Georgie Smith (#51, top, back row) joins (l to r, bottom) Ben Etzell, Makana Stone, Chris Tumblin and Tom Eller (cap) as crafters of Hall-worthy moments.
When I first started my Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, there was one quick dissenter.
His argument?
The “athletic history of the school is already up on the gym walls.”
And right then I knew I really, really needed to do this thing.
Why you ask?
Because what is up on the CHS gym walls is a mere fraction of this town’s sports history, and, if that is the only thing newcomers have to go off of, they’ll be reading one slim chapter out of a really thick book.
I mean, start with the banners on the wall in the gym itself, which stretch all the way back to … 1990.
You’re going to tell me the school never won a single title in the ’40s? ’50s? ’60s? ’70s? ’80s? Bull crap.
Just because the school has never researched those titles and hung banners (say, for the undefeated ’74 CHS football team) doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
And what of teams that had amazing seasons, such as the 2009-2010 Wolf boys’ basketball squad, which went 16-5, but lost out on a title banner by the slimmest of margins? Is that season not worthy of remembrance?
Head down the hallway, where the Athlete of the Year winners hang, and it’s impressive. But not complete.
Many great Wolf athletes never won that honor, for a variety of reasons. Some years (or decades) were stacked with multiple should-be winners, while in others, like with the Oscars, the winners were just flat-out the wrong choice.
And I could go on and on, but, eventually, we need to get to today’s honorees, the members of the 26th class to be inducted into my virtual hall o’ reclaimed history.
Keeping in that spirit, I’m veering off a bit today and inducting no athletes or coaches or teams or contributors, but instead, five moments.
Two memorable quotes, one moment of ultimate sacrifice, one quirky reminder it’s all fun and games and one transcendent season which never got its just due.
All five of which you would have no freakin’ clue about from looking at the gym walls.
For their contributions to our living history, we welcome Chris Tumblin, Georgie Smith, Ben Etzell, Tom Eller and Makana Stone. After this, you can find their contributions atop this blog, under the Legends banner.
We kick things off with our quotemeisters.
Tumblin, who’s already in the Hall with the state champion Little League team he coached, has always been a dependable go-to guy for words of wisdom and wit.
On this day, we remember him for an immortal quote he delivered after watching Josh Bayne wreck folks in a Wolf football game.
“Josh had one tackle on a receiver, folded him in half like a cheap hooker who was punched in the gut by her pimp. He had to sit out for awhile and wait for his liver to start working again.”
How is that not emblazoned on the entrance to the CHS locker rooms? I’d pay a dollar to see that.
Smith, an ’89 CHS grad who went on to work as a journalist before returning to farm the prairie quite successfully for many years now, is on a very short list of former Wolf athletes who declined my invite to reminisce about their prep sports days.
Her response to my inquiry remains, far and away, the best dismissal I ever got.
“Well, if there was one thing I sucked at David, it was high school sports.
“So if you want to do a story about how in a small town EVERYBODY gets to play on the basketball team (even if you can’t dribble to save your life) or the volleyball team (even if you were scared shit-less every time somebody spiked the ball at you) that would be me.
“I can tell you the story about the ONE TIME I tried to steal the ball in basketball and it was so ridiculous that when the play was over I looked over to see my coach with his head between his knees laughing til he cried. So if so, sure.”
Well, now I want to hear her other stories even more.
Our third moment came via Eller, who was a pretty dang good softball coach and teacher. My memory of him, though, comes from the football press box in the early ’90s.
CHS didn’t have a buzzer to announce the end of quarters at the time, so instead, Eller would fire off a starters pistol to alert the players and refs.
Every single time (at least the way I remember it) he would lean out through what was then an open press box window and tell fans to cover their ears.
Then, huge grin on his face, he would wait until they assumed it was safe to uncover their ears, at which point he would suddenly fire the pistol overhead, causing them all to jump. Then he would laugh and laugh.
It worked every time, and remains one of the best memories I have of covering high school sports.
Would you know about it from looking at the gym walls? Heck no. Hall worthy? Heck yeah!
Our fourth inductee, Etzell, was a standout athlete, a Cascade Conference MVP in baseball, a high-scoring machine in basketball and a state tourney vet in tennis. At some point, he’ll probably make the Hall for all that.
For the moment, we’re going to honor him for the time he ripped off his knee caps.
Playing a doubles match against South Whidbey in 2012, Etzell, channeling his baseball heritage, threw himself (and his bare knees) airborne twice.
Cement and skin are not an ideal match (“Everyone who was watching went berserk, including me!!” said coach Ken Stange, a life-long tennis ace who admitted he had never, and would never, replicate the feat), but Etzell converted both shots, then spent the rest of the season covered in horrifying-looking leg wounds.
Etzell had a lot of big moments as a Wolf, but, frankly, that’s how we’ll always remember him — bloody, unbowed, a one-of-a-kind maniac who played with abandon and never, ever backed down from a challenge.
And then we arrive at our final moment, a five-week span from Mar. 21-April 27, 2012, in which Stone, then a Wolf freshman, started her high school track career by winning her first 28 races.
No one else in CHS history has come remotely close to her run, not even state champs like Kyle and Tyler King, Jon Chittim or Amy Mouw.
Whether it was the 100, 200, 400 or the relays (she ran in the 4 x 100, 4 x 200 and 4 x 400), Stone was first, and only first, every time she stepped on the track until she finally ran into a mammoth field of seasoned state vets from 4A, 3A and 2A at the epic-sized Lake Washington Invitational.
She actually ran her best times of the season at that meet, went on to add four more wins that season and medaled at state in the 4 x 200.
Toss in a strong soccer season and an even better basketball season, and Stone was the biggest slam-dunk in school history to be named Athlete of the Year — an award which had NEVER before had any age restrictions attached to it.
Or so you, me and all the voting coaches who I talked to that year would have thought…
In Oscar terms, Stone “losing” that year was equal to Saving Private Ryan “losing” to Shakespeare in Love. A travesty wrapped in an abomination.
Go look at those gym walls, as our naysayer preferred, and you would have no clue of what a tragedy went down that year.
Good thing we have another way to celebrate our athletic legacy.
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