By Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

TIFFIN – Darius Moore hadn’t even finished unpacking when his cell phone started ringing.  

Less than 48 hours after moving back to eastern Iowa Moore saw his cell phone light up and checked the number.

When he picked it up he heard a familiar voice with a predictable request.

“The first weekend I was here, not even two days after I moved EP (Ethan Postler) calls me up and the first thing he asks if I want to work out,” Moore said. “I was like ‘yeah why not?’”

The phone call from Postler let Moore know he was home.

An Iowa City native who spent the past five years living in Sioux City, Moore got another phone call earlier this month that forever changed how he viewed the sport of football.

Moore grew up in Iowa City, seemingly bound for an athletic career at West High with childhood friends like Postler and current West High wide receiver Traevis Buchanan.

Before his seventh-grade year Moore moved to Sioux City where he would eventually become the starting quarterback at Sioux City West.

This summer Moore made the move back to Eastern Iowa and enrolled at Clear Creek Amana. He quickly heard from his old friend Postler who had transferred to CCA last winter.

“I called him right away,” Postler said. “I told him, ‘You’re back, let’s get to work’.”

The two immediately began building a rapport as quarterback and wide receiver.

Postler and Moore spent the summer working out together, running routes and trying to make up for lost time heading into their final seasons of prep football at a new school.

“It just clicked instantly,” Moore said. “This summer, we were always working in our free time and we have that connection where we are always hanging around each other on weekends and texting each other.”

Before fall camp started Moore had made an impression on players and coaches at Clear Creek Amana.

Talkative and polite with an infectious smile Moore fit in quickly on a new-look Clipper team full of varsity newcomers and a first-year head coach.    

“The first time I met him we were doing a little kid camp, he showed up and introduced himself right away and I could just tell the type of kid he is,” Clear Creek Amana coach Gabe Bakker said. “He’s a great kid, a great student and I’m glad everything worked out.”

Once fall practices began Moore really started to make his mark.

Postler raved about his performance in the preseason.  

Through fall camp, no ball seemed uncatchable for the speedy Moore.  

“You can make a bad throw and he’s still going to catch it,” Postler said. “I can have it a little underthrown and he will come back and make the catch.”

After struggling through an injury-riddled 0-9 season as a junior at Sioux City West things seemed to be coming together for Moore at Clear Creek Amana.

Days before the Clippers’ season opener Moore got the news – he was ineligible.

“I found a few days before our first game,” Moore explained. “It was like the worst thing ever. It was just a punch in the chest because everyone was expecting me to play and it just hit us real hard.”

Moore missed that game, a 14-7 loss to Mount Pleasant as his transfer was sorted out.

A week passed. The normally fun-loving Moore dejected as the Clippers prepared for week two without their game-breaking wide receiver.

“The whole week I was just dead,” Moore said. “I was just so mad and frustrated.”

Just hours before Clear Creek Amana faced Independence in week two Moore got a call that changed how he looked at football forever.

He heard his phone and saw his father was calling. He answered expecting the worst.

“My dad called me and said you are eligible and I just said ‘stop playing with me’. It was such an amazing feeling. I was so ecstatic,” Moore said. “It just showed me that I can’t take anything for granted I have to go 100 percent all the time, every practice, every game, every play.”

Since he got that phone call Moore has made good on his promise to not let a game go to waste.

Moore caught eight passes for 108 yards in his Clear Creek Amana debut and hasn’t slowed down.

The 6-foot-1, 175-pound Moore has 21 receptions for 341 yards and two touchdowns in three games this season, making at least five receptions for at least 100 yards in every game.

“We want to try to get him the ball as much as we can and I think that’s shown in the three games that he’s played,” Bakker said. “He has seven or eight catches I think every game. I think he’s very comfortable with Ethan and I think Ethan is getting comfortable with all our guys but they have a special connection right now and hopefully that continues.”

Moore caught eight passes for 128 yards and had a 31-yard touchdown in a week three loss to Dubuque Wahlert.

Last week against Maquoketa he snagged five passes for 105 yards including a 68-yard touchdown.

“Any time you have a playmaker like that you can just rely on him, any time I throw it up he catches it,” Postler said. “Last game we were able to stretch them vertically. We are able to do a lot of things with him.”

Not bad for a former quarterback playing wide receiver full-time for the first time.

“Wide receiver is awesome,” Moore said. “Everybody wants the ball in their hands every time but with EP he gets the ball to me and we make big plays.”

It was a tough start for Moore and Clear Creek Amana (1-3) but the senior believes the best is yet to come.

Clear Creek Amana will try to win its second straight game when it travels to Center Point-Urbana (3-1) on Friday.

“We are starting to click and get the whole team in sync,” Moore said. “We are starting to get it going and I think we are going to be a very dangerous team.”