'We Just Have to Move On'

This story took first place in Sports News Wriring at the 2010 Wyoming Press Association awards and third place in Sports Writing in the 2010 National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest.

'We just have to move on'

By BRENDAN
BURNETT-KURIE
Reporter/Photographer

It didn’t matter what happened on Jonas Field.

It didn’t matter what the final score was.

It didn’t matter that the 21-game winning streak was snapped.

What mattered was that effort. That determination. That dedication. That love.

Three months ago, when they marched onto a sunsplashed practice field behind Glenrock High School, no one thought this rag-tag group of seven seniors could replace the 15 that graduated the year before after claiming the 2008 state championship with a perfect 11-0 season.

And yet, with guts and grit and selflessness, the 2009 team, with only two returning starters, barreled through their first 10 games without missing a beat.

“It was a very successful year,” senior Murphy Johnston said. “We didn’t think we were going to do as well as we did. We came out the first game and we really got rolling after that.”

The Herders rolled all the way into the 2A State Football Championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie Nov. 13 with a perfect 10-0 record and a 21- game winning streak dating back to 2007. But despite a hard-fought effort in a close game, the Herders couldn’t continue the magic and fell 22-20 to Thermopolis after failing to convert on a twopoint conversion that would have tied the game with 5:41 left.

“It’s tough because I know how hard they worked for it and how much they wanted it,” coach Ray Kumpula said. “Somedays it’s just not meant to be. This is one of those days. We came up a little bit short, but I’m extremely proud of what they accomplished.”

“It’s a tough feeling,” senior Kyle Farley said. “Not because we lost, but because of this group of seniors and the guys we played with. There’s not another team like this in the state. I’m so proud of this team.”

“We just have to move on,” senior Dustin Worthington said. “I think we had a very good season. I think it was very successful. We just have to hold our heads high.”

After the game, after the trophy ceremony, after they greeted their parents with hugs and tears, the team gathered in the circular center of the home locker room for the University of Wyoming football team.

Under the banner “Home of the Wyoming Cowboys,” the players sniffled and silently wept as their coaches praised them as The Group That Got It Done.

“I think more than anything else, that exemplifies them,” Kumpula said. “They didn’t care, they just got it done. They put whatever they had individually aside and decided the team was more important. That’s why we play this game.”

“You guys mean so much to me,” defensive coordinator Donnie Stewart said from the middle of the circle, after giving each and every player a hug. “The thing about it is, we lost the game. But that ain’t who we are. That ain’t our season. I’m so proud of what we accomplished. Focus on all the great memories we’ve had.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more out of a group of kids than you guys,” he finished.

***

Glenrock entered the game as defending state champions, having beaten Kemmerer 18-0 at home last year, and were in the championship game for the sixth time in eight years. But even a storied history couldn’t propel the Herders over a Thermopolis team that was 3-30 over the last four years.

In the end, a close game on a snow-covered field came down to two plays. The Herders had a chance to tie the game after scoring a touchdown on a five-yard Cory Dewald run with 5:41 left. Glenrock lined up from the two-yard line for the extra point, but instead of its usual run play, surprisingly ran a pass to the flat for Dustin Worthington. The route was smothered by the Bobcats, however, and Kyle Farley’s pass sailed over Worthington’s head and landed harmlessly on the field.

“I thought we were just going to run it in,” Dewald said. “I mean, we’re Glenrock, we run.”

“I was the one who called it,” Farley said. “Me and Dustin came together and talked it over with the coaches. The first time we saw them, when we went to our doubles form, they only had one guy out on the (edge) so we figured we’d run Murphy on a slant and Dustin on an out. It could have been a better thrown ball, but it was pretty well covered.”

“The decision was to try to put the ball in the hands of the playmakers and see if we could make a play,” Kumpula said. “They were able to cut us off before we were able to get out in space like we wanted to.”

Thermopolis got the ball back with 5:36 left in the game leading by two, and Glenrock had only one time out left. After gaining one first down, the Herders forced the Bobcats into a fourth-and-1 with 2:20 left in the game. But Thermopolis’ Mitch Syverson barreled into his offensive line on a quarterback sneak. The spot was so close the referees called for a measurement.

“The spot was really close,” Farley said. “You hope for it to go your way, but sometimes it doesn’t.”

The ball ended up being six inches past the chains, essentially ending the game as Glenrock couldn’t get the ball back.

“It’s hard to say in the snow,” Kumpula said. “We had to step up and make a behind-the-line hit and we didn’t do that.”

“They had it,” Dewald admitted. “I just told them to come measure it.”

***

As Glenrock took the field before the game, a steady snow was falling as the UW athletic department worked frantically to keep the sidelines and yard-markers clear. Still, about three inches of slippery snow stuck in players cleats and prevented crisp cutting and lateral movement.

“The weather was tough,” Farley said. “The footing was rough. But that’s not an excuse. We had our chances.”

“They were able to use the snow a little to their advantage,” Kumpula said. “They spread their offense out and they have some really good backs and they kept us spread out.”

