Centralia provides relief from gloom

TACOMA — The father hugged his son, at last. They had waited almost 20 minutes for this moment, both wiping at their eyes as they wandered through the Tacoma Dome, needing each other.

When they met, Darren Wesen squeezed Colten so hard you thought he was trying to wring out all the tears. But Colten, the 5-foot-5, 183-pound bull of a running back, kept dripping. So did the father. The embrace lasted two minutes.

"I'm proud of you," Darren told his son.

This was, if you paid attention to the scoreboard, a scene from just outside of the losing locker room. Colten and his Centralia Tigers lost the Class 2A state high-school football championship game Saturday, relenting after an early lead and falling 14-10 to Lynden.

This time, the scorekeepers got it wrong, however.

One of the most devastating weeks in the history of Centralia didn't end with a loss. It couldn't have. Not after watching about 3,500 residents from this town, which is about a 30-minute drive south from Olympia on Interstate 5, of 15,000 gather here and shun misery. Not after watching them spend more than two hours illuminating the pride and resiliency of a community that refuses to let a coal-mine closing define it.

On Monday, about 600 workers, including Wesen, lost their jobs when TransAlta shut down the strip mine. Some of the best-paying jobs in Lewis County's strapped economy abruptly disappeared. The struggle to survive will intensify now. Fortunately, plenty of willpower exists.

The local football team showed us that.

"What they're doing is proving that we're not quitters," said Kim Scott, a Centralia resident whose brother was laid off. "No matter what we face, we're going to fight until the end and stick together. That's just who we are."

Scott was a senior at Centralia the last time the Tigers made it to the state-title game. Twenty-six years later, she couldn't miss the return.

Fifty-nine teenagers tamed the sadness of this past week. They couldn't destroy the melancholy. And now that the big game is over, the big dilemma returns. But everyone wearing orange and black praised the distraction.

We generally consider sports trivial at a time like this. We like to talk about putting games in perspective.

Sometimes, though, it is appropriate to care too much.

"This game was the most important thing," Darren Wesen said.

As Wesen spoke, he tugged at his coat. Blue stitching on the right side of his brown jacket read "TransAlta."

He spent 22 years with the Canada-based company. Chris Putman, a friend and an assistant Tigers coach, spent 25 years there. Instead of focusing on being robbed, Wesen told the story of how he and Putman coached this Centralia senior class when the boys were third-graders. They grew up so fast and so well.

They upset 2A favorite Prosser 37-35 in the semifinals. They led the title game 10-0. Their coach, John Schultz, said they played well enough to be called champions, and he was right.

Wesen's pride swelled. Colten is a third-generation Tiger, following his father and grandfather, Pete. Colten's brother, Brycen, was an all-state linebacker at Centralia. The Wesen family must have arteries made of pigskin.

Darren refused to allow being laid off get in the way of his son's big day.

"How can I dwell on something like that?" he asked. "How can I dwell on my problems when my kid is playing for the state championship?"

The entire town reacted this way. This isn't a Cadillac community. Rich has a different meaning. The people here invest in one another.

Steve Bodnar, the assistant superintendent of the Centralia School District, says he lives among giving folks. He figured the crowd might have been even larger, but some residents were on a "walk and knock" campaign. They wandered through Lewis County, going door to door, with grocery bags to collect food for the needy. With displaced miners, this effort is more important than usual.

"Even the people who don't have much give a whole bunch," Bodnar said.

The local football team showed us that.

The Tigers, considerably smaller than Lynden on the offensive and defensive lines, played physical enough to rush for 279 yards. They made their fans giddy most of the game. They held hands as they walked to midfield for the captains' meeting.

Mostly, though, they made everyone in attendance feel the pulse of Centralia.

"This is going to help," said Al Gray, a retired fireman who has lived in the town for 50 years. "We needed something like this. But this is something you don't get over in a day or two."

A new week has begun. The football season is over. Christmas is three weeks away. Now what?

"I can tell you this: I'm not moving," Darren said. "I'm not going anywhere. We'll regroup somehow. Football's over. It didn't end the storybook way it should have, but we're still here. We'll be fine.

"Can you tell? Don't you see?"

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com.