Steve Christilaw: Checking off another sports milestone

For as long as I can remember I’ve maintained a mental list of sports-related happenings that I am waiting to see come to pass.

Many of them have.

See Gonzaga men’s basketball reach the Final Four? Check. Play for the NCAA championship? Check. Watch the Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl? Done that. See the Boston Red Sox break the Curse of the Bambino? Check. See the Chicago Cubs smash the Curse of the Billy Goat? Check again.

I’ve seen Washington State reach the Rose Bowl twice and firmly believe we will see the Cougs do it again. Soon. I not only believe Eastern Washington football will win another FCS national title but that it will springboard into a new stadium on the Cheney campus.

Other items on my list: I long to see the day when Sandpoint’s Jerry Kramer takes his rightful place in the NFL Hall of Fame – it’s an unforgivable oversight that he’s not there already. I am certain that we will, very soon, celebrate Edgar Martinez’s induction into Cooperstown.

I believe we will one day see the Gonzaga women’s basketball program reach the Final Four, and I believe we will one day see the Whitworth men win the NCAA Division III basketball tournament. The Supersonics will once again grace Seattle, and I look forward to one day watching as an NHL team calls Seattle home.

Of course, I also believe that I will one day meet a humble Husky football fan. Go figure – some things are more possible than others.

Sunday night, one of the items deep down on my list came to pass. I’m still smiling at the thought of it.

I like to read before going to sleep, and I was checking my iPad Sunday night. There on my Facebook feed, between predictions for Monday’s eclipse and spoilers for the penultimate episode of “Game of Thrones,” a good friend from Honolulu posted a clip from one of his local television newscasts.

The high school football season starts early in the islands, and the clip was from McKinley’s game with Kalaheo in Week 2 of the season. If you watch the clip with the sound off, as I did the first time I watched, it was a clip like most of the ones we’ll see when the Friday night lights start here next week.

The McKinley quarterback took the snap out of the shotgun, made a drop step and floated a beautifully thrown pass to a receiver near the sideline in the end zone for a 16-yard touchdown. A bread-and-butter pass play.

The quarterback? Sophomore Alex Buchanan, who had quarterbacked the junior varsity all last season and started for the first time with the varsity.

Alexandria Buchanan.

Yup. The passer with the delicate touch downfield is a poised, confident girl who throws like a quarterback – despite how many times commenters try to say otherwise.

She topped that feat by dropping off a nice pass to her running back circling out of the backfield for the two-point conversion.

Buchanan is the first female to start at quarterback in a high school football game in the state of Hawaii and, I am sure, a whole bunch of states on the mainland.

Buchanan began her sophomore season with the junior varsity but was called up Tuesday and made the starter. She completed 7 of 16 passes for 135 yards and a touchdown, but also threw three interceptions. I’ve seen debuts fare much, much worse for players who went on to have successful college careers.

McKinley lost the game in a heartbreaker, 27-26, and is still looking for its first win since the 2013 season.

Those of you old enough to remember when you could make a call from a phone booth for a dime will recall the TV movie from 1983 starring a young Helen Hunt as a high school quarterback from Oregon who doubled as a homecoming princess. (In a stunning example of bold, artistic marketing, the film was called “Quarterback Princess”.) It was based on a true story – Tami Maida was the starting quarterback for the junior varsity at Philomath High in Oregon (the movie was filmed in McMinnville).

I have never believed there is anything fundamentally male about playing quarterback, although it does prove helpful to be tall and mobile. Being smart and able to read the field trumps all that at the high school level.

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think Courtney Vandersloot would have made a great option quarterback?

For Alexandria Buchanan, her feat was greeted with all the lame comments you would expect from Facebook commenters.

One Hawaii news outlet referred to the game as McKinley’s Cinderella story, which I think means they called the head coach her fairy godmother.

Buchanan isn’t the first girl I’ve seen play high school football, and I am betting that, even in the Aloha State, she’s hearing some nasty comments from fans who believe the gridiron is a bastion of maleness and her being in a high school football backfield is an affront to, well, I don’t know what. I hope she ducks them like blitzing linebackers and fires more touchdown passes.

I think it’s great, and I’ve been expecting it to happen since, well, before Helen Hunt was cast in that mediocre TV movie.

One thing I know: More than it took to stand in the pocket and deliver a touchdown pass, it took tremendous courage for a young girl to step up, put on the pads and helmet, and pay her dues as a high school quarterback. And I think it says a great deal about the coaches and teammates who have put their trust in Alexandria Buchanan and put the football in her hands.

And, with that, I mentally crossed off another prediction.

Edgar, you’re next.