Despite injury, WSU receiver River Cracraft is still hard at work

PULLMAN – On Sunday, River Cracraft showed up to his normal weight session in the Washington State football operations building with his teammates. He is around the team as often as ever, although his workouts now consist of rehab thanks to a torn ACL suffered in the third quarter of WSU’s win over California.

“He hasn’t done anything to bring attention to his situation or anything,” Gabe Marks said. “He came into the workout and did his little thing he was doing, all the things the attention has came because people have come because they realize they don’t get to watch the Cracraft Show anymore and it makes people sad. He’ll play again. He’ll be fine.”

Cracraft is not taking a break from football even though his senior season is over. If he did, he wouldn’t be River Cracraft.

“I usually in the summer had to tell River ‘You’re done. Let’s go home,’” Marks said. “Because we’ll just be out there for hours. I always told him that he overworks himself and stuff like that because he cares so much about what he does. His whole life is football really.”

Cracraft and Marks would spend hours running extra routes while Luke Falk threw them passes, long after their teammates had wrapped up their seven-on-seven sessions and found other ways to spend their summer days.

A soft-spoken leader, Falk credits the four-year starter with setting an example that his teammates have followed when it comes to spending time focusing on football when the coaches are not around to demand it.

“It sucks that this happened to him, but I know that he’s going to do everything he can to overcome it and I know he’ll get back,” Falk said. “River’s definitely a silent leader, he leads by example. He does everything the right way. You look at somebody you’d want to model after, he’s your guy.”