Little Drummer Boy...all grown up

Little Drummer Boy...all grown up

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

The fake wood-paneled wall of Felipe Ramos’ ‘70s era trailer is covered in white sheets of paper splashed with scribbles of black marker. On each is written some aspect of his hopeful music career; a song title here, a dash of cover art there, a long list of radio stations.

Just below the madman-esque flurry of wrinkled notes sits a $4,000 laptop, which holds the key to this maze of information. Felipe sits on his bed, dressed all in black, like always. When he goes outside, he puts on a black jacket. His undershirts are black. Even his sheets are black.

In his heart of hearts, Felipe is a drummer. He’s the guy who played in the Rose Bowl parade, the one whose caustic drumming accompanied George W. Bush when was inaugurated as president in 2001.

But for now, Felipe has transformed. He’s become Flip-In, a singer-songwriter who scratches raw vocals over slick west-coast hip-hop beats on his first album, Mexican Black Magic, which he hopes to release this fall.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said. “I’ve never sang or written. It’s not my thing. I had to think outside the bubble.”

***

Felipe sits down at his drum set, intensity building in his eyes like a rising tide, and turns his iPod to a classic jazz tune. Two massive speakers encompass him, pounding into each ear. He looks up one last time as the first notes flutter from the bulbous speakers, a mischievous smile splitting his lips.

He glances down, swings his left arm into the air and brings it down with a ferocious tenacity, smashing it across the top of a snare. The hits start coming faster and faster as he builds up energy, hands a-blur as they beat out the staccato rhythms. Beads of sweat form on his forehead, then cascade down on the clear plastic as he spins left and right.

***

It’s the second track of the album that really gets the head bouncing. It features a light piano dancing over a smooth, relaxed Dr. Dre-styled bass line. The drumming is simple, understated, and surprisingly not recorded live. Felipe has written his entire album, created all the music and recorded his lyrics, using his MacBook Pro and GarageBand, an intricate program he manipulates to create his signature country hip-hop sound (you can call it hibbity-hop if you prefer).

Felipe wrote the first six tracks of his debut in a flurry of inspiration last fall. After years of living with music as a hobby, he was determined to re-enter the biz. He knows it is where he belongs.

Felipe is a 2001 graduate of Douglas High School, which was just one step in his 14 years of bashing drums.

“I started off playing and it hasn’t stopped since,” he said. “It’s been a lot of fun. A hell of a ride.”

Felipe, who arrived in America from Mexico when he was just a baby, was selected to the Wyoming High School All State Marching Band for two years, earning the chance to play in the Tournament of Roses, the largest parade in the world. While still roaming his high school halls, Felipe started the band Pledge Felix with several buddies. They recorded a five-track demo, but broke up when several members left to attend Oklahoma Christian University.

“We wanted to do it, but we all went our separate ways after we graduated,” he said.

From DHS, Felipe accepted a full-ride scholarship to Northwest College in Powell to study under the tutelage of acclaimed drummer Ronnie Bedford. Bedford spent two years touring with Bennie Goodman, played for two Broadway shoes and was once matched with Buddy DeFranco.

But formal schooling didn’t fit the mile-a-minute Felipe, who dropped out after one year and never earned his performing arts degree. He soon returned to Douglas.

“I threw myself into an extensive practice period for awhile,” he said. “I’ve also been doing, since 2004, my homework for the production company. That’s something I have to learn, is the production side of music, and it sucks. I hate it. But it’s got to be done. It’s a tricky business.”

***

In 2004, Felipe created Foxxy Productions and/or Studios LLC, a production company he envisioned would sign other bands and record their albums. Quickly, he realized that Douglas had a dearth of local musicians.

“I have to get out of here to do that,” he said. “I’ve known that forever.”

So Felipe continued to do what he knows best, spending years working mostly in manual labor – oil rigs, landscaping, construction – or in restaurants. Finally, in the fall of 2008, he had a falling out with family, was forced to move from his home outside town and found himself living in a 15-foot trailer outside a friends house. One night, while sleeping on a thin mattress feet above a city street, he realized it was time to delve back into the music business.

“Last fall, especially, I was done for,” he said. “I was bored, but I almost didn’t do it. It took off for about five tracks after that. I actually did it for like 12 hours a day, working on it and listening to it over and over again. After that it kept going and going.”

Over the course of a year – often interrupted by family battles over land and money – he put together 17 tracks, which he crafted into his debut album.

“Waiting for inspiration to strike is expensive,” he said. “I’ve sat there listening to drum beats over and over trying to think of what lyrics would fit.”

***

He would start with rhythm – some drums and a twisting bass line –  then he’d add pianos and guitars and banjos, then, finally, sit down for the most difficult part: Writing lyrics.

“There’s a couple love songs in there,” he said sheepishly. “Just things in life, crazy dreams about this crazy town. Right now I’m biting my fingernails, a little nervous, to see what the world thinks about that.”

While his drumming is bombastic, most of Flip-In’s songs are laid-back, with a west coast hip-hop style infused with a twang of country living. But some of his lyrics beget a softer, emotional side. The side of lost loves and whirlwind romances. Still, on other tracks he reaches back into his cultural past, spinning the folk tale of a Mexican scorpion.

“It’s mello,” he said of the album. “It’s definitely not something that’s expected of me. I’m aggressive. Even my jazz is aggressive.”

With his initial demo done, Felipe sent a rough cut to Glen Romero, a friend and fellow DHS grad who lives in Massachusetts.

“He’s a musician who’s done his homework. I’ve done my homework too, but I use him to check out my work,” Felipe said. “He has a trick or two, and he’s been helping me out with that.”

Once he gets feedback from Romero, Felipe hopes to have a CD release party in the fall. He’s already hard at work on his second album – which could be part of a double release – and is still pouring himself into the drums every day.