Still, some players said they weren’t adversely affected.

“This is my favorite weather to play in and I liked it,” Worthington said.

“It’s slick out there in the snow, but it didn’t really matter,” Johnston said.

***

Thermopolis got the ball to start the game and went threeand- out, giving the ball to the Herders on their own 27-yard line. The drive quickly went over midfield, but an offsides penalty, a holding call on a 33-yard Austin Smith run and a false start forced Glenrock to turn the ball over on downs on Thermopolis’ 43-yard line.

This time, the Bobcats started marching, getting a 17-yard run, a 10-yard pass, a 10-yard run and a 17-yard run to go 57 yards in just six plays and take an 8-0 lead with 3:30 left in the first quarter. The drive ended on Syverson’s 17-yard touchdown run.

“We started off slow,” Johnston said. “We didn’t get off to a good start. We just needed to get off at the bat and that didn’t happen.”

Glenrock managed three first downs on its next drive, once again working its way into Bobcat territory, but gave up the ball on a fourth-and-six run when Farley was stopped at the line of scrimmage.

By the end of the first quarter, the snow had stopped falling, but was still piled on the field.

With 5:57 left before the half, Glenrock got the ball back on its own 19-yard line. On the fourth play of the drive, Farley took the ball on a sweep around the right side for 53 yards, giving Glenrock a first-and-goal from the fiveyard line. Two plays later, Smith barreled into the end zone on a one-yard run and Worthington followed with a two-point conversion to tie the game at 8-8 with 3:17 left before halftime.

Thermopolis wasted no time regaining its lead, as it scored on a 62-yard keeper down the left sideline just over two minutes later. After failing on a two-point conversion, the Bobcats led 14-8.

“They executed really well and we didn’t,” Dewald said. “At the start, anyway.”

Glenrock gained one first down, but couldn’t put together much of a drive before halftime, heading to the locker room trailing by six.

“We were in a good position,” Kumpula said. “We hadn’t played our best football yet. We kind of struggled in that first half with all the mistakes we made. I thought we could come out and do something and re-establish the line of scrimmage.”

“We were pretty positive,” Johnston said of the locker room mood. “We were getting the ball coming out in the second half. We just took it as being down a touchdown.”

***

Glenrock started the second half with a 10-play drive before Farley threw an interception. Thermopolis had the ball on Glenrock’s 43-yard line and took four minutes to score its third touchdown of the afternoon on a 22-yard pass from Syverson to Chris Leyba. The score put the Bobcats ahead 22-8 with less than 15 minutes of football remaining.

But there was no quit in these Herders, as there hasn’t been all season. Glenrock scored on a two-yard Worthington run on the first play of the fourth quarter, but couldn’t complete the twopoint conversion. The Herders were trailing by eight, 22-14, with nearly 12 minutes left in the game.

Then came a wacky pair of plays that swung the momentum back and forth across the field in a matter of seconds. First, Glenrock forced a fumble on the ensuing kickoff return, as Tyler Kelley fell on the ball on Glenrock’s own 45. Then Farley connected with Worthington on a 47- yard pass play, but Worthington coughed the ball up on the eight-yard line and Thermopolis had the ball back with 11:34 left in the game.

After giving up a 53-yard run down the left sideline, Glenrock’s defense stepped up and forced the Bobcats to turn the ball over on downs with 9:44 left on the Herders’ 40-yard line. Glenrock embarked on an eight-play, 60-yard drive highlighted by an 18-yard Farley run and a 21-yard pass from Farley to Tyler VanAntwerp. Dewald barreled into the end zone with 5:41 left to pull Glenrock within two. But the conspicuous choice to throw a pass on the two-point conversion failed and the Herders never got the ball back.

“We came back in the fourth quarter when we needed to,” Dewald said. “We just didn’t get that slant we needed to get.”

***

Glenrock finished the game with 233 rushing yards, their lowest total of the season, and 97 passing yards. Thermopolis gained 213 yards on the ground and 107 through the air. In a game decided by a two-point conversion, the stats were eerily similar. Thermopolis had 10 more total yards (330-320) than the Herders and both teams lost one fumble.

Worthington led the Herders with 85 rushing yards on 21 carries, despite only a 3.8 per-carry average. Farley added 82 yards on five carries and Smith chugged out 61 yards on 17 carries. Farley was 4-for-7 passing for 97 yards. Worthington caught three of those passes for 75 yards.

For seven Glenrock seniors, it was their final game. For seven Glenrock juniors, it put the weight of next season squarely on their shoulders.

“I hope we set the example that the younger kids can look up to us and continue the tradition on,” Farley said.

“We had a very young team and, I don’t know, we kind of built the team together,” Worthington said. “As one, we played together. The underclassmen stepped up and helped us out. I’m very proud of everybody. It was an honor to play with everybody.”

On the Road Again

This story took third place in sports feature writing among large weeklies during the 2010 Wyoming Press Association awards

On the Road Again

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

Reporter

This time, Steve Cobb had a helmet on as he flew over the handlebars and into the creek.

