Foster Faris, one of the best athletes in CHS history, and also a tough son of a gun.
Kids were just tougher in the ’70s.
Or, parents, coaches, and doctors weren’t as sensitive.
One of the two, but I’m going with a lot of the first, and a little of the second.
Case in point, Foster Faris, universally hailed as one of the best athletes to ever suit up for Coupeville High School.
I was leafing through old Whidbey News-Times clippings today when I stumbled across a story from June 16, 1977.
The piece hailed Faris for being named the 76-77 CHS Athlete of the Year, an honor he earned after playing football, basketball, and baseball.
During his days on the gridiron, he played quarterback, split end, cornerback, punter, and placekicker.
In basketball, Faris pumped in 668 points, and still stands as the 21st highest scorer after 102 seasons of Wolf boys hoops.
He was #10 when he graduated, long before the three-point line arrived.
And while Faris scored oodles of buckets, he also led the Wolves in assists and steals as a senior.
That season, Coupeville fell just short of state — denied by a two-point loss to Bellevue Christian — robbing Faris of a third-straight trip to the big dance.
Once spring sprung, the guy hailed as “Mr. Everything” hit .406 for the Wolf baseball squad, stole 32 bases, picked up 17 RBI’s and scored 35 runs as CHS romped to a fourth-straight league title.
The ’70s were a decade of excellence for Coupeville, probably the best run male athletes have ever had in Cow Town.
And Faris was as good an athlete as Wolf fans have ever witnessed.
But the point of this story, today, is to highlight two paragraphs from that ’77 story.
Paragraphs which caught my attention, paragraphs which will never be written in a modern-day story.
Here they are:
Although only 135 pounds (127 during football season), Faris has proved to be quite durable, with his only serious injuries coming during football season.
A broken finger, two brain concussions and a sprained ankle, all incurred while playing cornerback on defense, have never caused Faris to miss more than part of a game.
Gol-dang!
Now, I know what you’re going to say. Modern medicine is making people safer, yadda yadda yadda.
Stow it.
It was 1977, a time when a six-year-old me would ride around town (and on the freeway) sitting on the engine block of my dad’s work van.
Which meant every time my dad’s foot jammed through the brake pad, my head bounced off the wind-shield and then I flew into the back of the van, where all his jagged carpet cleaning tools and giant pump bottles of weird chemicals were waiting to break my fall.
I was six, Foster Faris was 17, and we were just tougher than these whippersnappers today. End of story.
Now get off my lawn!
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