“My ultimate goal is to just do drums,” he said. “Drums, drums, drums, all the damn time.”

When he dreams, Felipe pictures himself leading a rock or jazz group, hiring his own musicians, writing his own charts, being the man behind it all. But he knows he has to put in his dues, earn his way up the hierarchy. Toward that goal, he has been playing in the Casper College reading band for two years.

Even once he releases the album, Felipe knows he has a long way to go to becoming a successful musician. He plans to hit the road in 2010 for his aptly-titled Camper Blues tour.

“It’s the road for me, for awhile anyway,” he said.

After the road, who knows. Felipe knows the horrors of the industry. He knows that for every band that pops up on MTV, there’s a hundred more playing a musty old bar on the side of a highway on a Tuesday night.

“It takes a lot for it to take off. It takes time and money and patience for it to develop. You’re always gambling,” he said. “You’re always putting everything you have in. You’re always risking. Who knows for what? For fun, pretty much.”

A Weekend Enlistment

A weekend enlistment

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

The last sliver of purple sun is retreating behind the Laramie Range for its nightly slumber as I peer out the window of an unmarked white van bouncing along ice-streaked I-25. Face pressed against cold glass, I take it all in.

I observe from the back corner of the darkened van, illuminated only by the yellowed headlights splashing across the road and the blue glow of open cell phones, as Korn blasts through the speakers. In front of me, two adolescent young men battle through a testosterone-filled game of mercy.

After a couple songs, the driver grabs the iPod from the passenger and starts flipping through it.

“If I run into country music, so help me.”

“It’s not mine, it’s my brothers.”

“This is your brother’s? He’s got chick music on it.”

The iPod wheel stops spinning and the unmistakable sound of a rainstorm fills the van. Piano notes start dancing over a melodic bass line. Thunder booms. Rain patters. Jim Morrison wails.

“Into this world we’re thrown

Like a dog without a bone

An actor out on loan

Riders on the storm”

That’s what I am, an actor out on loan, thrown into a world I don’t know. For me, this isn’t real. But for everyone else – the other six inhabitants of this white blur speeding north on the interstate – this is their life. I am the imposter, the intruder. I am out of place.

I am in the Army. For a weekend, at least.

***

I watch the tree-speckled Laramie Range on the horizon as I lie prone in a makeshift trench on a hillside west of Casper. Seconds turn into minutes turn into chunks of an hour. Still, I repose quietly. I am a terrorist in the snow-packed mountains of Afghanistan. In my own head, I am.

Wind gusts of 45 mph scream across my face, covered in a black mask, muffling all sounds and forcing me to pop up from my covered position every few minutes in anticipation of the intruding Humvees.

With a Gortex jacket and three layers of pants on, I’m surprisingly warm. But I keep worrying that my weapon will freeze and I’ll be left out-gunned in the midst of an ambush.

I have specific instructions. Along with the three men beside me in the hovel, we are to wait for the four approaching Humvees to get sniped, then wait for the men inside to exit and start up the hill toward the entrenched snipers. Then, when they are exposed on an open hillside, we will start mowing them down.

Of course, the only constant in war is that there are no constants. The caravan spots a sniper before they reach the hillside. They stop far away, not even close to our firing range. They start up the hill and across a field, a dozen men in full camo with faces painted to match the snow and black weapons in their hands.

We make a decision, we must get closer. Two of us pop out and run a few feet, then flop prone to the ground. The other two follow. We leap-frog across the snowy tundra, stumbling along the uneven, rocky hillside.

Still out of shooting range we are spotted. I lie down behind a bush with my fellow insurgents on either side of me. We start taking out a few approaching soldiers. But soon there are too many of them. They start picking us off. Finally, a pair of paintballs slam against my hand and shoulder. I am dead. I flip over onto my back, lay my gun at my side and stare up at the blue sky as the wind howls past my ears.

Despite my death, I can only think of one thing.

“Boy, this is fun.”

***

It all started on a cold November morning in front of the American Legion here in Douglas. Staff Sgt. Paul Peterson of the Douglas Armory branch of the Army National Guard spotted me taking pictures on Veteran’s Day and remembered a recent column I had written about practicing with the football team.

“When you gonna come drill with us?”

“Ha, I don’t think I could make it.”

“No, seriously. In December we’re heading up to Casper and we’re going to be driving around in Humvees and shooting paintballs. It’ll be fun.”

Humvees? Paintballs? Now we were getting somewhere.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

***

So here we are, rumbling toward Casper. Sgt. Peterson is driving and alternately dishing out insults about most song choices.

In the front seat is Pvt. Brock Hladke, from Lusk, but a member of the Douglas unit. The second row is Krista Switzer and Brenden Krejci. The third row – where the epic battle of mercy is taking place – is Mike Meadows and Tyler Halverson.

At 5:20 the brilliant lights of Casper burst into view on the horizon. Ten minutes later we are turning off of CY Avenue and into the armory.

***

Pop-pop-pop-pop.

We are under siege. I am not sure if we just ran over a firecracker or we are taking fire. The van slams to a stop and we all look around puzzled. Then, the faint shadows of several men slip from behind a parked tank. They carry weapons. They are pointed at us.

I am a little scared. More confused.

We get out of the van, I glance around for mortar fire. Instead, the remnants of a dozen yellow paintballs have left starbursts of warning along the entire side of the van.

“That is the realism,” Staff Sgt. Marty Frank says.

Having been informed we would all be dead if it was a true road-side ambush, we enter the armory. We are ushered into a classroom filled with about 20 other guardsmen. Many are so new they don’t have their ACUs (Army Combat Uniform) yet.

Before we can drill, we must learn. We sit down in a classroom, long, brown tables lined with chairs. Cinderblock walls hold two white boards at the front and a bookcase and a television stand line the walls.