Cobb had already laid his bike down four times during the grueling Ten Hour Enduro in Casper Feb. 8, but that didn’t deter him. He stood up, readjusted the brace around his neck – the same one he wore for three months last summer – and inspected his bike.

It was good to go. But still he waited.

He paused, fingers wrapped around the handlebars for what seemed like an eternity.

In reality, only a few seconds ticked by. Finally, Cobb swung his leg over the seat and revved the engine.

This race wasn’t over yet.

“I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a little hesitation,” Cobb said. “It took me a little bit to get going again. It stunned me.”

But the amazing part wasn’t that Cobb finished.

The truly unbelievable moment occurred when he wheeled his bike up to the starting line, stood next to nearly a dozen bewildered riders, then sent dirt flying like a wood chipper as he sped away.

All the other drivers could see as he drove out of sight was the Riding For Christ emblem on his number plate.

“Every crew, you saw the look on their faces, they were as shocked as I was,” Cobb said.

***

On June 21, 2008, Cobb was driving his 2006 GSXR 600R bike on WYO 345 near the Montana border when he lost traction with the road. Driving merely 60 mph, Cobb lost control around a curve, slamming into a fence and flying across grasslands before coming to a stop in the middle of a field.

A passing pack of bikers called 911 and Cobb was rushed to Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County.

“A bright, white flash of light was all I saw,” Cobb said. “I thought I was dead.”

“The sheer carnage of it was incredible,” he said. “The top of my head looked like a grapefruit or Mike Tyson had punched me 20 times.”

Cobb had broken his T1, C6 and C7 vertebrae. He had a severe concussion, a sprained back and two broken teeth. According to doctors, Cobb was one-sixteenth of an inch from dying.

“I should not have lived,” he said.

***

In the aftermath of his accident, Cobb didn’t know if he would ever ride again. But as soon as he got his neck brace off after three long, hot months he was back on a dirt bike. Never a street bike, mind you, that still terrified him.

“It scares the crap out of me,” he said.

But dirt bike racing was different, despite warnings from Dr. Brian Weider, a neurosurgeon in Casper.

“He said it was up to me, ride or no ride,” Cobb said. “He said it was extremely risky. He recommended that I not.”

Despite doctor’s orders, Cobb readied himself for one last return to the track. One last hurrah amidst the flying dirt and roaring engines.

“I guess to prove I wasn’t dead yet,” he said. “It weighed on me to do it. I thought it would be a big triumph for my life.”

Instead of dipping his toes into a small race, Cobb decided to test his mettle with the Ten Hour Enduro, an epic adventure circling the 4.3 mile loop at the Casper Dirt Riders Racetrack.

In the field of nine racers – split amongst bikers and four-wheerers – Cobb finished second, putting 206.4 miles under his tires. His 48 laps trailed the winner by six, but bested third place by at least 14.

“It was a tough track,” Cobb said. “Uphills, downhills, flat areas, deep sand, snow in spots, ice in spots we had to cross. It was very treacherous.”

At one point the course crossed a small creek bed, which started as a sheet of ice in the morning, but the heat from dozens of tires tearing across it and the midday sun melted it into a muddy pit.

That’s where Cobb went over the handlebars. That’s when he had his moment of levity. That’s when he had the strength to go on.  But how?

***

“From my standpoint, the Lord got me through that race,” he said. “I’ve given my life back to Christ 100 percent.”

Since he saw that brilliant white light; since he lay on a hospital bed with his vertebrae bursting out of his neck, stretching the skin into a bulge between his shoulder blades; since he was faced with the unenviable position of giving up his career as a bike racer, Cobb’s life has changed.

He found Jesus.

“I attribute everything to Him,” Cobb said. “Because He saved me on that day. That light was Him.”

He now preaches helmet use, as he did before his accident, but without the powerful personal tale that now attaches itself to his warnings.

“If anyone reads this, I would highly recommend a helmet,” he said in a Budget story July 23. “I should have been wearing one. I feel like a hypocrite because I’ve always preached helmet use.”

“That was a good testimony,” Cobb said of the story. “I was hoping if it could save one person’s life, it would be worth it.”

It just might have. Cobb was sitting in front of his loudly painted van at the state fair in August, selling his airbrush art and t-shirts when a woman stopped by.

“She said the article saved her son’s life,” he said. “I guess her son got into an accident, but he’d been wearing his helmet and it saved him.”

***

Still, Cobb battles with the aftermath of his auspicious crash.

“My neck has only come back about 80 percent,” he said. “I still have problems with it crunching and popping.”

Despite the pain in his neck, and the inherent danger of re-injuring himself, Cobb still battled through 10 straight hours on a dirt bike. He would stop every  lap to get his card punched, grab a bite to eat and maybe use the bathroom.

Cobb has come to the sobering reality that his motocross – and dirt bike racing – careers may have finished their final chapter.

“I doubt I’ll compete this year,” he said. “I want to spend time with my wife. I’ve put her through a lot since 2003 in racing.”

