West Valley Eagles off to fast start in football

Craig Whitney didn’t answer the question right away.

He was asked about his team going for a second straight 5-0 start when his West Valley Eagles travel to Kellogg for a nonleague football game Friday night.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess we are, now that you mention it. I hadn’t even thought about it that way, to be honest.”

High school football coaches generally don’t take time for the 10,000-foot overview during the season, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that he hadn’t considered the bigger picture. He’s been busy making game plans and ensuring that his players are ready for a game.

On Monday, that meant a day of heavy-duty conditioning.

Most Mondays the junior varsity is busy playing a game, but this week, the team has a bye. That meant a whole bunch of freshmen and sophomores would be joining the varsity players for a day usually reserved for conditioning.

Whitney took the team to the school’s weight room and put his team through a series of agility tests to see just where it was with its conditioning after four weeks of games.

“What I really want is for those young JV kids to see the kind of work our seniors put in to make themselves better football players,” the coach said. “We want to inspire them to start putting in that kind of work to make themselves better if they want to be varsity players next year.”

Teams don’t get off to a 4-0 start, let alone a 5-0 start, without putting in lots of hard work, both on the field and off.

The weight room is just one part of it, he said. There’s also a much bigger emphasis put on teaching young athletes about proper nutrition so that their bodies have the proper fuel to excel on the field. And there are professionals around to help them with the aches and pains that come with playing a physical game.

“Over the years I’ve learned a lot from the professionals who do this kind of thing day in and day out,” Whitney said. “It’s fun to see kids who come into the program real small and who then end up doing great things.

“Knock on wood, we have been able to cut down on injuries. We consider a lot of it to be preventative maintenance. You’ve got to lift, you’ve got to stay loose. You have to maintain proper nutrition and you have to keep yourself hydrated properly. And we have our trainer on staff, Melissa, if we do get any bumps and bruises. A lot of what she does is make sure the kids understand that we need a little more of what we want from them – ice treatments, extra stretching. That helps get them back on the field.”

That all has translated into a series of impressive wins to start the season. A 38-20 win over Shadle Park and a 48-13 win over North Central, both Class 3A members of the Greater Spokane League. There was a 13-12 win over Colville and a 49-15 win last week over Moscow in the Eagles’ Homecoming Game.

After this week’s game at Kellogg, the Eagles settle in for the meat of their schedule. In the final four weeks of the regular season, they face Pullman, Cheney, Clarkston and East Valley.

There will be no big surprises in those final league games. And what the team did in those first five nonleague games will have little influence over their Great Northern League rivals.

“Last year was a pretty magical season for us,” the coach said. “We have a lot of the same pieces back, but we also have pieces to fill. These first couple of games have been about seeing just what kind of a team we’re going to be. Are we going to be big and strong? Are we going to be fast?

“We’ve been trying to get a handle on the makeup of this group. Coming in we knew we had a really good nucleus, but you don’t really know what you’re going to be really good at.”

But when it comes to those final four opponents, they have a pretty good idea of what they’re going to be really good at.

“That’s what’s so great about our league,” Whitney said. “Our coaches do a pretty good job of figuring things out and I don’t think there are ever any real surprises. You may see a kid who’s just a little bit faster than you thought he was or throws the ball a little better than you figured he would. But no real surprises.”