Dakota Murillo doesn’t remember why he wanted to play football.
His dad had a thing about him starting too young but eager Dakota was never one to wait.
“I remember asking my dad, asking him all the time, ‘dad let me play football,’ ‘no, you gotta wait,’ ‘dad let me play football,’ ‘no, you gotta wait,’” Murillo said. “It’s just something you do, it’s kind of hard to explain, it’s just something your family does, when you start playing because you watch everybody else play and you grow up watching people play.”
That’s really all it comes down to for a lot of young players who grow up in a state where football is tradition.
Murillo finally got his chance to play the game when he was in the sixth grade; when his father thought he was mature enough.
The 18-year-old senior at Skiatook High School is now the fullback and linebacker for the varsity team, and the only Osage starter, according to Skiatook head football coach Vince Miller. Drew Hight, an Osage sophomore, plays on special teams for the Bulldogs.
“I love the game,” he confessed. “I love the atmosphere, the physicality, the hard work it takes, all the extra time you put in, being close to people as a team, growing together.”
Murillo has always had respect for the sport but it wasn’t until he got to high school that he realized how much love he really has for football.
Miller has coached Murillo since he was a freshman. He said Murillo has always showed love for the game.
“He’s always been one of those kids, hard worker, great kid, he’s just gotten better and better over the years, he’s raised the bar for himself and just gotten stronger,” Miller said. “He’s more of just a smash-mouth-hard-nose-type kid, that old school football type player.”
“He’s a quiet kid, his thing is he loves football, you can tell he’s got a passion for football and that’s what he wants to do, he wants to go to the next level as well, that’s what he works hard at,” Miller added.
As a junior Murillo was on his way to a picture-perfect high school football career, but that was until the start of the football season when he tore the UCL in one of his elbows.
It was the first scrimmage of the season and in a matter of seconds he sustained an injury that left him sitting out the first half of the season his junior year.
“It’s probably been the hardest thing to overcome,” he said.
But overcome he did, and continued to be an asset to the Bulldogs.
“The rest of my junior year I played with it (a brace), just try to be the best football player I could be,” he said. “Then summer came, I decided I wasn’t going to let it effect me, I was going to get bigger, I got stronger, I was going to get faster and I did that, I went in, I worked out just as hard and strengthened my elbow.”
Miller said Murillo’s work ethic is perhaps one of his best assets and a benefit to the team.
He said Murillo demonstrates great effort in just about everything he does, football or not.
“His work ethic brings a lot to the team as far as how hard he works for himself to be better, which I think helps his teammates to be better as well,” Miller said. “He’s a very good student as well, he gets it done on the field and in the classroom. Overall just character, a great kid, never causing trouble or anything like that.”
Murillo said school is important to him where as football is just a game. He said the two could land him a college education and the possibility of playing at a higher level.
“You never know when football’s not going to take you anywhere, you got to have the grade,” he said. “I carry like a 3.5, I always take the ACT to try to better myself and I enjoy learning.”
Now a senior on the team Murillo is thinking and talking college football. He currently is in the recruiting process but hasn’t gotten any offers that interest him.
He’s decided to only take offers from Division I schools and if he doesn’t get any he plans to attend Oklahoma State University and eventually attend law school. He’d like to be a sports agent one day.
Murillo is the eldest of Shea and Esther Murillo’s three children. He has a younger brother and sister and stems from the Big Elk family.
Murillo said he’s proud of where he comes from and how his family, education and football have taken him.
“I love the game, it’s a huge part of my life, it’s where I developed all my friendships, it’s made me the man I am today,” he said. “To me it’s super positive. I don’t know where I would be, to me it’s more than a game, it’s a passion, it takes character; football’s a game of character.”
Clahchischiligi is a former reporter for the Osage News. Before joining the News she worked for two and a half years as a sportswriter for the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz. Clahchischiligi held internships at The Salt Lake Tribune, The Santa Fe New Mexican, Sports Illustrated Magazine in New York City, Albuquerque Journal and others. She holds dual degrees in Print Journalism and Speech Pathology from the University of New Mexico.