With his newfound faith, Cobb also hopes to spread his joy of high-flying, adrenaline-seeking biking to the younger generation.

“I’ll lean towards mentoring up-and-coming riders,” he said. “I don’t know how many more competitions I’ll do.”

There’s one easy lesson any youngster can take from Cobb’s six-month-long ordeal.

“I was going to finish the 10 hours,” he said. “I just didn’t want to quit.”

He never does. He got back on the bike.

Etching his name

How the worst athlete in his own family became one of the best in Douglas High School history

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

Reporter/Photographer

There are many things people know about Pierre Etchemendy.

They know he set a single season Douglas High School record with 2,025 rushing yards – the most by a Wyoming high school back since at least 2001.

They know he set a school record with 32 touchdowns in a season.

They know he set a single-game record with six touchdowns.

They know he’s a two-time individual state champion wrestler at 171 lbs.

They know he was a starter on back-to-back state champion football teams.

They know he finished second at state in the discus his junior year and has been a part of three top-four 4x400 relay teams.

They know he was class president of his freshman and sophomore years and treasurer his junior year.

The know he’s in the National Honor Society.

They know he is slated to play football at Chadron State College in the fall.

They know he’s had 18 years of unqualified successes.

There are many things people probably don’t know about Pierre Etchemendy.

They don’t know he spends his summers perfecting his Basque dancing in festivals. He even performed a Basque dance at Invesco field.

They don’t know he loves to braid horse reins.

They don’t know he enjoys settling down for an evening with a good C.J. Box mystery.

They don’t know he’s a history buff who loves watching American Pickers.

They don’t know he loves breaking in horses – his family has 15 on their cattle ranch 25 miles north of town – and calls Cowgirl, a 6-year-old paint horse, his own.

They don’t know that during track season he still takes his three-hour overnight shift during calving season.

They don’t know he enjoys leatherwork.

There are many things people have to say about Pierre Etchemendy. They’re all good.

“He’s what every coach dreams of,” wrestling coach Bob Bath says. “Somebody who has the talent and uses it and is a good leader and is just a good kid. You can always count on him. Those kids come along every once in awhile. It just makes it worth it sometimes.”

“When Pierre talks, people listen,” head football coach Jay Rhoades says. “He’s a really good combination of leadership by example – which I think is the best leadership someone can possess. He didn’t talk a lot. He wasn’t real verbal. But when he did, he was so effective. He is just that type of individual who is going to get things done.”

There are a few things you notice when talking to Pierre Etchemendy.

He’s soft spoken, with a quiet demeanor that belies his competitive nature. He’s a physical specimen, with 180 pounds of muscle tightly wrapping his six-foot frame.

And yet if one were to rank Pierre and his two siblings – older sister Elisa and younger brother Ty – based purely on athleticism (not drive, not determination, not leadership or IQ) he would probably rank third.

“Yes, I would definitely agree,” he says self-deprecatingly when asked this question. “Ty got the jumps and everything. He’s just a great athlete. Elisa is way good. She’s amazing.”

There are many records the Etchemendys own.

By the time Pierre reached Douglas Middle School, Elisa was already the school’s record holder in the discus. Years later, Ty would set the school triple jump record. In the middle, there was Pierre and his eighth grade wrestling season.

In his final year of middle school wrestling, Pierre finished 25-0 with 24 pins, both school records.

“We all got our names up there,” Pierre says.

That wrestling season followed Pierre’s first season of football. That’s right, the man who will require nuclear armageddon not to become a Douglas football legend, didn’t even play until eighth grade.

He was planning on playing in seventh grade but injured his foot in an unfortunate accident involving his bicycle and a loading dock a week before the season started. At first, he thought it was sprained so he hobbled around for a week before finally acquiescing and heading to the doctor, where it was discovered he had broken his foot in seven places.

“It made me want to play more when I broke my foot,” he says.

Starting late wasn’t necessarily a detriment to his burgeoning career, however.

“If a person is very athletic, it doesn’t really matter when they start playing a particular sport,” Rhoades says. “Sometimes that may even enhance them going further because they don’t have bad habits. They just use their athleticism and you can nurture that into a football player. That’s where we were with Pierre.”

Pierre still remembers his first varsity game. It was late his freshman year in the midst of a snowstorm. Ryan Adams, then a sophomore, comes sprinting off the field, ripping his soaked gloves off his hands. He tosses them to Pierre, tells him to go in.

“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing,” he says.

Still, he crouches at his linebacker position, staring across the line through the thickly falling snow at the opposing running back. The ball is snapped, Pierre starts running. It’s a pass to the flats. Pierre is there. He tackles the receiver out of bounds. He has made his first tackle.

“Pierre’s name was definitely one of the up-and-coming freshmen that were talked about by a lot of different people,” Rhoades, who had just arrived as the new head coach, says. “Once I saw him and how athletic he looked, it was exciting to think about what he could do.”

There are few things more impressive in the annals of Douglas sports than Pierre Etchemendy’s senior season.

