Jonathan Brunt

David Casteal addresses his sixth-grade class as “learners,” as in: “Learners, here’s what going to happen.” On this October morning, Casteal’s learners at Cooper Elementary School are visited by Mads Tranberg, Rogers High School’s Danish foreign exchange student who recently made the football team’s first field goal in three years.

This is it.   The last time these players and these coaches will be a team.   The last time to play under the lights of Joe Albi Stadium.   The last chance to win.   The Rogers High School football team and their coaches stand shoulder to shoulder, arms around one another in a circle in the school’s wrestling room.    They are about to board a bus to their last game of the season.  “The friendships that you make, the bonds that you build, will last a lifetime. It’s never going to be like this again – even for those that have more games ahead of you, this circle will never be the same,” coach Matt Miethe says. “Here’s one last shot for this circle to go out and get the job done tonight.”

Before a team meeting in the wrestling room at Rogers High School, the players gathered for the official team picture. Coach Matt Miethe prefers to have the team photo shot at the end of the season so that the Pirates who are memorialized in the yearbook are the players who made it to the end.   The 2013 final team photo of the Rogers Pirates had 43 players. Here are some of them: Marcus Phillips, the most recognizable kid on the team, with drooping, black, curly hair and braces, is one of several sophomore varsity starters who give the Pirates hope for the future.

The setting sun hits the orange Art Deco bricks, and the glow makes Rogers High School look like it’s on fire. In the adjacent field, the school’s football coach takes over a lackluster practice from his assistants, displaying energy he hasn’t had for days. Head coach Matt Miethe missed practice two days earlier, hooked up to an IV full of antibiotics at his home, hoping to avoid his 19th hospitalization in nearly as many years from the effects of an ailment that goes dormant but never fully leaves his system.

The balance of the Spokane City Council will shift to the left after a season of record-breaking campaign spending. The first results from Tuesday’s election showed incumbent Councilman Jon Snyder easily holding on to his seat representing south Spokane with 64 percent of the vote over former Republican state Rep. John Ahern. In the other competitive Spokane council race, former Plan Commission Chairwoman Candace Mumm was beating Michael Cannon, chairman of the city’s Community, Housing and Human Services Board, with 54 percent of the vote.

Fire District safe from Ahern

A ball sailed through the uprights during practice at the Rogers High School football field one day, drawing the kind of cheers from players that normally would be reserved for a game-winning field goal. The kicker, a tall, blond Danish exchange student, lined up in a different spot on the field and did it again. Then again. And again.

Two debates filmed Tuesday showcasing candidates for Spokane City Council races had two distinct tones. A debate between Michael Cannon and Candace Mumm, who are vying for a seat representing northwest Spokane, was testy.

Jacob Meusy held it together as the seconds ticked off the clock of a homecoming game that appeared won, but somehow slipped to defeat in the final minutes. He held it together as he reprimanded a teammate who had thrown his helmet as tears ran down his face – angry, the player said, at his lack of playing time. Meusy told the teammate to shape up and grabbed him to line up and shake the hands of the celebrating players from North Central who had just beaten them.

A young man accused of killing a woman as she walked her dog along the Spokane River last year will stand trial for second-degree murder. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Maryann Moreno ruled Tuesday that Avondre C. Graham, 18, is competent to face criminal charges.

A judge will decide today whether the young man accused of killing a woman as she walked her dog along the Spokane River last year should proceed to trial or be deemed too mentally incompetent. Avondre C. Graham, 18, is described by his defense lawyer as incapable of understanding the proceedings against him and unable to assist in his own defense. The defense team wants the criminal case halted, but prosecutors are objecting.

To make his team think about a fresh beginning, coach Matt Miethe asked his players to contemplate their end. In the first week of Rogers High School football practice, Miethe assigned players the task of writing their obituaries, imagining the end of their high school careers and their deaths at age 99.

A gunman ranting about “Obama” took over a Spokane pawn shop Friday, temporarily trapping a handful of people before armed employees took up positions at the front door and provided cover for the fleeing patrons. No injuries were reported in the tense two-hour standoff at Double Eagle Pawn, 3030 E. Sprague Ave., which ended about 12:30 p.m. when 26-year-old Jonathan Johnson surrendered to police. Johnson is suspected of jumping over a sales counter at the pawn shop Friday morning, grabbing a shotgun and loading it, then firing as customers and employees ran for the exits.

A dead pigeon lies in a corner of the old hardware warehouse, all bones and feathers. The fir and maple floors are dirty, scuffed and occasionally routed. The fire sprinkler pipes are rusty, vulnerable to failure. But the structure of the brick, six-story former Jensen-Byrd warehouse, just east of downtown Spokane, is sound. Its beams, a horizontal forest of fir, are thick. Although cracked at the edges, its roof keeps the rain out.