SEATTLE — Joe Jarzynka's last hurrah didn't have to look like this.
On March 4, 2023, the Husky football folk hero left for a fishing trip. The night before he had hosted friends for a Ping-Pong tournament in the basement of his north Tacoma home. The Ping-Pong table was surrounded by silent reminders of a singular college career — purple helmets, signed footballs, All-Pac-10 plaques, framed articles from Sports Illustrated and The Seattle Times featuring delightfully hackneyed headlines:
NO ORDINARY JOE
The cliches were both tired and true. After earning Pierce County League MVP and second-team all-state honors as a do-everything wide receiver, defensive back, kicker and returner at Gig Harbor High School, Joe walked on at Washington — where his legend only grew.
Despite a diminutive 5-foot-7, 175-pound frame, Joe earned UW's kick- and punt-returning duties as a redshirt freshman in 1996. In the next four seasons he developed a fervent fan base — due in part to his flowing surfer blond locks and outright refusal to concede a fair catch. He was fearlessness and defiance personified.
Sometimes to a fault.
"I think it was [against] Oregon State where he came down and got absolutely dropped before the ball came into his hands, and he had to eat out of a straw for three days," recalled Matt Taylor, a former UW offensive lineman and Joe's roommate. "That was the side people loved him for and the side that was so special about him. But people didn't see day two, three and four after that."
In Seattle, they saw enough. They saw a former (and future) soccer star who filled in as the Huskies' kicker in 1998, promptly converting 6 of 8 field-goal attempts — including a 44-yarder that helped secure a 16-9 win in the Apple Cup. They saw a 91-yard punt-return touchdown against Cal, in which Jarzynka sprinted clear through the end zone, shaking the back fence inside a simultaneously shaking Husky Stadium.
(As Montlake threatened to unmoor, he kicked the extra point.)
In 1998, Joe told The Seattle Times he turned down Eastern Washington — his only scholarship offer — to walk on at UW because "football isn't the only interest in my life."
Fans saw one side of the undaunted, undersized return torpedo.
It wasn't the only side.
"He was a Renaissance man," Jen Jarzynka said of her husband, a real-estate broker by trade. "That's a silly thing to say, but he tied flies and sold them for fishing. They were beautiful flies. He made furniture. He taught himself how to play the drums. He got into semipro soccer. It's like, of course you did. He always had something crazy going on."
March 4 — a drizzly Saturday in western Washington — was par for the crazy course. After concluding Ping-Pong night, Joe crashed on the couch in his living room, then woke for a fishing trip on the Sol Duc River outside of Forks — 160 miles away. The plan was to return that night, before attending his daughter's soccer game the following day.
"I would always question him going. Because he would stay up late. He loved to have a good time," Jen Jarzynka said Sept. 22, 200 days after her husband's death. "That's how he did things. He was a night owl. He was always up. He'd sleep on the couch, because he'd fall asleep watching movies. I think he slept in bed once or twice a week."
At 6 a.m., Joe shuffled into their bedroom to kiss his wife and say goodbye. Jen asked whether her high school sweetheart was OK to drive.
"I'm good. I slept," he said.
They kissed and exchanged I love yous; Joe shuffled to the door. As he left, Jen raised a fist above her head.
"Party on," she said.
———
The party started with a pine cone.
It was love at first flight.
In the summer of 1990, 14-year-old Jen (captain of the cheerleading squad) and 13-year-old Joe (already an accomplished athlete) met on opposite ends of a volleyball court during a party. At one point, Jen playfully hurled a pine cone at her future husband, cutting him in the chest.
Competitively, romantically, energetically, Joe had met his equal. They dated on and off throughout high school and college, though Jen attended Washington State. She'd pick him up from August two-a-days in a Jeep with the top down and a Cougs sticker pasted on the windshield, earning the ire of Husky safety Lawyer Milloy. After both graduated, they moved into an apartment in University Place.
"Jen's so incredibly strong," Taylor said of the 4-foot-10 former personal trainer who still works out at 4:30 a.m. every day. "Her and Joe were meant for each other. If there was anybody who could go up against Joe in anything, Jen could do it. She was an incredibly strong person to be able to marry him and that personality."
At their wedding on Oct. 4, 2003, they put pine cones everywhere.