In only 11 games, Pierre ran for more than 2,000 yards (2,025 to be exact). He never ran for less than 113 in a game and topped 200 yards five times. He had at least two touchdowns in every game. Over the course of the season he averaged 10 yards per carry. He also led the team in tackles.

“It was huge,” Rhoades says of Pierre’s 2009 performance. “There were games that I didn’t think he had a lot of yards because he didn’t carry the ball a lot and he had over 200. Ten yards a carry? That’s unbelievable at any level. That’s a feat in itself.”

His junior year, Pierre went into the summer in a platoon with Cody Bohlander as the team’s running back duo. But just a few games into the season Bohlander was named the starting back and received the bulk of the carries. Pierre finished that year with 400 yards rushing.

“I have no doubt he would have shattered the all-time rushing record and held it for many years to come,” Rhoades says of the possibility of Pierre starting for two years. “He very easily could have been our main back his junior year. With Bohlander’s athleticism, even though Pierre was a more natural running back, Cody was such a great athlete we had to keep him on the field. What’s great about Pierre is he accepted that role. He just wanted to produce in whatever capacity he could.”

Going into his senior season, Pierre knew he was following in the footsteps of three great running backs. The Jay Rhoades era had already produced three straight 1,000-yard backs: Payden McIntyre, Scott Boner and Bohlander.

“You’re the next person and you’re expected to be good,” Pierre says. “When I was a freshman I was scared to death of the big guys. Sophomore year, I loosened up a little bit. Junior year, I realized I could play with these guys.”

Junior year would also be when Pierre helped the Bearcat football team to its first state championship in 30 years. It would be the first of four state titles for Pierre.

There are very few wrestlers in Bob Bath’s career that rank with Pierre Etchemendy.

“I’ve had a lot of good talent come through here,” Bath says. “I hate to try to compare him to somebody else. Has he been one of the best? Yeah, he’s been one of the best.”

Pierre’s wrestling acumen was first displayed in fifth grade when he won state championships in Greco and freestyle during USA wrestling.

“I knew back then that he had some pretty good skills,” Bath says. “As a little kid he was pretty good, but nothing like when he was in high school. He developed into a great wrestler. His work ethic and his hard work helped him to get where he is.”

His freshman year, Pierre went 32-18 in the 140 lb. weight class, finishing fourth at state. The next year he moved up to 152 lbs. and went 40-11, again taking fourth at state. Pierre was slotted at 171 lbs. as a junior, improving his record to 37-4 and capturing his first state championship. All three years the Bearcats finished second at state.

Senior year arrived and once again Pierre was penciled in at 171 lbs. He proceeded to go 40-1 and win another state title. But this time his teammates joined him in the celebration as the Bearcats pulled off an incredible come-from-behind upset of Powell to win their first team title in 11 years.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that high on everything,” Pierre says. “The adrenaline was just pumping through you. Usually, it goes down after awhile, but with six matches in a row it just stayed.”

There is little doubt that Pierre Etchemendy will succeed at Chadron State College.

“He’s going to fit in great at Chadron,” Rhoades, a Chadron State graduate, says. “They have built their success on guys like Pierre; good kids from Wyoming and small schools. I think if he sticks with it and continues to mature and build himself physically through their weight program, he’ll have an outstanding career at Chadron. I was very happy to see him go there. Chadron is a great place to go to school.”

But like many of his fellow two-sport athletes at DHS, choosing a school is only part of the question. The other side of the equation asks ‘What sport will you play?’

For Pierre, the choice wasn’t hard.

“At times, wrestling has been amazing. But it’s not something I would want to do in college,” he says. “Football, I have a lot of fun doing it. Football, for me, is just a feeling. It’s a lot of fun.”

So Pierre will likely red-shirt next year, then take the field as an Eagle at either outside linebacker or safety.

“I went down to visit and met the football players,” he says. “They just seemed like a family and that triggered my mind back to this year’s team. I wanted to go from a team that’s real close to another team that’s bonded. They’re all good kids. It’s a small town. It’s a good fit for me.”

While at Chadron he plans on getting a business degree in design technology and hopes to eventually go into construction management or back into ranching, possibly even taking over the family ranch from his father, George.

There are many stories about Pierre Etchemendy. One sums him up the best.

Pierre is sprawled across the grass of Bearcat Stadium his junior year, stretching before a game against Rawlins. A couple Outlaws mosey across the 50-yard line and start walking through the Bearcat stretching lines, a blatant display of intimidation. But Pierre won’t be intimidated. Nor will he be disrespectful.

He gets up, walks over to the Rawlins players and says calmly in his soft voice, “We don’t take that.”

On the first play of the game he sacks the quarterback.

Brooke Marcus will win the battle

This story took first place for sports feature in the 2011 National Newspaper Association awards.

Brooke Marcus and her dad, Mike, sit courtside at a mid-October Lady Cats volleyball game. As the girls warm up on the court just feet away, Brooke is greeted by dozens of well-wishers. Like the reception line at a wedding, grandmothers, fathers and children all line up to smile at her, ask how she is, tell her how brave she is.

