It only happened because of Isaiah Bruce.
Bruce was one of 230 students at Lena-Winslow High School in 2018, and one of 2,700 residents living in Lena, Illinois. He was the first football player in the school’s history to receive a Division I offer, which came from the University of Iowa.
The following winter, Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz and assistant Seth Wallace visited the northwestern Illinois town to visit Bruce. Lena-Winslow head football coach Ric Arand guided them through the school, pausing outside the cafeteria. The conversation was interrupted by a 6-foot-5, 290-pound sophomore named Gennings Dunker.
Dunker had a simple question for Arand, but he got more than a simple answer..
“Coach Wallace immediately went up to him and said, ‘What size shoe do you wear? What’s your name? How tall are you?’” Arand recalled the conversation to Hawk Central in 2019. “They were really interested in him from right there. They just continued looking into him.”
Next thing Dunker knew, the then 15-year-old was sitting across from Ferentz at one of the lunch tables. It was at that moment that the reality of a possible college football career began to sink in.
A Hawkeye at birth
Every day Dunker lives as a member of the Hawkeyes, he is living out his dream.
The first eight years of his life were spent in Des Moines. By default, he was in Iowa State territory, though his family strayed from the Cyclones. The Hawkeyes ruled strongly inside the household.
“We took family photos and [I’m wearing] Hawkeye shirts and stuff,” Dunker said. “I got a picture of me and my little brothers wearing Hawkeye shirts.”
Those pictures still exist today. So do his fifth-grade career aspirations.
“My teacher in fifth grade, Mrs. Chrisman, sent me a picture. It had some PowerPoint we did in fifth grade on what you want to be when you grow up,” Dunker said. “And I had a picture outside my skill zone. It was a picture of me getting a handoff from a quarterback. I didn’t live that out. Obviously, if I touch the ball, we have problems.”
Dunker began playing football in the fifth grade. There was no youth football in Lena, but there was a league 16 miles east in the town of Dakota. Dunker and his friends made the trip to play.
Running back was a stretch for him because he was always bigger than kids his age. Instead, he found himself among the front five on offense, blocking for the running back and the quarterback. It was simply just a hobby at the time, but it carried into high school.
Dunker went into Lena-Winslow High School as a 6-foot-1, 180-pound raw player. He worked his way up to the varsity level by his sophomore year, and by his junior year, he shot up to 6-foot-4, 260 pounds. The size alone should’ve drawn attention, but in a rural town away from the Chicago area, Division I scouts weren’t looking in that direction.
Except for Iowa.
Iowa’s coaching staff saw the potential in Dunker and pursued it, with Wallace and then-offensive lineman coach Tim Polasek going back to visit him on several occasions.
Dunker attended one of the Iowa football camps he was invited to in the summer of 2019. Ferentz watched him compete and had seen enough. He gave the then-incoming high school sophomore a formal offer.
Dunker’s decision process lasted about two seconds.
“As soon as Coach [Ferentz] gave me my offer, I committed, like, the next sentence,” Dunker said.
Setting the standard
After winning two state championships and graduating from high school in 2021, he finally arrived in Iowa City. Just not the way that he’d hoped.
A broken sesamoid bone plagued Dunker’s senior year of high school, and it carried over into his first year of college. Within his first two weeks with the Hawkeyes, he underwent surgery, putting an end to his first season before it even began.
After spending all that time recovering throughout the 2021 season, Dunker suffered another injury during preparation for the Citrus Bowl, causing him to miss spring practice ahead of his second year.
Being away from the sport was hard for Dunker. But he learned a lot from being on the sidelines, watching film and studying the guys ahead of him prepared him for when he got back onto the field, specifically veterans such as center Tyler Linderbaum, tight end Sam LaPorta, and linebacker Jack Campbell.
“It’s not fun at all, but there are still a lot of things that you can do to make the most of it [an injury],” Dunker said. “It was a really good opportunity for me to learn and know what’s a good block and what’s not by just watching.”
“The biggest thing I learned is that injury is good for you. That was my biggest takeaway. I’ve had a couple of surgeries since being here, but just learning that it’s good for you to be hurt gives you an opportunity to step back and look at things differently and improve on things that you wouldn’t even have thought about if you were not injured.”
It took Dunker nearly 2 1/2 years to see playing time. Patience was at the essence, and it showed when he returned, appearing in 11 games during the 2022 season and securing his first start at right guard in the 21-0 Music City Bowl victory over Kentucky.