———
After impact plays, Joe Jarzynka lifted a symbolic pinkie to the sky.
One for the little guys.
In sports, Joe's stature wasn't a detriment; it was an inexhaustible ocean of rocket fuel. Taylor said, "He just had a little bit of that Napoleon side. 'OK, underestimate me. I'm going to show you right away that I can do everything better than you.' "
Added John Crouch, who played semipro soccer with Joe for the Tacoma Stars: "I think that's why a lot of people relate to him and love him — because he was very athletic, of course. But there was no real position for a player like him in [Division I] football or the pros. His back was against the wall from the very beginning."
If Joe looked like a pinkie, he played like a middle finger — defiant and undeterred. He caught punts he should have let drop inside the 10-yard line; he slurped food through a straw with a smile. Former UW running back Braxton Cleman said, "The stuff we talked about in meetings that you shouldn't do, he still did it and was the best at it."
So much so that Joe was named a first-team All-Pac-10 pick and the Huskies' KIRO-TV/Pete Gross Player of the Year in 1998. A year later he turned in a 55-yard trick-play touchdown in his final regular-season game, a 24-14 Apple Cup win over WSU.
As Joe's local legend grew, a fan club was formed — featuring the motto, "Joe, Joe, he's our guy, give him the ball and he will fly." A contest from the UW Daily newspaper bestowed the nickname "Mo' Joe."
"It didn't go to my head," Jen Jarzynka said. "I just knew him as the guy I met when he was 13 and I threw the pine cone at his chest."
Of course, Joe learned there's little room for a positionless pinkie in the pros. And when the NFL never materialized, he saluted an unlikely football career with a two-month fishing trip.
"Him and his buddies went on a huge fishing trip after he left college, kind of a last hurrah," Jen Jarzynka said. "He always did his last hurrahs. He had a last hurrah before we had our first baby. It became a joke. It was like, 'You have a lot of these.' "
A lot. But not enough.
———
Football aside, Joe was fearlessness and defiance personified.
Sometimes to a fault.
"He was willing to take risks that some of us wouldn't be willing to," said Tom Jarzynka, Joe's younger brother.
Added Crouch: "That 'no fair catch' mentality became a lifestyle for him. It was full pull all the time."
Especially when it came to fishing. According to Jen, "His brother fishes. His dad fishes. He fished his whole life."
Joe — who named his only son "Fisher," a narrow winner over "River" — spent three summers after college as a guide on Alaskan fishing expeditions. Jen, who bought a cat to keep herself company, said, "He always came back with a big, burly beard."
The good news being that he always came back.
Sometimes it just took a while.
"We'd go places, and Joe would disappear all night long, and you don't know what he's doing," Crouch said. "The man operated on a different time clock than really anyone. You give him space, and he does what he does."
Which sometimes meant hitchhiking, rather than employing a shuttle service on fishing trips. Or insisting on fixing his boat or car himself, then facing the consequences. Or letting his phone die while fishing and losing track of time, forcing his family to call the police.
In an attempt to mitigate the persistent risks, Joe's parents once gave him a AAA membership as a gag Christmas gift.
"He always had some crazy, outlandish story," Jen Jarzynka said. "He has literally strapped the Tiderunner to his belly, under his armpits, and swam it in [after his boat's engine died]. That kind of stuff happened all the time."
Which is why Jen didn't panic when she woke on the morning of March 5, and Joe still wasn't home. She called Tom Jarzynka — Joe's brother — as well as the police. Then she drove her daughter, 17-year-old Madi, to Redmond for a 2 p.m. soccer game.
At halftime, she returned a call from Clallam County sheriff's deputy Jason Earls, who relayed nightmarish news.
Joseph David Jarzynka, 45, was found dead along the Sol Duc River in the Olympic Peninsula. His pontoon boat was discovered in a log jam roughly a mile upstream.
"I think I said, 'Oh my God' for like two hours," Jen Jarzynka recalled through returning tears. "I couldn't stop saying, 'Oh my God.' "
———
It's been seven months since Joe Jarzynka drowned; since Jen repeated the same three words, unable to process his passing; since Madi scored a goal and, without knowing why, dedicated it to her dad.
