts.
That wasn’t the case for Wing, who seemingly came out of nowhere. He was a backup running back on the freshman football team his first high school season. As a sophomore in 2019, he played some varsity, but was stuck behind some older, more experienced players.
Wing felt his junior year was going to be his time to break through. During the offseason spent at Buck’s house, he put on 25 pounds of muscle and when his junior season finally came around in the spring, he looked the part.
The breakthrough came: At running back, Wing rushed for 716 yards and 11 touchdowns on 71 carries, averaging more than 10 yards per carry. At linebacker, he racked up 68 tackles. He was the most dominant two-way player in the Class 4A South Puget Sound League and was named the league MVP during the shortened season. He was also named to The News Tribune’s spring All-Area team.
“He worked as hard as anyone I’ve ever had,” said longtime Spartans coach Keith Ross. “He took care of that business. We had to play him out of position as a sophomore at outside strong safety. He was good against the run but struggled in the one-on-one coverage out there.
“Junior year, we got to move him to the middle. We couldn’t decide if we wanted him at running back or receiver. We knew he’d be a great running back, but we didn’t know he’d be as good as he was. I really felt he would be an upper-echelon linebacker. We just didn’t need him there sophomore year.”
Sumner quarterback Bo Carlson felt Wing was going to have a big junior season.
“He kind of flipped that switch,” Carlson said. “We all knew it coming into the season. Then we saw it on the field.”
In many ways, Wing is a throwback football player. He never wants to come off the field, he hits hard. Whether he’s running at defenders with the ball or hitting a ball carrier on defense, opponents are going to feel it.
“It’s like the hammer and the nail,” Wing said. “You don’t wanna be the nail.”
Football players either have that dog in them or they don’t. It’s not something that can be coached.
“He’s just tougher than everybody else,” Ross said. “He can hit and run. There’s not a lot of kids who can do that anymore. Football has changed so much, it’s more finesse-y, teams are throwing it all the time, teams are playing less big, tough guys and more (defensive backs).
Wing has rushed 57 times this season for 421 yards, averaging 7.4 yards per carry. Defensively, he has 47 tackles, seven tackles for loss and two sacks.
In other ways, Wing is a modern football player. There’s more to his game than just stuffing the run and being an intimidating presence at middle linebacker.
“I say he’s an ‘80s-style linebacker with 21st century athleticism and speed,” Ross said. “He reminds me of guys I played with in the ‘80s, except he’s a point guard (in basketball), he can run. He’s got the best of both worlds.”
Just ask Sumner basketball coach Jake Jackson, who said Wing is the toughest player he’s coached in his 10 years of coaching high school hoops.
“He can guard one through five,” Jackson said. “His lateral quickness is uncommon. He can cut you off and contain you. He can lock you up if you’re one of the best shooters on the team. … And just his determination, his will to win. He’s going to out-will you, out-hustle you. The athleticism plus that grit, he’s going to out-work you.”
So what are colleges missing? So far, Wing only holds an offer from the College of Idaho. The 6-foot, 210-pounder is considered a three-star recruit by 247sports.com and the No. 40 player from Washington in the 2022 class. 247sports national recruiting editor Brandon Huffman called him “criminally underrecruited” in a Sept. 2 tweet.
There’s a question as to which position Wing could play at the next level. He’s a bit undersized and doesn’t have elite top-end speed.
“He’s kind of that tweener,” Ross said. “He might be in a strong safety body. I think he could play running back. He could certainly play fullback and he could certainly play linebacker at an FCS school. I know he can.”
Wing said he’s been talking with Eastern Washington quite a bit. He’s hoping the Eagles offer at some point.
“I’ve been really close with Eastern,” he said. “That’s my No. 1 recruitment.”
Maybe the colleges who have passed on Wing will be proven right in their hesitancy someday, or maybe they’ll be proven wrong. That remains to be seen. One thing’s certain though: Whichever school ultimately gets Wing is getting a kid who can flat out play the game and will give them his all. Even on special teams, Wing is the first player down the field to make a tackle on kickoff returns.
“He does it all for us,” Carlson said. “He’s a freak athlete, barely ever comes off the field and he never complains. He’s always working.”
Sumner, the state’s fourth-ranked team in 4A, faces top-ranked Graham-Kapowsin on Saturday at Sunset Chev Stadium at 7 p.m. Both teams enter the game with undefeated records. Sumner will have its hands full, but the Spartans aren’t backing down from the challenge.
“We’re ready to go,” Wing said. “We’re ready to get after it on Saturday.”