We go over cover and concealment (cover stops bullets, concealment doesn’t). We are taught the rudimentary basics of tactical evasion, escaping from armored Humvees, setting up a security perimeter and when to engage the enemy.

We go over the basics, the different ranks of enlisted men, the five levels of warrant officers and the hierarchy of commissioned officers. I learn that there have been only five five-star generals in 200-plus year history of the Army, and all five fought in World War II. (Let’s see if you know them, I’ll give you the answer at the end of this story.)

We talk about noise and light and litter discipline. We learn to tape anything metal that we carry and to not leave trash behind because it could provide clues to the enemy. Before we fight, we must learn.

We are split into two teams for trivia, except this is extreme trivia. If you lose you are punished with pushups or lunges or arm circles. I get two of my three questions right and I am happy.

Finally, about two hours after arriving at the armory, we are fed pizza. Newly enlisted scramble for seats closest to the food, but are quickly taught nothing comes that easy in the army, as the food is moved to the back, closest to those who had the patience to wait. It comes in unmarked cardboard boxes, like some kind of government-issue dinner.

At 8 p.m. we are dismissed and retreat to our hotel. We are warned not to drink, not to drink and drive, to watch out for the other “idiots” on the road and not to partake in unprotected sex. Check, check, check and check.

***

5:54 a.m. – I leave my room for breakfast. I scarf down cereal, a bagel, waffles and juice. I am convinced I will need plenty of energy for morning PT (physical training).

6:45 a.m. – We arrive at the Casper YMCA for morning training. I have heard two stories.  One has me dragging myself through a two-mile run, grunting through pushups and straining through sit-ups. The other has us playing dodgeball. I’m calling in favors with the man upstairs to make sure it’s the latter.

We stretch in formation, but first, because there are so many newbies (I am quite thankful, otherwise I would have been the only one screwing everything up), we have to learn how to stand in formation. We learn to put our hand on our hips and touch elbows with the men (or women) on either side of us. We extend our arms in front to determine where to stand.

7:10  a.m. – It’s dodgeball. I can barely contain my excitement. It’s like the first time I saw sports in high definition. The feeling is nearly incommunicable.

But this is the Army, and in the Army it’s never just dodgeball. There are a few wrinkles. First, if you get out, you must do 20 pushups before you can re-enter. Sergeants play, but they can’t get out. And if your team loses, have fun with the punishments.

Our team loses the first game and we are instructed to do suicides. Having trudged through several basketball practices in recent years, I’m prepared.

We lose the third game and we have to lie on our backs and perform butterfly kicks (riding an imaginary bicycle with your legs). Try it sometime. It’s spectacularly difficult. At this point sweat is dripping down my face, and I am considering giving up. My mind races through alternative options I could offer to get me out of the punishments. Maybe they’ll let me bob for live grenades in a barrel of battery acid. They can water-board me. Anything.

More dodgeball games, more punishments. Arm circles and slow-motion push-ups send my shoulders into full-fledged revolt. I am pretty sure they planned to start a revolution against my brain at one point.

8:10 a.m. – We are back in the van. The sweat that has soaked my clothes is now freezing against my skin. We are headed back to the hotel for a half hour of “personal hygiene.” I guess one of those favors was returned.

8:45 a.m. – Back in the rear seat of the van. Headed to the armory. It’s paintball time. I hope. I pray.

***

I have just died. I am lying on my back behind the bush with yellow paintball juice dripping from my shoulder. All the insurgents are dead. Our ambush has failed. We will soon learn why.

Sgt. Frank gathers the two dozen guardsmen around him. First question: “Who were the four who were on the hillside and broke their cover?”

Me and three others raise our hands.

“Why the hell did you move. You should have just waited for us to get closer. Who was the first one to pop out?”

It was probably me, but there’s no chance I volunteer this information. It’ll either go to my grave with me, or I’ll write about it in the newspaper. One of the two.

Three more trips out and two more times I’m on the losing side. Probably not a coincidence. in fact, the one time my team doesn’t lose, I am assigned only cover duty on the backside of the Humvees, where no insurgents ever appear.

***

One thing I learn quickly is that at the armory – and in the Army as a whole I’m sure – the end of the day is not the end of the day. When you finish, you’re not done.

After a day in the fields and bouncing over snowpiles in fully-armored, field-ready Humvees we must spend close to two hours cleaning. We must scrub every weapon, every facemask, every jacket. We must scrub the classroom, wiping down every table and chair, vacuuming the floor. We must mop the halls. We must work. The lesson, as always, is that even a good time doesn’t come without hard work.

And that’s the lesson I left the weekend with. I knew that Guard weekend would be a combination of fun and work, but I didn’t realize the level of cause-and-effect that is drilled into each activity.

It is the same in the battlefield. To borrow a famous science phrase, each action has an equal and opposite reaction. For every minute of blindly splaying paintballs across a field; I must clean, or sit in a classroom and learn proper tactics.

Too many times in life people get to enjoy the spoils of something without suffering the consequences. Not in the Guard. They share the benefits and the punishments. Dodgeball is fun, but running sprints are not. Eating pizza is fun, but sitting through two hours of learning insignias is not. Winning a trivia game is fun, but circling the room doing lunges is not.

So that’s it. In the end, that’s what I took away from my weekend drilling with the Guard. It’s fun, and it’s not. But would I do it again? Hell, yeah.

Oh, and the answer? Gen. George C. Marshall, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Henry Arnold, Gen. Omar Bradley (later of the Air Force).

Cody Bo Knows

Cody Bo Knows

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

First the knees bend, flexing tendons and stretching muscles. The quadriceps explode into action, pulsing along the femur as four muscles stretch in unison.