The 2023 season was a semi-breakout year for Dunker, showing off his versatility by starting 11 games at right tackle. He helped the Hawkeyes complete four games with at least 179 rushing yards and was awarded the Iowa offense’s Team Hustle Award and an All-Big Ten honorable mention by Big Ten media.
“To his credit, he fought through some moral leg injuries that were impeding his progress and development. And offensive lines all about development,” Ferentz said. “So, you know, he was playing catch up that way.”
Momentum from Dunker’s second season carried over into his third as he played his way into a variety of honors — he won second-team All-Big Ten honors voted by coaches, was named Associated Press second-team All-Big Ten, was named third-team All-Big Ten by the media, Phil Steele third-team All-Big Ten, won the team’s Hayden Fry Award for offense, and was a part of the offensive line that was up for the Joe Moore Award.
Throughout his 11 games played in 2024, Dunker helped Iowa amass seven 200-plus rushing performances, the most since 2015. The Hawkeyes’ 197.2 rushing yards per contest was the highest average for the program since 2002.
If there’s one thing to know about Dunker, it’s that he can play a perfect game or compile a great season, but the constant need for improvement will shut his accomplishments out more times than not.
“I watched a lot of tape, and I just see a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed. It kind of hurts to watch. I can only watch it for so long. Just always working on getting better every day.”
Does Dunker consider himself a perfectionist?
“I try to [be perfect] as much as I can,” he said.
That’s why he made the decision to return to Iowa for another season. Dunker had the chance to go to the NFL, and he almost certainly would have been drafted.
But he feels he has more to prove.
“He knows how to work. He understands he’s not going to be perfect, but he’s gonna strive for that every single day and work towards that,” said Iowa starting center Logan Jones, who has spent the past four years with Dunker. “He understands how to work and the importance of that, and then he’s going to be super physical.”
External expectations are sky-high for Dunker in 2025, with several preseason accolades, including Phil Steele and Sporting News preseason second-team All-American and appearing on the preseason Lombardi Award, Outland Trophy, and Wuerffel Award watch lists.
Yet, to him, there’s no pressure. The potential accolades are irrelevant. Ask him how he feels and he’ll downplay it.
“I’m still working on a lot of things,” Dunker said. “ I don’t think I’m some great player, but I just try to do exactly what I’m told to do. The same things I worked on when I was 18 and came here as a freshman, I’m still working on. It’s literally the same thing every day.”
Love rules
It’s hard to miss Dunker in public. Not because of his massive size, but his fiery red mullet and mustache combo.
The motivation behind the mullet? To make it to the NFL.
“I did copy [former Iowa guard Connor] Colby because he had a season without one, a season with one. You know, he played a lot better with it,” Dunker joked. “There’s a correlation.”
Colby was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL Draft after a stellar year with a mullet. Dunker’s chances of becoming an NFL player are high, with or without it. If he doesn’t make it to the NFL, he’ll aim to be a doctor of some sort — he is a human physiology major
“Hopefully I didn’t take all those classes for no reason,” he said.
But Dunker is well aware that the NFL is the way to go.
“At one point, he said he wanted to be a doctor, which he’s still pursuing. And, you know, the NFL wasn’t really in his thing, but he just loved playing football at Iowa, right?” Jones said. “But now it’s kind of switched, where he just loves playing football. He kind of understands the opportunity he has, and how much he’s grown into one of the best offensive tackles in the country.”
The thing about Dunker is that he has to love what he does. His genuine approach to life will never be guided by anything other than love. It’s the same reason why he loves playing Pokémon in his hotel room before games, blasting Morgan Wallen and Zach Brian in the locker room, or even living life happily without using any social media handles.
His close circle would tell you the same thing. Going back to his hometown, regularly checking up on his parents, and hosting his friends in his Iowa City apartment so they can watch him play at Kinnick Stadium are acts of love he commits for his people.
Through it all, he’s kept that same circle around him, no matter what it takes.
“I think it’s super important [to stay in touch]. And I hope nobody, especially when they come here, loses sight of that because it’s those kinds of people that molded you.”
Whatever professional career Dunker wants to pursue, he will have a ton of love and support around him, whether that’s from his teammates or those from small-town Lena.
“I know everyone and their third cousin in Lena because usually people will stay there. So I know everybody in their whole families,” Dunker said. “I know their parents and their grandparents and whatnot. You walk into Casey’s to grab an energy drink or something, you see someone that you went to high school with, or someone’s parents, you can just talk to them.”
Dunker would have never returned had he not enjoyed playing for Iowa. The love for the Hawkeyes was instilled in him from birth, running with him throughout his entire childhood and leading to a split-second commitment that ended up being one of the best decisions of his life.