Dekker Zelensek was a late starter to football, with good reason.

The Oswego senior’s mom did not allow her only child to play at a younger age. Instead Zelensek played soccer for eight years. The most aggressive kid on the soccer field, that style foreshadowed his athletic future.

Zelensek finally got the chance to try football in eighth grade.

“I thought, I can’t be hitting people on the soccer field. I like contact. I want to hit people,” Zelensek said. “It was a lot of convincing my mom. I told her I want to play football, all my friends are doing it, I’m built for it. I asked her every single day and she finally gave in.”

Soccer’s loss is Oswego football’s gain.

Zelensek played running back and defensive end at first, but found a home at the former position.

Last season Zelensek was part of a carousel of running backs for an Oswego team that went 9-0 in the regular season and reached the playoffs’ second round.

Now the 5-foot-10, 190-pound senior is expected to be Oswego’s lead back, one of just a handful of players on the roster with starting time last season.

“We’re counting on it,” Oswego coach Brian Cooney said. “We had multiple backs last year that got touches. With that position you got the bullseye on your chest. He was kind of their guy for that class coming up. Counting on a big year for him.”

Zelensek last season rushed for 578 yards on 63 carries with six touchdowns.

He enjoyed one of his biggest games as a junior in Oswego’s playoff win over Waubonsie Valley. Zelensek rushed for 95 yards and a 25-yard touchdown.

On the field or watching from the sidelines, the year was a valuable experience.

“I took it as a great chance to learn from the people above me, competing against great competition, the linebackers and safeties,” Zelensek said. “Learning from my position group, teaching me how to stay low. You can’t run high at the varsity level. It’s not going to work.”

Although he’s found his niche in football, Zelensek looks back on soccer as setting him up for future success. At the same time, he’s clearly in the right place now.

“It gave me good endurance to know how well conditioned that I am. Soccer is non-stop going, no breaks,” Zelensek said. “But in soccer I couldn’t hit anybody. In football it’s the whole point.”

Zelensek borrowed a page from Chicago Bears legend Walter Payton’s workouts this summer in further building up his endurance.

Zelensek and teammate Mariano Velasco ran up hills at a ski resort around Joliet with Velasco’s cousin, a personal trainer.

“We know hills really benefit you a lot with acceleration and speed and endurance,” Zelensek said. “We also did sand work in sand pits, worked on our agility in the sand.”

Coincidentally, Zelensek wore the No. 34 jersey Payton wore his freshman year.

“But my favorite running back of all-time is Marshawn Lynch,” Zelensek said. “I like his style, downhill.”

Zelensek, too, tends to embrace that downhill style. He likes outside runs, but prefers hitting the gaps, putting his foot down and going.

“He hits the hole hard, he has great vision and he has some deceptive speed,” Cooney said. “We saw that at times last year, was he just put himself in good position with his vision. It’s probably his best attribute.”

But far from his only one.

Zelensek has the size and speed, and bruising mentality as a running back, that fits Oswego’s traditionally blue collar style of offensive football.

“He is put together, and always has been. He is a uniquely big kid,” Cooney said. “He is not going to win every foot race but he can outrun a lot of kids. Not the biggest kid in the conference, but we saw on film last year he will put his foot on the ground. Defenders try to put him the ground, he will reverse that and put them on the ground.”

Dekker is intent on helping Oswego maintain supremacy in the Southwest Prairie West, despite the low number of varsity experience returning.

“I’m excited for this season,” Zelensek said. “We lost a lot of people, but I expect us to have the same competitive level. Oswego football is always at a high level. We have the same expectations from last year to this year.”