It’s the late 1990s and a dozen kids swarm the Douglas Primary School playground, a handful of youngsters with basketballs bigger than their heads and a set of baskets located a couple feet closer to the ground.

There’s one boy, shorter than the rest, and he keeps taking off from the pavement, basketball clutched in both hands, and soaring until his head nears the rim, then throwing the ball downward through the nylon net.

Blood pours down the femoral artery as the hamstrings contract on the back of the thigh, turning the lower leg inward as the hip rotates in unison with the knee.

It’s about 10 years later, and that boy, now a young man, is a sophomore playing varsity football for a team bound for the state title game. He runs a seam route across the middle – always a dangerous space for receivers – and leaps to make the catch. As he comes down with the ball, a defender grabs his leg, twisting it around as he swings through mid-air.

“Geez, how’d he not break his leg?” his coach asks. “I don’t know how he didn’t get hurt.”

The other kids call him “Shark Boy” because they believe he’s made entirely out of cartilage.

“He’s a very tough kid,” the coach says in awe. “He has great resiliency.”

Now the calf muscles are screaming with effort, the plantar flexors – the gastrocnemius, soleus and plantaris – work to stabilize the body, ensuring that when all these crouching muscles are unleashed, there is a united direction.

It’s 1993 and the boy is only 2. His legs work overtime as he tries to keep up with his older brother, Eric, as they gallop across the street to see an elk. The 2-year-old never sees the car coming. Later, the woman driving would admit to speeding when her bumper collided with him. He was tossed to the curb, bleeding and crying.

Miraculously, a few stitches later and the little boy was back up on his feet, ready for his next adventure.

Finally, all the clenched muscles release, as tendons and ligaments snap into place and the entire body pushes down onto the ground below, transferring energy and motion up through the legs into the body and suddenly the soles of the feet have left the ground. They propel upwards, leaving the safety of earth and soaring against gravity into the air. A jump.

He is the boy with the golden legs. The ones that can kick field goals, return punts, run through linebackers, clear hurdles, pop up from a crouch to throw out a would-be basestealer, lift above a crowded lane to grab an offensive rebound, or launch into an intruding tight end’s chest.

These are the legs of Cody Bohlander. At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about his lower extremities, which have already been operated on. But somehow, someway, those two poles of strapping muscle and bouncy tendons have propelled Cody to the state’s athletic elite.

“I don’t know whether to credit it to my mom or dad,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know which one can jump higher. I’m pretty sure it’s my mom.”

Jumper

Everyone knows Cody can jump. From his coaches, to his teammates, to the uneducated fan in row seven. But why does he jump so high? Football teammates Jake Vogel and Daniel Hancock both have higher verticals than Cody (who at 35 inches isn’t exactly shabby). So why is it that Cody elicits muffled bursts of amazement from the crowd?

“I don’t know,” football coach Jay Rhoades says, as he mulls the question. “I think a lot of it is the timing. He knows when the ball is at its highest point and is able to make those kinds of catches that make him look like he’s jumping higher than he is. But he’s a pretty good jumper.”

Basketball coach Ron Erickson is even more vague.

“I think a lot of it is heart,” he says. “He has a combination of somebody who can really leap and is naturally aggressive. You’re going to have a good rebounder when you can combine those two things.”

“I think I just time it right,” Cody says. “They’ll just jump to jump. I’ll time it right so I can get to the ball.”

From an early age, Cody was known for his jumping. Not only that, but he loved to jump.

“When you’re above everyone, and you’re the shortest guy, it’s an intense feeling,” he says. “I think I like that feeling more than scoring a basket.”

He used to get in trouble at school for breaking exit signs as he leapt to touch them on his way by. By the time he reached high school, he was a celebrated athlete in five sports. He had played as point guard of two undefeated middle school basketball teams, played quarterback and linebacker in football, even won a state championship in 2000 in wrestling (he was fourth at Rocky Mountain Regionals). He was a baseball player and a skilled hurdler and high jumper. And he was just entering high school.

By the time he was done with high school, especially on the gridiron, he would be one of the most celebrated athletes in Douglas lore.

Records galore

By the time the final seconds clicked off the clock at Bearcat Stadium to clinch Douglas’ 34-21 win over Buffalo for its first state football title in 30 years, Cody had already clinched almost every statistical accolade one person could accumulate.

At the top of the list was his 1,810 total yards, 200 more than any other 4A player. His 22 touchdowns were eight more times than anyone else found the end zone.

As a runner, he was second in the state with 990 yards and tops with 19 touchdowns. His 6.2 yards per carry also topped 4A.

As a receiver, he was fifth with 395 yards and three touchdowns. His punt return average of 12.1 yards was best in 4A and his kick return average put him third.

Along the way, he notched the longest run (84 yards) and catch (95 yards) in the state. To top it all off, he was second on the team with 130 defensive points from his safety position.

“He’s a playmaker. He has a knack for it,” Rhoades says. “That sums up Cody more than anything.”

Cody was a starter from the get-go, playing as a freshman as a punter and punt and kick returner. The last two games of his first season, he was inserted into the starting lineup in place of Blake Richendifer.

As a sophomore and junior he played safety and slot receiver, leading the team in receptions as a junior. But then his senior year, things changed.

Receiver to runner

“I really was planning on using him as the slot receiver and running the ball every once in a while out of that position,” Rhoades says about his plans entering last fall. “But when we went to camp, two of our tailbacks got hurt and we threw him in for a scrimmage. I knew it was going to be hard to get him out of that tailback spot.”

During the first two games of the season, Cody and Pierre Etchemendy split carries in the backfield. But after a tough  27-14 loss to Glenrock, Cody and Rhoades sat down to discuss the team’s direction at running back.

“I told him I wanted to put the team on my shoulders. I wanted to help the team out,” Cody says.

