Double Trouble Eastern Washington’s Twin Linemen A Precocious Pair Of Redshirt Freshmen

It might sound like faint praise, but Paul Wulff is probably paying Lance and Tyson Knaevelsrud the ultimate compliment when he describes them as “a little rough around the edges.”

Granted, the twin brothers’ lack of polish might work against them in certain social settings - their own dorm room comes to mind. But it helps compensate for their shortcomings on the football field.

“They’re a couple of wild characters,” said Wulff, who has the 6-foot-4 identical twins under his tutelage as the offensive-line coach at Eastern Washington University. “They’re a little rough around the edges, but they’re tough and aggressive, and that’s what makes them good football players.”

In an ideal world, neither Lance, a 255-pound tackle, nor Tyson, a 225-pound tight end, would be playing much as redshirt freshmen. But because of some key injuries and the unexpected improvement both made during fall camp, they will line up side-by-side as starters when the Eagles entertain Montana State Saturday afternoon at 12:30 in a crucial Big Sky Conference matchup in Woodward Stadium.

“In an ideal world, yeah, neither one would be playing,” admitted coach Mike Kramer, who has his Eagles perched at 3-1 despite the injuries. “They’d both be backups. Tyson would be playing on special teams and Lance would be getting some spot time in the O-line and trying to get better.

“But right now, they’re on the field and at the tip of the spear, because they’re our front-line guys.”

Tyson ranks fourth among EWU receivers with five catches for 60 yards and one touchdown. And Lance has emerged as a solid pass protector and run blocker, especially on the sweep play, which helped back-up tailback Rex Prescott account for 132 yards and two touchdowns in last Saturday’s 24-7 win over Portland State.

“They’ve responded exactly like the kind of football players they are,” Kramer said of the two 19-year-olds. “They’re both competitive, hard-nosed, physically tough and mean.”

How mean?

“We’re talking brotherly love here, I know,” Kramer explained. “But these two guys, they’re not afraid to whale on each other.”

Last year, while sharing a dorm room, the twins got into an argument that quickly escalated into a fistfight.

“We woke up people on three floors,” Tyson recalled. “There were five or six (resident advisors) there, the police came, all our friends were trying to hold us back. But that was our last fight.”

Lance said they’re better at keeping their differences under control. “Yeah, we don’t get in fights now, we get in arguments,” he said. “We used to fight, but that got to be too destructive.”

Following last year’s incident, the dorm council decided to move the twins into separate rooms for their own safety.

But they made up a couple of days later, secretly moved back in together and kept the spare room for other social pursuits.

This year, they are sharing a five-bedroom house with two friends and hardly know how to react to such spacious confines.

The twins grew up in Bellevue as the youngest of nine children. Their mother, May, is full-blooded Cherokee. Their father, Hans, is full-blooded Norwegian.

“That might be why we’re kind of weird,” suggested Lance, who is 4 minutes older than Tyson.

It probably didn’t help, either, that their mother played the twin thing up big while her youngest sons were toddlers.

“She dressed us alike in girls clothes,” Tyson recalled. “She even painted our fingernails and let our hair grow long. We were identical, nobody could tell us apart.”

According to Tyson, he and Lance were inseparable back then - and extremely competitive.

“Our friends would sometimes hate it because everything we did together ended up being a competition between me and Lance,” Tyson said. “We never thought it was a problem. It just seemed like it made us better.”

Both were three-sport standouts in high school and ended up entertaining football recruitment advances from EWU, Boise State, Oregon and Washington State.

They knew from the onset that they wanted to play together in college and Kramer had no problem accepting them as a package deal - even though part of the package ended up damaged.

According to Kramer, he and one of his assistants made a home visit during the winter of 1994, only to be met at the door by Tyson, his father and a family friend.

“Lance was nowhere around,” Kramer recalled, “which we both thought was kind of strange. We spent about an hour there and no Lance, so finally, at the end of the conversation, we asked where he was.

“They told us he had gone somewhere and couldn’t get back, but that he’d get back in touch with us.”

As it turned out, Lance was in the hospital preparing to undergo reconstructive knee surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament he had torn while playing basketball.

Neither Tyson nor his father wanted to mention it to Kramer, because they were afraid it might hurt their scholarship chance.

“But Hans finally called and admitted what had happened,” Kramer said. “He was kind of sheepish about it, but I told him I thought we could handle it.

“We told Lance to go ahead and take two years to rehabilitate (the knee) if he needed it, because we really liked what we had seen on film - of both of them.”

Kramer’s gamble now looks like sheer genius, although he is still not ready to anoint either Lance or Tyson as the Eagles’ next great offensive lineman.

“They’re both doing a credible job,” he said, “but they’re not nearly the football players they’re going to become as time goes on.

“They’re definitely ahead of the (learning) curve, but they’re headed for some rocky times because on-the-job training - particularly in the offensive line - is the worst type of training there is.”

But in this particular case of twin brothers who are still a little rough around the edges - both on the field and off - it’s the only type of training there is.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo