Kristoff’s proper sendoff

PULLMAN – For regular viewers of the Pac-12 Networks, Kristoff Williams has become a familiar face in recent months as the Washington State football team’s representative in a series of promotional mini-profiles on selected athletes.

The Pullman school had nominated him for this honor last year, partly because of the 82 catches he had made in three seasons and partly because of his clear-sighted goals and excellent academic record. The Cougars were obviously proud of him.

Until this week, however, Williams and his parents – an Army colonel in Florida and a medical-records employee in Northern California – had spent the last month or so believing they had been snubbed by the team. Specifically, in the aftermath of a season-ending concussion Williams had sustained in September, they believed they were being banned from the annual Senior Night ceremony honoring players making their final home-game appearance.

If that was ever the case, it’s no longer true: Probably because of a reporter’s randomly timed question this week, Williams and his parents will indeed participate in Senior Night festivities at Martin Stadium prior to the Apple Cup against Washington on Saturday.

But the episode, which spawned conflicting accounts of the gist of a conversation between Williams and WSU coach Mike Leach, perhaps illustrates how quickly an injured player can feel brushed away amid the high-pressure exigencies of major-college football.

And, as staff members at WSU point out, certain types of ruffled feathers or lapses in translation are possible on any team coached by Leach, with his intent focus on the next opponent, his general avoidance of public talk of injuries, and a personal priority list that places Senior Day festivities – to the extent that he thinks about them at all – somewhere near the Greek Row chariot races at the halftime of homecoming games.

But the sequence of events has left Williams’ father, Col. Dan Williams, highly critical of WSU coaches’ response to his son’s injury, saying Kristoff’s repeated attempts to return to the playing field were insufficient in the coaches’ minds, and that he was apparently being punished for not trying more emphatically to pass the school’s concussion protocol.

“Our feeling was that Kris was being bullied and he was being pushed away from being allowed to do any of the senior activities,” Dan Williams said. … “He (Leach) and his coaches are not owning up to things that they’ve done.”

Kristoff, striking a more detached tone, pointed out that “I have no animosity toward the program at all. There have definitely been some enjoyable times and I’ve had great relationships. It’s unfortunate this happened but I’m not going to let that affect my overall experience. I’m very grateful for Washington State football.”

The concussion, he said, was the fourth of his college career, and he never did pass the concussion protocol this time. He’s therefore taking the stance that there’s no reason for him to endanger his long-term health for the sake of football. The senior receiver was delighted to learn that he had been invited to Senior Night after all, but meanwhile he has been preparing for the next phase of his life.

Having received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice last spring, with a 3.71 grade-point average, he is taking bonus courses this semester while applying to graduate schools that he hopes will lead to a career in criminal law. He has already been accepted by three of the top law schools in the country – UC Berkeley, Michigan and Georgetown – and is waiting to hear back from others.

“I want to be in the courtroom, arguing, giving a voice to people,” Williams said in a preseason interview in August. “That’s my biggest thing with the law. I feel like it gives a voice to people who don’t have one.”

At 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, Williams has long been considered one of the Cougars’ most physical, complete receivers. Injuries have limited his production over the years, but he made 51 catches for 490 yards at the Cougars’ Z position last season. With the redshirting this year of Z standout Gabe Marks, Williams could have reasonably expected a stellar senior campaign.

The picture changed in Game 2 at Nevada. As a kickoff returner, Williams was being tackled by one defender when another struck him in the head as he was falling backward. He left the game, was diagnosed with a concussion and has never returned to the field.

He said, however, that he made three attempts to return in the ensuing weeks while undergoing periodic medical tests. Although MRI’s and neurological exams came back negative, he said he was never able pass the battery of other tests that compose the school’s concussion protocol. Meanwhile, he continued to experience headaches, and although he was medically cleared for practice at one point, he was never cleared for game participation, he said.