“When you have a kid who does that, a lot of coaches may feel threatened by that, but in my eyes, you have a kid come up and he says he wants to carry the load and basically put the team on his shoulders and carry them as far as he can.”

“It wasn’t really hard for me,” Cody says. “I knew that this was my last season. We needed help to get to the state championship. I felt like it wasn’t a big pressure on me, and it would help our team out to have a set running back.”

So the starting gig was Cody’s and he never looked back. He rushed for 154 yards in week four against Rawlins and there was no doubt the job was his.

Above the rim

In recent years, only three Bearcats have lettered four years in basketball: Chase Plumb, Blake Richendifer and Cody Bohlander. While Cody’s stats (he averaged 12 points and four rebounds per game as a senior All-State player) may not measure up to Plumb and Richendifer, his impact on Bearcat basketball can compete.

Cody joined the team as a freshman, late in the season, and played mostly as a defensive specialist.

“I remember watching him play in his first game for JV and thinking ‘That young man is going to be a great athlete,’” Erickson says. “He was doing some pretty impressive things athletically.”

By his sophomore year, Cody was starting, but still working as a utility man, playing tough defense and grabbing rebounds.

“Cody was really our blue-collar, heart-and-soul player,” Erickson says.

His junior year, he finally got his chance to showcase his skills offensively. His numbers stayed similar between his junior and senior seasons, although the team’s success greatly increased. Cody hit two free throws in the final two seconds to give the Bearcats third place in the state to cap his senior season.

“He’s very well respected by his peers and teammates,” Erickson says. “With me, with Cody, I think of a real competitor. That’s the key word that jumps into my mind.”

Oh, there’s more

We’re more than 1,500 words into his story and there hasn’t been a single mention of his baseball or track successes.

Cody has starred as catcher and third baseman – as well as cleanup hitter – for the Cats American Legion baseball team in the summers. While most of his fellow high school athletes are relaxing as life guards at the pool, Cody is sweating under a venerable anvil of equipment while squatting behind home plate.

He had a chance at winning state in the 110m hurdles last spring, but fell late in the race. He’s also excelled as a high jumper.

He even suggested at one point that, “If Douglas had a soccer team, I’d probably play on it.”

Too many sports

Back when he was wrestling, Cody would play five sports each year: football, basketball, wrestling, track and baseball. That’s probably why he’s decided to take a break from competitive athletics when he goes to college at the University of Wyoming.

“I’ve never really had a break,” he says. “A lot of other kids didn’t play baseball, but I went four or five sports every year. I didn’t get a break to just have fun.”

Cody hopes to become a pharmacist, an interest he’s had brewing since his first chemistry class.

“I like working with chemicals,” he says. “I like my science classes more than anything. When we were in chemistry, I liked doing all the labs and figuring out how things worked.”

Hopefully, the first thing he can figure out, in his quest to see how things work, is how it’s possible for a 5’ 10” unimposing athlete to soar through the skies, as if he’s a bird taking flight over treetops.

Someone has to know.

The Quiet Assassin

The Quiet Assassin

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

Daniel Hancock is freshly showered, wearing a pair of red basketball shorts, a 2008 East Regional Tournament t-shirt and his ever-present gold cross.

It’s exactly a week – down to the hour – after Daniel and the rest of his Bearcats teammates’ season ended with a third place finish at state. Still, Daniel appears ready to head to practice, suited up to shoot another set of free throws and run the three-man weave one more time.

As Daniel sits at his dining room table, with the NCAA tournament pattering on the television in the background, he is already contemplative. As always, he’s polite, but reserved. Even when he does start talking, his hand dances in front of his mouth, as if trying to capture the words and not let them escape.

“He’s a quiet-type person,” Douglas football coach Jay Rhoades said. “He would do anything you would ask him to do, which is good. But, man, he’s so quiet it’s hard to get his thoughts on things. I just remember the athleticism and what a nice kid he is.”

When Daniel talks about his football state championship his eyes light up, glistening with excitement. But when his mind wanders to the week before, when his ridiculous 24-straight point performance wasn’t enough to take down Kemmerer, he is still emotional.

The wounds of that semi-final loss are still fresh, but they struggle to diminish the incredible season the senior put up, which followed an equally impressive year on the gridiron.

In football, Daniel tied for the conference lead with five touchdown catches and was in the top five with 30 catches and 380 yards.

“We felt like he was one of the best receivers in the state,” Rhoades said. “I feel like he was as good as any receiver that we played against, for sure.”

On defense, he intercepted three passes, including two in the state championship game.

“I think I got a lot better than I used to be,” Daniel said. “Cornerback isn’t really my passion, but I like it. I just didn’t like covering as much as I’d like hitting. But it was fun.”

The 6’1” slasher scored 16.4 points per game this basketball season as the Bearcats leading scorer, good for third in the conference and fourth in all of 3A. His 1.8 steals were seventh in the conference as he added 5.8 rebounds and an assist per game. His unbelievable quickness and athleticism allowed him to lead the Bearcats in offensive rebounds. He tied a career-high with 29 points in a 71-56 win over Rawlins.

There’s probably a seventh grade coach outside Dallas that would shudder to hear those numbers. Daniel, amazingly, didn’t make the seventh grade basketball team in his last year before moving to Wyoming. Even his first year in Douglas, as an eighth grader, was spent on the ‘B’ team.

It’s possibly the most familiar tale in all of basketball. Like George Washington and his cherry tree, there was Michael Jordan getting cut from his high school varsity team as a sophomore. While Washington went on to help free a nation and and Jordan reached the peak of sports super-stardom, they share at least one characteristic with Daniel: Persistence.

Instead of steering his attention solely to football – which he had always excelled at – Daniel put his head down and started working to improve his game on the parquet.

Daniel was born and raised in Tyler, Texas, a city of just over 100,000 about 100 miles east of Dallas on Interstate 20. He later moved to Garland, a suburb of Dallas, which is where his freakish athleticism wasn’t enough to overcome his lack of basketball IQ. The following year he moved to Douglas.

“It was definitely different, going from a big city to a small town, but I’d been coming up here every summer since I was in kindergarten,” Daniel said. His grandparents were building a house in Esterbrook. “I was happy here. It was fun, but I didn’t really know anyone.”

When Douglas basketball coach Ron Erickson first saw Daniel as a freshman power forward, he noticed an extremely talented athlete who was still learning how to play the game.

“He was very athletic, he had a lot of potential,” Erickson recalled. “He was relatively new to the game, as far as playing organized basketball. We looked at the upside, there was a lot of athleticism.”

As a sophomore, Daniel got his chance to play in the state tournament after a late-season injury to Cody Bohlander. In limited minutes, Daniel played tough defense and displayed a knack for getting big rebounds.

“We’d been trying to get Daniel some more time here and there,” Erickson said. “He brought quickness and defensive potential. We kind of used him like we did Cody, as a defensive stopper.”

Daniel and Cody were linked on the football field as well, as both starred on the 2005-06 undefeated freshman team. That squad had the same nucleus as this year’s state championship team, and it was the bonding done as youngsters learning the game that provided the trust and confidence to bring home Douglas’ first football title in 30 years.

“I think freshman year we all accomplished that undefeated season as a team,” Daniel said. “Once we hit our senior year, we were going to get a state championship. I remember we always talked about it. We’d say ‘Wait until our senior year.’”

During his sophomore football season, Daniel shared third receiver duties with Jake Vogel, waiting his turn to take over for Blake Richendifer and Jake Jackson. As a junior, Daniel started across from Vogel, with Bohlander in the slot.

After that season ended with a semifinal loss to Jackson, Daniel and his fellow juniors re-dedicated themselves to accomplishing their long-term goal of a state championship.

“We came in our junior year summer and lifted every day, whenever we could make it,” Daniel said.  “This was our year and we had to give it all we had every practice,”

But before football could kick off again there was another basketball season ahead. Daniel averaged 12 points per game as a junior, but the team struggled, eventually finishing seventh in the conference and failing to make state for the first time in nine years.

So before his senior year, Daniel hit the gym for two sports, lifting weights and working on agility for football while fine-tuning his jump shot for basketball.

“Whenever we’d have a late practice and open gym after practice, he’d be one of the last guys there,” Erickson said.

“It just seemed like he was always good at what he does,” Rhoades said. “A lot of it was due to his hard work in the offseason. He did great in our speed and agility work in the summer. He was always coming to our weight training.”

But the road to glory certainly wasn’t smoothly paved, as the Bearcats hit some potholes early in the season, starting 1-2 with losses to Glenrock and Chadron.

“We always started off slow with the offense that we ran,” Daniel said. “Against Glenrock, we had to come out and ground-and-pound and we hadn’t had time to get our passing game going. If we’d played them at our peak we could have done some real damage. After we beat Buffalo (at the end of the regular season) I think that decided we were the team to beat.”

According to his coach, Daniel’s main improvement his senior year was learning to adjust his routes to the defense. Always a perfectionist who focused on the details, Daniel would always run his routes as they were drawn up. Eventually, he learned to read what the defense was doing and make adjustments on the fly.

“What maybe frustrated Daniel with me is when you run pass routes as a receiver, you can’t always just run them like they’re drawn up on paper,” Rhoades said. “He’s so meticulous, he wants to do the best that he can. There’s times when he would want to run the route more like it’s drawn on paper. He started understanding what the defense was doing.”

But the Bearcats got on a roll and crushed Buffalo 34-21 in the state title game, thanks in part to two picks and 58 receiving yards from Daniel.

“It was great, it was the best feeling ever,” he said. “We were in the locker room screaming and dancing. There were tears of joy, it was very emotional.”

But there was no rest for the weary, with less than a week off, Daniel turned his attention to putting another ring on his finger.

“We had always talked that we were going to get two rings, football and basketball,” Daniel said. “That’s what we wanted.”

Like the football team, the basketball team got off to a sluggish start, but not because of Daniel, who was leading the team with more than 16 points per game. As the season went on, the team improved, eventually going on a nine-game winning streak and winning the regular season conference crown. Down the stretch, Daniel became the team’s go-to guy.

“That’s just a natural evolvement,” Erickson said. “He’s extremely quick. As the season went along, we went to different sets. If it was a situation where we needed a basket, we thought Daniel could get it.”

That was never more evident than in the state championship semifinals when a red-hot Daniel scored Douglas’ first 24 points – spanning almost three quarters – while leading the squad with eight rebounds. But despite his heroic effort, the rest of the team didn’t have quite enough to pull out a win and was relegated to the third-place game with Lovell.

“Individually, it’s a good thing we had him,” Erickson said. “He kept us in the game.”

After the game, the normally reserved Daniel became even more withdrawn. With tears in his eyes, he sat alone on the bus ride home, alone with his thoughts.

“I had a couple tears,” he said. “I was more mad than anything.”

Daniel is an introspective young man. During the course of an hour-long interview, you can literally see him thinking, see him critiquing himself as he looks back. You can see he always wants to be better, to do better. You just know it pains him not to win.

“It’s not that he’s shy, I think he was always very thoughtful on what he was doing,” Rhoades said. “He was always examining what he could do better.”

Just as he learned to play the game of pick and roll and how to disguise an out-route, Daniel will continue to get better as his career progresses to the next level.

