One junior high school football recruit is using this time of recommended self quarantine to catch his breath.

Less than a year ago Maurice Heims changed continents.

Heims, a 6-foot-7 and 240-pound defensive end out of Santa Margarita Catholic High School moved from Germany to southern California five months ago to chase his dream of playing football at the highest level after he received his first scholarship offer from Penn State last June.

Prior to his move across the Atlantic, Heims had played just one year of competitive football after deciding to hang up his soccer cleats.

This coming fall will be his third season playing the sport, but it’s clear he’s caught the attention of several college football programs including UW.

Washington defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski extended the three-star DE his fourth offer on Jan. 23, joining two other Pac-12 schools, Arizona State and Washington State, along with the Nittany Lions at the time.

Since then four more programs – Boston College, Colorado, Oregon State and Utah State – have joined the mix of schools pursuing Heims. UW was slated to host the three-star recruit next month for an unofficial visit along with his father.

Due to travel restrictions from Covid-19 from Europe to the United States his dad won’t be able to make the trip with him, and Heims remains unsure whether or not he’ll be able to visit with the NCAA restricting unofficial and official visits until April 15 at the earliest.

“I hope to visit all the schools as soon as all this ends,” Heims said earlier this month, when asked how the restriction of visits impacts his recruitment overall.

“I don’t really know to be honest. I can definitely spend more time on school work now as this past quarter and transferring in general was pretty tough. But having better grades should technically help me with my recruitment.”

Heims grew up on soccer in Germany and played for eight years until he got to high school. He decided it was time to try something new and by happenstance stumbled onto a German football organization, the Hamburg Swans.

“After I was done playing soccer I wanted to do something else,” he said. “My friend, who already played ball in Hamburg, took me to one of his practices and that’s when I fell in love with the game.”

The Swans practiced roughly 30-minute drive away from where Heims and his parents lived in Hamburg. On the occasions when they couldn’t take him it required a train, a bus, and he would have to leave two hours before every practice in order to make it on time.

Now, after spending the last half year getting acclimated to life in southern California and at Rancho Santa Margarita, he said the difference is abundantly clear.

“It is like a night and day difference,” Heims said, between playing in Germany and now America. “The amount of time and effort that is being put into this game is insane and I love it.”

All eight schools that have offered the three-star junior defensive lineman – Arizona State, Boston College, Colorado, Oregon State, Penn State, Utah State, UW and Washington State – are recruiting Heims as a defensive end.

However, that’s not where he goes his start.

“I started playing football as a receiver but I was pretty big so they moved me to tight end for the All-State team,” Heims said. “And then during the offseason I had to move because we didn’t have enough d-linemen. It was probably the best transition that could’ve ever happened to me.”