But as each person stops and holds her hand and tells her how happy they are to see her, her eyes drift over their shoulder to the young women clad in white, with Lady Cats splashed across their chests. Her eyes glint with envy.

The game starts and the volleyball players battle for every point. They scream and cheer and jump in the air in exultation. Mostly, they battle for points. Brooke, more than anything, wants to be out there with them. A lifetime sports nut, it’s all she can do to not jump on the court and slam a kill over the net. But she can’t. She has her own battle.

Last April, Brooke Marcus played in a basketball tournament with her traveling team. A few days later, she left for Costa Rica to save sea turtle eggs from being eaten by the locals. But something wasn’t right. She started feeling sick. She could barely stand up. When she sunburned her legs, blood pooled under the skin.

On April 18, she returned from Costa Rica. The next day she planned to go to an AAU volleyball practice with most of the Douglas High School team. She never made it.

On April 19, her feet were so swollen they wouldn’t fit in her tennis shoes. Her mother, Tammy Ware, brought her to Memorial Hospital of Converse County to see Family Nurse Practitioner Kellie Claussen, who performed a blood test.

The average young woman has 400,000 platelets in her blood. Brooke had 10,000. The hospital called down to St. Luke’s Presbyterian in Denver and were told to get her there as quickly as possible. Brooke was rushed onto a jet, then onto a helicopter to take her to St. Luke’s.

“It was really weird,” Brooke remembered. “I got taken in a jet to Denver. Then I got in a helicopter and my mom was with me, but she had to take a cab. They strapped me down to the bed and I was shaking.”

On April 20, Brooke was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a form of blood cancer that affects less than 4,000 children a year. Brooke said her blood was 75 percent cancer.

“For a while you’re in shock,” she said. “How can I be that sick? I played in a basketball tournament two weeks before I left for Costa Rica. I didn’t feel that sick. I felt like I had a cold or mono.”

“It took a little while for it to sink in that she was that sick and had leukemia,” Mike said. “She didn’t look sick for the first month or so.”

“It’s really hard to watch your child go through that,” Tammy said. “You certainly wish you could do it for them. You just have to take it one day at a time and have faith that she’ll be fine. If you try and think about the whole future, it’s too overwhelming. It’s been really hard to watch her.”

That future held two-and-a-half years of chemotherapy, including more than a month at the hospital to start with. For the first six months, Brooke has had to travel to Denver every week for chemo treatments. For the next two years she will have to go once a month.

Brooke, 14, was expecting to enter her freshman year of high school in Douglas. A straight-A student, she had spent the last several years in Buffalo, playing volleyball, basketball and returning to the Jackalope City in the summers to play softball.

“The biggest thing about Brooke is her love of sports,” Tammy said.

“Brooke has always been very competitive and determined,” Mike said. “She has played sports her whole life and learned the benefits of hard work and pushing through difficulties at a young age.”

Brooke played hitter in volleyball and forward in basketball. She was the catcher for the Douglas Dynamite through the 2008 season. Now, she waits with tepid anticipation for her sophomore year. That’s when she’ll be cleared to play sports again.

“Everything is a bigger deal,” she said. “To get to play sports, or to get to do things. For a long time you can’t do anything because you’re stuck in a hospital.”

For now, she does online school through DHS, but her smiling face and colorful bandanas are no stranger to the hallways. She still attends volleyball games, even goes up to the school and watches volleyball practices. She plans to attend basketball practices and games in the winter.

“I knew all of them,” she said of the team. “I was planning on playing. I was going to play AAU last year before I got sick.”

But she can’t make it to every game, or every practice. Because once a week she has to head back down to Denver, to St. Luke’s, and go through another round of chemo.

“After she started losing her hair and watching her get sick and lose weight it was very hard because there really wasn’t anything I could do other than find ways to support her through all her treatment,” Mike said. “As long as she is doing okay, I do okay.”

While in Denver, her family stays with Allyson Taylor, a friend of Tammy’s from their days in grade school here in Douglas.

Brooke spends her time at St. Luke’s in a children’s ward for cancer patients.

“There were a lot of really little kids,” she said. “They’re so cute. It’s so sad. There was a girl who was just getting done when I was starting. I talked to her a lot. I still text her.”

But one little kid stood out. The Little Warrior.

Brayton Morell was barely a year old when he was diagnosed with stage two neuroblastoma cancer in August. He had a four-inch long tumor in his brain.

Brayton is from Douglas, his mother Nicole works as a special education teacher at Douglas Intermediate School and his grandmother, Patty Morrell, worked at the Best Western.

“Brooke had come in to get her treatment and she had found out that we were there,” Patty said. “She just came in and started playing with Bray and he went right to her like he knew who she was. It was amazing.”

A month later, Brooke’s cousin Caitlin, the setter on the Lady Cat volleyball team, approached her about some ways the team could honor her. They wore pink and dyed their hair green in honor of Brooke’s favorite colors.

Then they started a Make-A-Wish fundraiser, selling placards for a wall in the rec center. But this year, instead of donating the money to breast cancer awareness, they were going to give it to Brooke for her expenses.

