Salt of the earth Knights ready for anything

Rodney Harwood

by Rodney Harwood
| December 1, 2016 12:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — I used to cover this basketball team in Cheyenne that made Wyoming sports history with a 23-0 run to a state championship.

They started 20 of those 23 victories with a jam on the first possession off the opening tip. The 6-foot-8 former tight end would tip to the kid that ended up playing for Jerry Tarkanian at Fresno State, alley-oop to the skywalker headed to New Mexico — boom shakalaka — chin-ups on the rim. Those were the days.

When you follow a team from destiny’s door into the history books, you tend to get to know them a little better than some. Head coach Duane Cook’s son Jason was the shooting guard and his youngest, Josh, was the ball-boy. Cook was ex-military, so it was a lot of yessir, no sir, and he darn sure expected his boys to do the same, even though I told them when Pops wasn’t around, “Yo Rod,” was cool.

One day Josh comes diddy-bopping into the locker room and gives me a “yo Rod,” and deep from the caverns booms this voice like God himself, “What did you say?” We still laugh about that. Josh is 25 now, still calls me sir.

Covering the Royal Knights the past few weeks reminds me a bit of that experience. They are a bunch of farm kids that play a pretty good game. They’re as good as any 2A or 3A program I’ve seen this year.

The Knights are knocking on destiny’s door, even though they’d never say it out loud. If they win one more it will be the first time since 2004-05 that Royal has won back-to-back Class 1A state championships.

“We’re not trying to defend anything. We’re just trying to win a state championship,” Royal coach Wiley Allred told me.

Knights quarterback Kaden Jenks reminds me a lot of the Cook boys. Infectious smile, every question answered with yessir, no sir. It’s like talking to rodeo legend Ty Murray, “yessir, no sir.”

He can’t ride a bull, but opposing cornerbacks will swear they just got run over by one after trying to tackle the 6-foot-2, 215-pound senior. There’s some “cowboy up” in Jenks, combined with a gunslinger’s mindset and a salt-of-the-earth heart.

After doing this gig for awhile, I tend to run off at the mouth when I’m interviewing kids after the game. I have to chuckle because more than one of the Royal guys has asked me to repeat the question after their train of thought was derailed when they noticed I was writing down their every word.

I like these guys. Humility’s a good thing.

“I just catch ’em,” Corbin Christensen says. Yeah, I know … all of them. Corbin’s a little bit like Broncos legend Ed McCaffery — lean, lanky, tough as a 10-cent steak. I always look at the stats at the end of the game in awe. He only caught four passes? Of course, three of them were for touchdowns. Guys like defensive tackle Raynor Beierle and Rams Gonzalez are getting this interview stuff down.

I had a nice laugh with Danny Cuevas at the Colville game. The 5-4, 145-pound Knight running back got clobbered and got up looking out the ear hole.

“They ever tell ya what happens when the big guys finally catch up?” I asked.

“They must have forgot,” he said with a smile that said it’s nothing winning won’t fix.

They give you the Royal Treatment right here in the heart of the Columbia Basin and it’s pretty refreshing to see football at its purest form, played a such a high level, for the love of the game.

Rodney Harwood can be reached at 509-765-4561 ext. 111 or businessag@columbiabasinherald.com.