Next year, Daniel will rejoin his sophomore-year quarterback, Drew Hodgs, at Black Hills State University. It was the only school that wanted him as a receiver – several schools saw him as a cornerback – and he jumped at the chance to play with several former teammates, including Scott Boner and Cale DeMinck.

“I think it was a good fit, plus there was a bunch of guys already going there,” Daniel said. “It helped knowing Drew would be my quarterback.”

“I think Daniel has all the tools to be a very good college receiver,” Rhoades said. “He’s just going to have to continue that training and education of being able to run routes against the defense. He has to take what the defense gives him.”

But Daniel isn’t ready to close the book on his basketball career. While many college students struggle to find the time for one sport, Daniel dreams of playing two, plus getting his degree.

“I would like to play both,” he said. “That would be very fun. It would be very time-consuming, but it would be great. I don’t want to put basketball out of the picture.”

Erickson agreed that Daniel has the requisite skills to bring his game to the college ranks.

“As far as what he could give to a college team, there’s a lot of potential there,” he said.

And if there’s anything Daniel is good at, it’s turning raw potential into tangible skill.

Remember, this is the kid who didn’t even make his seventh grade basketball team. Maybe he does have a bit of MJ in him.

Back-to-Back!

Back-to-Back!

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

There were 528 minutes of play in Douglas’ 2009 Championship season.

The Bearcats trailed for none of them.

“No one even touched us,” senior Houston Falkenburg said. “We’re like royalty. We’re like gods. They bow at our thrones.”

Cody was the latest team to feel the wrath of Douglas’ mythology. The Bearcats crushed the Broncs 44-14 in the 3A State Football Championship Game at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Nov. 14. The dominating win – Douglas scored the first 25 points – demonstrated the same supremacy that led to an undefeated 11-0 season that featured 10 straight wins by at least 25 points.

“I always wanted to coach a team like this and I got the chance this year,” head coach Jay Rhoades said. “They never really had to face any adversity and that’s pretty uncommon in high school football. These guys found a way to do that.”

“Loss of words, man. I can say they did it and I went along for the ride,” defensive coordinator Wes Gamble said. “Thanks for the ride, it was worth the ticket.”

“This is the best feeling in the world,” junior quarterback Hayden Barker said. “I haven’t felt anything like this. It’s much better than last week.”

The seniors

For the team’s 12 seniors, it was a fitting ending to their celebrated careers. Leaving Douglas High School as the only repeat champions in school history wasn’t enough, though. They played for another reason.

“It feels amazing. It’s indescribable,” senior running back Pierre Etchemendy said. “We got one for ourselves this year. As you know, it wasn’t just for a football championship. This was for Skye (Hiser) and Levi (Sober) and all those people. This feels great. I’m so happy.”

“It’s amazing. I don’t know what else to say,” senior lineman Tyler Crawford said. “It’s been a great season. We have a great coaching staff, great kids. We worked hard.”

“It feels amazing, incredible. I’m psyched, for sure,” senior fullback Colter McNare said. “As excited as I was, I think I was almost more sad because I knew that I’m done.”

The win

The Bearcats won by combining methodical drives with quick-flash big plays. Thanks to a breakout game from Barker, who threw for 242 yards and three touchdowns and added 47 yards and a touchdown on the ground, the Bearcats scored on three plays of 40 yards or more.

“We’ve had a lot of big plays throughout the year, but we’ve had a lot of great drives throughout the year,” Rhoades said. “We take what we can get. The kids performed great today. It didn’t matter if they needed a drive or a big play. It didn’t matter how it got done.”

“It was amazing watching (Hayden) play,” Falkenburg said. “I want to watch him next year. He has a lot to learn, but he’s on his way.”

Etchemendy rushed for 152 yards on 28 carries and scored two touchdowns to give him 2,036 rushing yards and 32 touchdowns on the season, both school records. Etchemendy is the only Wyoming athlete to rush for more than 2,000 yards since at least 2001, but statistics are not available before that.

“It’s an individual accomplishment with a team effort,” Etchemendy said. “It’s just another number. We know what it’s like in our hearts, what we play for, and that’s all that matters.”

That team effort starts with arguably the state’s best offensive line.

“We don’t get much credit, but we know where it’s at,” Crawford, an offensive lineman, said. “It’s great seeing Pierre get all the publicity that he has. It’s good because we know we did it for him. He’s a great athlete. We love blocking for him and he loves running for us.”

Douglas gained 266 yards on the ground and threw for 242 for a total of 508 yards of offense. Meanwhile, the defense held Cody to 217 yards of offense, and 73 of those came on a reverse play just before halftime with the Broncs already trailing 25-0.

“We just did what we did all year, we attacked,” Gamble said. “They caught us on one reverse and then one drive. That’s been kind of our deal all year. We play about nine or 10 of those three-and-out series. Our philosophy is if we can get them in seven or eight short series with three to four plays and maybe one first down we’re going to win the battle. There’s always one little letdown and that’s the improvement factor.”

The game

To start the game, Cody got the ball and went three-and-out, then Douglas embarked on one of the strangest and wackiest drives of the season. Behind a 12-yard Etchemendy run and a 15-yard Barker scramble, the Bearcats marched down to Cody’s 18-yard line with relative ease. Then things went awry.

On a fourth-and-11 play from the 18, Cody was called for pass interference on Justin Melton, giving Douglas first-and-goal on the nine. Two straight holding calls and a pass interference penalty on Melton left Douglas with a second-and-goal from the 41. After an Etchemendy run gained three yards, the Broncs were again called for pass interference and Douglas had a first-and-10 on the 23. Two plays later, Douglas was flagged for a false start, followed by Barker getting sacked and the Bearcats facing second-and-18. The Broncs were then called for a late hit, giving Douglas third-and-nine on the 10. Two plays later, Etchemendy mercifully ended the drive with a one-yard touchdown run up the gut. After failing on the two-point conversion, Douglas led 6-0 with 4:41 left in the first quarter.