But Brooke had other ideas.

“I gave the money to a little boy in Denver who has a spinal tumor,” she said. “Everyone has been so nice to us, and he had just been diagnosed so I asked if we could give it to him.”

That little boy was also the Little Warrior.

“She’s just the sweetest girl,” Patty said of Brooke. “I had gone in to pick up a prescription at Frontier Drug and Traci Peplinski told me about what Brooke was doing. I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s absolutely fabulous.’”

“We were in Denver for Brooke’s treatment right after Brayton was diagnosed with cancer and she and I stopped and visited him and his family,” Mike said. “They seemed to have an instant connection and that made her decision very easy.”

There’s a common line of thinking about 14-year-olds. The drama of entering high school is about all they can handle. They only care about themselves. They’re self-centered.

“This one wasn’t,” Patty said, “neither was that volleyball team.”

Brooke didn’t even enlist the help of her parents.

“I heard it from another mom at the store,” Tammy said. “The mom told me that was amazing of Brooke and how nice it was. People have been so giving to us so I was proud of her for thinking of someone else.”

Brayton is currently going through his fourth 21-day round of chemo.

“How precious are the children in this town?” Patty said. “How quickly the town comes together for one or more of its own. We have lived here for more than 30 years and it never ceases to amaze me the impact of strength and courage a community can really give back to us. We are truly blessed to belong to such a place.”

Now it’s a waiting game. There’s still the chemo, still complications like when her liver shut down and she had to be rushed down to Denver. But you’d never know it was a struggle when you’re sitting on a couch talking to Brooke in a pristine living room overlooking Laramie Peak.

“She has had an amazing attitude throughout it,” Tammy said. “She’s been very positive. She’s handled all of it really well. She just says, ‘This is what we have to do and we’re going to do it.’ She doesn’t get down. She doesn’t complain about losing all of her hair.”

When Brooke lost her hair, her little sister, Olivia, 10, shaved her head too.

“It’s been a life-changing event for everyone close to her,” Tammy said.

“I am obviously a little biased because she is my daughter but I think she is an amazing young lady,” Mike said. “She sees this as something that needs to be overcome and whatever it takes she will do it. She has been upbeat and pretty positive through everything she has already endured. I am so proud of her and feel like this experience is going to somehow positively impact others that she crosses paths with during her life.”

Right now, Brooke has her sights set on making one impact: in the wins column for the Douglas volleyball, basketball and softball teams.

“I think it helps that she is a little ornery and able to focus that energy and determination toward getting better, doing well in school, and playing sports next year,” Mike said. “How we overcome adversity helps shape who we are and she will come out of this a stronger and more determined young lady that can conquer anything that comes her way.”



The Beautiful Team

This story took first place for feature story in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Association Awards among dailies under 20,000.

It all started the day the goals came down.

It’s more of a clearing than a soccer field, a grassy expanse nestled behind a modular classroom tucked behind Cannon Valley Lutheran High School on the corner of a four-way stop, just a stocky bridge crossing off Highway 60 in Morristown.

It’s a soccer field in the way that a front yard becomes a football field — run to the trash can, fake right, then cut to the red pickup and I’ll hit you there.

Trees sprout up at random intervals, like monolithic defenders caught in quicksand. Mounds and divots roll and dive, just waiting for an ankle to wrench. But for the neighborhood kids, it was a perfect place to gather on a warm summer’s evening and knock the soccer ball around.

“We just got bored sometimes during the summer and grabbed a bunch of kids from the trailer court,” Frankie Morales said.

Until the soccer nets disappeared.

***

“When you’re a small school you turn a large green space into a soccer field and it works,” CVLHS volunteer development director Mike Young said.

Cannon Valley is a small school in the way a Fiat is a compact car. It sits atop Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Morristown and has an enrollment of 16 students. Up until three years ago, it had a soccer team, but in those days enrollment reached 27. In recent years, there just weren’t enough students to support a team.

Then one day a group of area Latino kids stopped by the parsonage to ask Pastor Eugene Chase where the goals went. Chase explained the goals were taken down for liability reasons and to facilitate mowing the grass. Then he had an idea.

“You guys like soccer, why don’t you come and play for our school this fall?”

And that’s how the menagerie of ethnicities, ages, backgrounds and cultures came together to form the most unlikely of soccer teams.

***

If you just looked at the scoreboard, they didn’t win much. In fact, they didn’t win at all. But oftentimes in sports, the greatest victories don’t correlate with a crooked number spelled out in light bulbs. The CVLHS Titans soccer team was made of up five students from a small Christian high school, three students from Waterville-Elysian-Morristown High School, two from Faribault, one home-schooled kid and three elementary students.

One day during practice they all took off their shoes and flipped over the tongues, comparing the sizes. Little fourth-grader Yianko Borrego had size 4 feet. The largest were size 13.

Over the course of a seven-game season, numerous practices and a few film sessions on YouTube, they became more than teammates. They became friends.

