Steve Christilaw: Following athletes long-term is rewarding
I try to keep track of the young athletes I write about.
There’s that one we went to interview back when I was an unpaid TV news intern. I hear he went on to have a pretty good college football career. Maybe a Super Bowl.
Mark something, I think it was.
Sometimes I even hear back from them.
I got an email from a woman I had written about during her high school career. Not a feature story, unfortunately, but I mentioned her in several stories about her girls basketball team – a squad that placed at state. She was the kind of player I love to watch. She did the little things that made her team better than the sum of its parts. She rebounded. She dove for loose balls. And she never, ever, lost the big smile that was as much a part of her as the blonde ponytail.
I mentioned all those things in one particular story – a single paragraph talking about how she made her teammates better.
Two decades later, she emailed me to thank me for mentioning her in that story. She had become a Chicago-area attorney and was teaching her young daughter how to play basketball the right way.
That story, that one mention, she said, had made her father so very proud.
I answered her email to tell her that I remembered her father. He was already very, very proud of his daughter.
There’s one that surprised me.
He was a good, but undersized football player and a much more effective point guard. He left high school to play at Western Washington and I lost track of him.
A few years ago Canadian football returned to cable sports programming and there he was, the defensive coordinator for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as they played in the CFL championship game, the Grey Cup.
He’d enjoyed a stellar career in Hamilton as a defensive back and the fact that he made the transition to coaching came as absolutely no surprise. Well, except I figured he would eventually be a high school basketball coach.
He spent a year as defensive coordinator at Fresno State but is now back in Hamilton as the assistant head coach, presumably to be groomed to eventually replace June Jones as the team’s head coach.
With the college football season getting underway, with players reporting to campus to start fall practice in the stifling heat of August, it feels like the cupboard is a little bare.
Yes, East Valley’s Rodrick Fisher is vying for playing time at Washington State and the speedy wide receiver has a chance to do great things for the Cougars.
There are just four players from Eastern Washington on the Cougar roster as players trickle in for the start of practice. At the University of Washington there are two. Four if you include two players from Coeur d’Alene.
Western Washington has always dominated in-state recruiting. The law of big numbers demands that – there are more players on that side of the mountains.
But this feels awfully light.
The return of Idaho to the Big Sky Conference spells two things for local football fans: an end to the annual showdown between Eastern Washington and the Montana Grizzlies. That game is replaced by the return of an old rivalry when the Vandals come to the Inferno on Oct. 27.
The second is a solid class of locally produced football players showcasing themselves.
It’s purely a coincidence, but the state of football in the state of Montana is a surprise.
The Big Sky State has a long history of drawing a few local players onto the rosters of Montana and Montana State.
The Bobcats’ Eastern Washington contingent consists of freshman defensive lineman Seer Deines from Connell. The Grizzlies have twice that many area players: Gavin Crow, a redshirt-sophomore from Kamiakin High in Kennewick, and redshirt junior defensive tackle Cy Sirmon from Wenatchee.
You have to think that situation will change, especially in Missoula, as former head coach Bobby Hauck returns and brings in former Washington State quarterback and NFL veteran Timm Rosenbach as offensive coordinator.
Idaho, under head coach Paul Petrino, returns to the Big Sky and the Football Championship Subdivision. His son, Mason, who played his high school football at Pullman High, could well be the Vandals starting quarterback by opening weekend and West Valley’s Connor Whitney will be on the sideline as a freshman tight end and former teammate Tevin Duke will be a sophomore defensive back. David Ungerer, Petrino’s teammate with the Greyhounds, will be a senior wide receiver.
In all a dozen players from east of the Cascades, the vast majority out of the Great Northern League, will wear Idaho black and gold this season.
At Eastern Washington, the numbers are even better. Out of the 100-odd players on the Eagles roster, 18 are from their own backyard. That total includes Ferris standout Cole Karstetter as a senior defensive back and Ketner Kupp, brother of EWU legend Cooper Kupp, as a senior linebacker.
The quantity may be down. But there’s plenty of quality out there.
Stay tuned.