“We knew we had it,” Etchemendy said. “Penalties were there, the refs were calling everything. We battled through that. They’re a good team and we’re a good team so we weren’t going to break every play for 20 yards. We ate away with five yards here and five yards there and then we broke a couple. That’s how you play football.”

Cody went three-and-out on its next possession, followed by a three-play, 50-yard Bearcat touchdown drive that ended abruptly on a 40-yard touchdown scamper by Barker. He was supposed to give the ball to Etchemendy on the play, but the two couldn’t make the hand-off and Barker took the broken play to pay dirt. Douglas led 12-0 with two minutes left in the first quarter.

“I didn’t get out there far enough to hand it off to Etchemendy so I figured I might as well hit the hole myself,” Barker said.

“He was supposed to hand it off to me and we didn’t mesh and I thought ‘Oh, crap’ and away he went,” Etchemendy said.

Cody went three-and-out to follow – at this point the Broncs had nine yards of total offense – and Douglas took only three plays to score again. After two penalties left Douglas with a second-and-22, Barker connected with Mitch Espeland on a 69-yard out pattern that Espeland took down the right sideline for a touchdown. Again, the two-point conversion was not successful, leaving Douglas with an 18-0 lead a minute into the second quarter.

“We have great receivers, our line gives great protection, it just makes everything so easy,” Barker said.

Cody proceeded to lose 10 yards on its next possession, but for once, Douglas didn’t respond, turning the ball over on downs. Cody managed to lose 10 more yards – it now had -11 net yards for the game – and punted back to Douglas with 3:54 left in the half. The Bearcats wasted no time, as Barker connected with Melton on a 54-yard touchdown pass on a go route down the right sideline. This time, Douglas called in placekicker Saxon Bull, who calmly made the extra point to give the Bearcats a 25-0 lead with 1:41 left before halftime.

“They didn’t shut Pierre down but they certainly contained him a little bit,” Rhoades said. “Things opened up and Hayden had a great game, Justin and Mitch came up big, (Danny) Palmer came up with a big catch at the end.”

The Broncs finally broke a play on their first run from scrimmage, as Brady Guide ran 73 yards on a reverse to set Cody up for a four-yard touchdown pass 44 seconds before the half. Still, the Broncs went into the locker rooms trailing 25-7.

After both teams traded three-and-outs to start the second half, Douglas put the game away for good with a 37-yard touchdown run from Etchemendy on a sweep around the left side. It was that play that put him over the 2,000 mark for the season, as he had 1,969 going into it. Bull connected on the extra point to put Douglas up 32-7 with 4:37 left in the third quarter.

Barker hit Espeland for a 33-yard pass early in Douglas’ next drive – following another Cody possession that ended with them losing yardage – to set up four-straight Dylan Klava runs. After gaining 38 yards on four plays, Klava found the end zone on a three-yard run off left tackle. Douglas held a commanding 38-7 lead with just 13 minutes of football remaining.

Cody managed its second scoring drive with an 11-play, 76-yard drive to pull within 24 at 38-14. The Bearcats took little time in responding, embarking on a 51-yard drive, capped by an 18-yard pass from Barker to Palmer to settle the final score at 44-14.

The undefeated

There were conflicting responses on whether the undefeated season added a layer of excellence to the championship.

“I think the kids expected that all year,” Gamble said. “Now, they look at it and say ‘It’s an undefeated season.’ But, as we preached week in and week out, it was one play at a time. They never worried about it. They played our style of football and they let the winning and losing take care of itself. Fortunately for us, it was all winning this year.”

The win gave Douglas back-to-back state championships for the first time in school history. It is the fourth state title in school history (1975, 1978, 2008, 2009). So how did this year’s title compare to last year’s, when Douglas beat Buffalo 34-21 at home for the school’s first football championship in 30 years?

“It’s really different,” Rhoades said. “That was a totally different team last year. For them to win, it was pretty tough. This year it was pretty dominating. We lost a lot of kids off that team last year so it’s a new championship for these kids.”

“Every group is a little different,” Gamble said. “Last year’s 22 seniors brought big plays and athletic ability and some individual efforts. This year’s team brought coachability, athletic ability and toughness. Next year will bring experience and reloading.”

The last game

For 12 seniors, it was their final game, including Jake Marcus, who was unable to play all season with a knee injury, but finally got on the field for the Bearcats’ final possession with a bulky knee brace on under his uniform.

As time was running out, Douglas took the field in a new formation, Victory 11, where all 11 seniors – with the exception of Keith Thompson who suffered a knee injury in the second quarter – took the field to kneel the ball and clinch the victory.

“This is a great group of kids and they finished it off the right way,” Rhoades said. “They did a phenomenal job of leading our team this year. I can’t say enough about those seniors.”

“(There’s) no doubt we have to replace irreplaceable kids,” Gamble said.

“It was great, it was fun,” Crawford said. “It’s been a long season and it’s been fun.”

“It’s an amazing feeling,” Falkenburg said. “No one touched us in the whole 3A division or the Nebraska team. It’s a freaking amazing feeling. I hope they keep it up next year to make it three times.”

But unlike last year, when the graduation of 22 seniors left many experts thinking Douglas would take a step backwards this year, the field was filled with juniors playing key roles this year. That plethora of experienced underclassmen had everyone thinking – even if they didn’t want to admit it – about a three-peat even as they celebrated Title No. 2.

“I’m not really thinking about next year right now, but it’s going to be great to have a lot of these kids back,” Rhoades said. “There’s going to be some kids who need to step in to fill some of the roles the seniors played this year. Hopefully, we keep the program going.”

 “They can do it,” McNare said. “I know they can.”