At some point during these attempts to return, one of the team doctors, Sunday Henry, said “she was concerned,” Kristoff Williams said. “She also spoke to a specialist in Seattle, who said she was concerned as well, and Dr. Henry responded that it (stepping away from football) was definitely something I should consider. Seeing that symptoms have lasted so long, we wouldn’t know what would happen if I were to take another hit. Hearing her concern – I tried to come back multiple times – it just seemed the best thing to do was to not return.”

Henry didn’t respond to a voice mail, and team doctors aren’t likely to talk about individual medical situations anyway. In the case of Leach-era Washington State, virtually no one talks publicly about injuries.

Following the Cougars’ loss to Arizona on Oct. 25, Williams said he took what was termed a “medical retirement” with the blessings of a team doctor, though he wasn’t sure how coaches would view his status. He began to inquire whether he would be allowed to participate in activities such as Senior Night and the team’s postseason banquet, speaking first to outside-receivers coach Dennis Simmons and eventually invoking the testimony of school trainers familiar with his medical status.

“He was telling me it’s Leach’s call,” Williams said of Simmons. “I went in and talked to Leach and he said no. I actually went back to Coach Simmons with the (WSU) trainers, so they could confirm it was a medical retirement. He was still on the side with Leach on it.

“After that, I kind of thought there’s not much else to do. It’s been confirmed it’s been a medical retirement, but I guess they’re not seeing it that way. They’re seeing it that I quit.”

Leach gave a different account Tuesday of his communication with Williams, stressing how little he had seen of the athlete in recent weeks and implying that the issue had yet to be resolved when they last met.

“I told him, ‘I haven’t thought about it (Senior Night).’ ” Leach said. “And I still haven’t thought about it.”

Simmons, who often speaks with an almost fatherly warmth about his receivers, declined to comment Tuesday on the Williams situation.

Leach’s response to concussions has been on college football’s radar screen since his contentious final days as Texas Tech coach in 2009, when he was accused of ordering Red Raiders receiver Adam James, who had sustained a concussion, to stand in an equipment room during practice. Leach disputed the James family’s characterization of events, but meanwhile he was fired after refusing to apologize to James.

In the Williams case, WSU administrators played a role in the turn of events this week.

On Monday, a Lewiston Tribune reporter left a message with an assistant to athletic director Bill Moos, asking if the A.D. had any opinion on what the Williams family saw as a snub from the football program.

Moos, who was out of the office, said he didn’t immediately receive the message, but meanwhile deputy athletic director Mike Marlow, who shares a set of offices with Moos, acted on the message himself, asking football chief of staff Dave Emerick if Williams had been banned from Senior Night. Emerick then contacted Leach.

“I said, ‘Coach, is Kristoff going through Senior Day?,’ ” Emerick said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I guess. Why wouldn’t he?’ ”

Not much later, football operations director Antonio Huffman phoned Williams and extended the invitation to Senior Night, and the athlete immediately informed his parents. With the ceremony only 12 days away, they scrambled to shuffle their plans, and Dan Williams said he spent $2,000 remaking travel arrangements that he had earlier canceled when he thought the family had been banned.

“Fortunately I’m in a position to be able to do it,” he said. “But I don’t appreciate them not taking responsibility for their inappropriate (original) decision.”

In Dan Williams’ mind, athletes who have invested their future in football might be highly willing to take chances with their long-term health, but his son’s sense of a bright future outside football gives him a different perspective.

Kristoff Williams said that perspective began to form even before his latest concussion, as he was struggling with injuries during his early years at WSU.

“I put a lot of my identity in football,” he said in the preseason interview. “I really lived for people telling me, ‘You did well’ and that type of thing in football. Just having injuries, and having football taken away temporarily, just makes you sit back and kind of humbles you. You realize that’s not what you should be putting your identity in, because it can be snatched away from you so quickly. There’s more to you than that.

“(Injuries) have been the biggest thing to overcome, but at the same time they’ve been the best thing for me. They’ve changed my outlook with football and everything I do in life.”