“It’s a very neat thing, breaking the cultural barriers,” Mike said. “It’s a great thing, bringing the two groups together.”

Half the team was Latino, half the team was white. It would be politically correct to say that none of them saw the difference, but that’s not quite true.

“They are much better at soccer than us,” joked Ron Menze, a junior at CVLHS.

It was more that none of them cared about the difference. There were the two WEM players: Roberto Perez and Morales; there were the fourth- and fifth-graders: Jose Perez, Yianko Borrego and Junior Colin; there were the Faribault kids: Joshua Duran and his cousin Marcello; and there were the CVLHS students: Menze, Kourt Remund, Ben Lamont, Mitch Witte and Louis Quiram, plus Mitch’s little brother, Austin.

“It definitely breaks some stereotypes when you get to know people from a different culture and a different segment of society,” said CVLHS Interim Administrator and team coach Andrew Bull.

Sometimes when practice ended they would play a friendly pick-up game, school kids against town kids.

“They would always laugh and joke about how they didn’t need shirts versus skins,” Andrew said.

When practice ended, they didn’t retreat to their separate enclaves. They made that difficult high school leap from acquaintances to buddies.
“I hung out with them a lot,” Frankie said. “When you’re on a team, automatically you get to know that person and build a friendship.”

The town kids attended the CVLHS Homecoming bonfire and a Titans volleyball game. After games, McDonald’s trips would entail everyone ordering fries and dumping them in a towering heap on a tray in the middle of the table. America’s melting pot had become a mountain of salt and beef tallow.

“I’m a lot closer with Frankie and Roberto now,” Mitch said.

“Now I consider them friends,” Ron said. “It was a lot easier than I ever thought it would be.”

What did they bond over? Sports, video games and — they’re high school boys, after all — girls.

“Just put GIRLS in your story in big letters,” Ron joked.

***

Not only did they not know each other, but they barely knew the game. Three of the CVLHS students had never played organized soccer before, and one, Kourt, had just a single year on a U7 team to draw from. At least one of the WEM students had never played before.

“It was just a whole bunch of people you don’t know, starting a team.” Frankie said. “It was fun. It was really frustrating at the same time.”
One week before the school year, the team didn’t even have enough players, there were still just 10 of them.

“We didn’t have enough players, so they started asking, ‘Well I have a little brother who plays, but he’s in seventh grade,’” Andrew said. “Then before long it was, ‘My little brother has a friend, but he’s in fifth grade.’”

So Junior, a fifth-grader who had played in the pick-up games over the summer, joined and so did Josh and Marcello from Faribault. Now there were 13. Andrew went ahead and cold-called a bunch of schools that the Titans play in volleyball and put together a seven-game schedule. They would play their home games at Camp Omega, with one game at the Faribault Soccer Complex. The season opened with a 5-3 loss to Christian Life Farmington.

“The first game we did OK, but we could have done better,” Frankie said. “If we had played our first game at the end of the season, we would have been awesome. We probably would have won.”

Andrew had never coached before — he didn’t intend to coach until no one else stepped forward — and he started by downloading coaching manuals off the Internet. One day, when practice was rained out, he had everyone gather around a computer and watch a YouTube clip of a soccer video game.

“The computer programs the players to do certain things because that’s what real professional players would do,” Andrew said. “We learned about defense and where you ought to be at certain times and how to move the ball around.”

***

By the end of the season, the team’s improvement on the pitch was evident.

“We made a lot of progress,” Frankie said. “We could have beaten a lot of the teams we faced if we didn’t make mistakes, which is surprising.”

Early in the year, the Titans lost 8-2 to Immanuel Mankato. Just two weeks later, they lost 3-0 while scoring a goal on themselves.

“That was kind of a turning point in the season,” Andrew said. “After that game we came back to practice and we realized we had found what really works.”

Most of the CVLHS kids played on defense and the Morristown kids were on offense, led by their mighty fifth-grader, Junior, who stands just over 4-feet tall and scored two goals in the team’s final game against Mountain Lake Christian.

“The kids we were playing against were just enormous,” Andrew said. “Junior was just dribbling around them and in between their legs. They kept getting burned by this little kid. You could see it on his face, that’s probably one of the best moments he’s had all year.”

With three kids who have yet to hit sixth grade, the Titans sometimes looked like something out of the “The Big Green.” Yet they made it work.

“Just because they’re short, doesn’t mean they can’t kick or run,” Mitch said.

“The other team found that out,” Kourt chimed in.

***

The season is over now — it wrapped up on Tuesday — and four of the CVLHS students are gathered on chairs and couches in Andrew’s room on the second floor of the school. They reminisce about games, and learning the game together and the friendships they bridged across cultural gaps.

“It was a learning experience,” Andrew said. “It was really rewarding to get to see everyone get out there and have fun.”

Finally, as the discussion slows and everyone is itching to leave school for the day, they’re asked if they plan on playing again next year.

“Oh yeah.”

“Most definitely.”

“We’ll be juniors and the little guys will grow about two feet.”

“We have a lot of years left with Yianko.”