"I think I knew something was wrong," said Madi, a striker just like Joe, who often coached her teams. "Because he wouldn't miss my game."
The Jarzynkas miss everything.
"I still can't believe this is our story," Jen said last month. "He always made it out. He lived as if he was invincible. I had to be the responsible one for the both of us.
"I always thought it was going to be a car accident, but he would survive, and maybe it would make him realize he needs to get good sleep, or wear a life jacket. But for it to be this, while fishing? I just didn't think he would drown."
For friends and family, the cause of death is difficult to digest — a folk hero denied an extravagant end. There was no foul play, no heart attack. He'd fished the same river the week before.
Said Taylor — who bonded with Joe through fly-fishing trips during football breaks: "I couldn't believe there wasn't something grander."
Instead they're left with sharp, painful reminders; there are pine cones everywhere. It's too difficult for Jen to wear her wedding ring, so she had silver rings made for herself, Madi and Fisher imprinted with Joe's fingerprints. Jen used to exercise in the basement, beside the Ping-Pong table, and yell at his photos on the wall.
Their kitchen table — which Joe built from fir — is accompanied by four empty chairs.
They don't eat there anymore.
"I would call him damn near every day. That didn't mean he'd call me back," Tom Jarzynka said with a laugh. "All those times when I'd reach out just to touch base and see how things were going, I still want to do it. It's bizarre.
"I was having conversations with him for a number of weeks afterward. Those have subsided a little bit. It feels simultaneously like it never happened, it just happened, and it happened a long time ago."
Added Jen: "He was my car fixer. He was my maintenance man. It's the secondary losses. Life just goes on."
They lost Joe seven months ago — and they lose him every day.
———
The dust still hasn't settled.
Following Joe's death, a GoFundMe was launched to support his family. The initial goal was $25,000.
It was deactivated after raising $154,910.
Flowers and groceries and friends and neighbors parachuted onto the property. Tacoma Stars soccer players volunteered to clean the gutters. The Stars produced and sold replica Jarzynka jerseys that raised an additional $7,000. Cleman pooled a parade of gift cards — Nike, Lululemon, restaurants, nail salons — from the Husky football family.
He, fullback Pat Conniff and center Kyle Benn attended one of Madi's soccer games "because Joe would have done the same."
When the family held a celebration of life in April at the Foss Waterway Seaport in Tacoma, more than 500 people came.
"I know other people that are grieving say eventually it's going to be really lonely and the dust will settle. That hasn't happened for us," Jen said. "The way people still show up for us ... with the internet and social media, people who I haven't seen since high school message me on a regular basis.
"It's still happening, and we're coming up on seven months since [Joe's death]. I hope the dust never settles."
On Wednesday — her 20th wedding anniversary — Jen ate at the kitchen table.
Meanwhile, her husband's legacy transcends his last hurrah.
"It's been really completely amazing to see the impact he had," Tom Jarzynka said. "As we started to go through his old stuff, he had letters from high schoolers who had written him. There was a dude from Woodinville. When he was getting some notoriety at UW, the guy had written a letter saying, 'Hey, I'm undersized and was getting made fun of and wasn't getting playing time.'
"He thought he wasn't able to make a difference or participate or play. He saw my brother, and it changed his mind."
One for the little guys.
On Sept. 9, Joe was honored during the first half of Washington's 43-10 win over Tulsa. Jen, Madi, Fisher and other family members stood on the 25-yard line inside Husky Stadium, waving while the fan club reconvened. UW coach Kalen DeBoer ran from his spot on the sideline midgame to shake their hands and wish them well.
When it was over, they retreated to their seats in Section 108 on the southwest side, while fans stood and clapped and reached for handshakes and high-fives.
"That was just frickin' totally odd and super moving," Tom Jarzynka said.
This fall, Fisher is a 14-year-old freshman at Stadium High School, another high-level soccer striker. Madi, a senior, is committed to play soccer (and possibly track and field) at the University of Puget Sound.
"I'm working on my college essay right now, and it's about this," she said. "It's hard, but in a good way."
For Joe — the Huskies' biggest little guy — there's plenty left to say.
"That dude was just too big for life," said Crouch, his soccer buddy. "He couldn't live a long life. He had given too much. Joe couldn't give that much forever."
