Eastern Washington running back trio makes most of spring practice

With sunshine hard to come by on Tuesday, the 70 players on Eastern Washington’s football roster practiced for the first time this spring at Roos Field.

Positional shortages aren’t unusual this time of year – Eastern won’t practice with 19 of its high school recruits until this summer – and the Eagles will almost certainly add a few more transfers before August.

But a smaller group means more opportunities, and from that perspective one positional group with much to gain from this spring is Eastern’s running backs – all three of them.

“It’s really fun to compete, talk a little trash,” sophomore running back Wilson Medina said after practice. “It’s fun.”

Medina played in just four games as a true freshman last season and carried the ball 14 times for 77 yards. Yet he had the team’s longest gain by a running back all season: a 56-yard carry late in a September blowout of Western Illinois.

Much of Eastern’s ground game during its 5-7 campaign in 2025 ran through quarterbacks Nate Bell, who had 663 rushing yards, and Jared Taylor, who added 160. Combined they ran for 11 touchdowns.

That left fewer opportunities for Medina, Marceese Yetts (75 carries for 239 yards) and Kevin Allen III (58 for 259), running backs who themselves probably got more carries than expected after Malik Dotson suffered an injury in Week 1 and was shut down for the season.

It all added up to a rushing attack that averaged 122 yards per game, second fewest in the Big Sky Conference.

But Taylor graduated, Yetts transferred, and meanwhile, Dotson’s appeal for another season – his fourth at Eastern after two years at two different junior colleges – was granted by the NCAA.

The three running backs at Eagles’ practice Tuesday were Dotson, Allen and Medina, each of them doing about 15 minutes of extra work after practice with position coach Tamarick Pierce – each of them with plenty to prove this spring.

EWU head coach Aaron Best said last week that he wanted to see more consistency from the offense in just about every aspect: in the run game, in the pass game, in the screen game, and on first and third downs.

A lot of that relates to the running backs.

“We’ve got to protect better. We’ve got to run the ball effectively,” Best said. “We’ve got to be better, and we’ve got to be more consistent at running back.”

Told what Best said about his position group, Allen offered a series of further descriptions as to what it might look like for the trio of running backs to be more consistent.

“That just looks like running more angry, running with a purpose, running with a passion. Just making something happen even when there’s nothing,” Allen said. “We can’t have excuses. And we’ve got to break more tackles. I think that’s what it looks like. Breaking more tackles and making explosive plays.”

Allen was a prolific rusher at Helix High School in California, where he averaged 7.2 yards per carry as a senior and gained 1,295 yards while scoring 22 touchdowns. After redshirting in 2024, Allen came on strong late, gaining 105 yards on 27 carries over Eastern’s final three games.

Allen, who said his focus this winter was on bulking up, is the smallest of the three running backs, listed at 5-foot-11 and 187 pounds. Dotson (6-foot, 206) and Medina (6-foot, 209) are built more similarly to each other, and Medina said he’s learned a lot from Dotson over the last year and a half.

“He’s been a really good mentor,” Medina said, “and I am really glad to have him back.”

Whereas Dotson is trying to stay healthy after playing in just 14 games over the last three seasons, Medina – who gained 3,205 rushing yards in three seasons at Sherwood High School in Oregon – is trying to master a college playbook and improve in aspects such as blocking.

“Honestly when it comes to pass protection, that’s the biggest thing,” Medina said of the playbook learning curve. “In high school, you see a guy and you just truck stick him. But everyone’s got skills (in college), so you’ve really got to be more technical.”

“The person who calls the cadence, you’ve got to protect him at all times. That’s the prize,” Medina said. “You’ve got to protect him. “

Competition for the trio will ramp up in August, when high school recruits Demarkus Barnes and Jaxon Bell – Nate Bell’s brother – will join the roster.

But until then, the backfield reps will belong to Dotson, Allen and Medina.