High School Sports
Issaquah QB takes talent, lifetime in sports, to Class 3A semifinals

By Matt Peterson
Seattle Times staff reporter

	JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES He has led Issaquah to an undefeated season but Mark Gray is attracting little attention from colleges because of his size.
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ISSAQUAH — It all started right here, on this sprawling suburban play field with its tennis courts and backstops and soccer goals. He passes this place every day on his way home, turning left at the corner of Northwest Newport Way and 12th Avenue Northwest, and sometimes what he sees still gives him goose bumps.

It is morning, and the big lights Mark Gray remembers so fondly have yet to be turned on at Tibbetts Valley Park in Issaquah. But there is Field No. 3, trampled and muddied from a thousand cleat prints, exactly the way he found it a decade ago. Look farther, toward the hills, and you'll see that old weed patch, the one they'd have to run to as punishment, but always together, because that was Dave Young's way.

No, not much has changed here. But everything is different.

"We came through mud, sweat, tears," says Gray, now the starting quarterback at Issaquah High School. "We knew we were going to stick together. And even in Little League, we had the chemistry."

This is Mark Gray's story. But it just as easily could be that of any of the 11 Issaquah seniors who started here at Tibbetts, who worked and learned and played together, who won four consecutive junior-league championships and who tonight will lead the No. 1 Eagles (12-0) against No. 2 Bellevue (11-1) in the Class 3A state semifinals at 7 p.m. at the Tacoma Dome.

"The reason we're so successful is the experience we have together," Gray says. "All the years of playing, it's just kind of ... you really can't beat it."

He is running now, moving to the middle of the field and pointing to a misty hillside in the distance. His house is on that mountain, tucked away in the trees in a quiet development called Forest Rim, where he lives just a few doors down from childhood friend and starting strong safety Scott Young. This was their circle in years gone by. Tibbetts to home, home to Tibbetts. Why, you can almost see one place from the other.

"You grow up so fast," says Gray, wearing blue jeans and a backward baseball cap. "But just like the memories of the guys, it's pretty cool to just drive by here and think about it."

Plenty must be going through his head these days with the high-school football season, as well as his prep career, entering their final days. Gray, unlike other local standouts, does not have a college scholarship waiting, nor does he have any big-time offers to entertain.

He is, quite simply, a very good high-school football player with very average high-school size. But he has led his team this far, and has no intentions of stopping.

"It's state or bust," Gray says. "We won a KingCo championship, but if we don't win state, our season is not going to be successful. It's not. That's the way everyone sees it."

But let's go back for a minute, to a time before Gray became a team captain and a three-year starter, to the days before all those passing records fell and all the honors were bestowed. Let's come right back here to Tibbetts and see a 7-year-old boy on his first day of practice with a helmet that fits like a 5-gallon bucket.

Coach Dave Young, Scott's father, was there that afternoon, just as he would be for virtually every practice over the next seven seasons.

"You could tell from a very early age that Mark was gifted," says Young, who along with Mark's father, Ron, coached this year's senior class in junior football. "He had a great enthusiasm for competition, and his natural eye-hand coordination, balance, foot-speed and strength were pretty exceptional."

Still, it would be two years before Gray started his first game at quarterback, two years spent biding time, playing a little defense, and learning behind future Skyline stars Simi Reynolds and Brody O'Connor.

When Gray was 9, he finally found his way under center.

	JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES Issaquah's Mark Gray, right, and teammate Erik Woldseth take in some quiet time before last week's 3A quarterfinal victory over Columbia River.

See him now on the television screen, clapping and shouting and wearing that gold jersey, No. 10, just like then-Issaquah quarterback Darren Kerr. See him race around the left end for a touchdown, switching the ball from his right arm to his left, just like a pro.

"I haven't seen this one in awhile," says Gray, sitting at home in an upstairs room where he and his buddies often come to relax, watch videos or play poker. "You just realize how long you've really been playing football, and how fast it does go. You know, we're already seniors in high school, and I remember just going to watch my brothers' games and thinking how long it was until I got up to that level."

Another tape slides into the machine. It's the championship game. Gray stands at midfield, one of four 13-year-old captains. Fast forward, and suddenly the play-by-play man is screaming.

" ... Right to left, now gonna roll, gonna throw, downfield, got a man inside the 5 ... "

And suddenly it hits you. What has been happening this season has not been extraordinary at all, but perfectly normal, predictable even.

Mark Gray has been doing this for years.

"To be honest, I don't think he has changed that much at all," says senior wide receiver Erik Woldseth, one of Gray's primary targets and a teammate since both were 9. "He has always been the same type of kid, a good leader, always confident in himself that he can play the position."

	JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES Issaquah QB Mark Gray has led his team to an undefeated season.

But let's go back even further, to that awful day in August 1984, when Pam Gray's younger brother was killed in a water-skiing accident on Lake Washington, right next to the I-90 bridge. She and Ron already had two boys by then, Michael and Eric, and had no plans to have another child. But only a few months after the tragedy that took her brother at 24, Pam learned she was pregnant again.

There was no question, she decided. Her brother had been the "true athlete of the family," a talented golfer and baseball player at Issaquah. If the baby were a girl, they'd name it Markee. If it were a boy, they'd name it Mark.

The newest addition to the family was born a natural athlete. Even when he was 4 and 5 years old, he would wake his father — who worked the swing shift at Boeing — around 8:30 or 9 o'clock every morning and the two would start the day by playing ball in the back yard.

The legacy lived.

"I love my name," Gray said. "I was named after him (my uncle) and just hearing the kind of guy he was and whatnot, it's pretty cool."

But there's something else about Mark Gray. It's something people notice immediately, something none of his career statistics — not his 5,062 yards passing or his 50 touchdowns, not his 66.1 percent completion rate, not even his 24-6 record as a starter — can outshine.

It's right there on the roster: 5 feet 8.

No matter then that Gray can throw a football close to 60 yards on the fly. No matter that he has the kind of accuracy that once won him $5 from his brother, Eric, who didn't think Mark could hit a post 40 yards down the road without so much as a warmup toss.

At that height, big-time college coaches pass.

"When we won the Rick Neuheisel passing tournament this summer, I know that Phil Snow (UW co-defensive coordinator) said, 'If he were 5 inches taller, I'd be recruiting him right now,'" says Issaquah coach Buddy Bland. "That says it all. The Division I schools are looking for the 6-3, 6-4, 6-5 quarterback because they know the line is going to be 6-4, 6-5, 6-6."

And winning? Does that play a role in any of this? Does the fact that the kid has won 20 of his past 21 games as a starting quarterback get anybody to pick up the phone?

"I don't hold anything in my hands," Bland says. "I just know he's a kid with a rare ability and he's going to help somebody."

"He's small," adds Gray's oldest brother, Michael, who graduated from Issaquah in 1997 and went on to play baseball at San Jose State.

"But I think his biggest muscle by far is his heart. He believes that no one is going to beat him."

Gray says none of this talk about his size bothers him, though he admits being "curious" who might have been calling had he only been a few inches taller.

But what's the use even wondering?

"There's really nothing I could do," Gray says.

"I'm thankful for what I've got. I wasn't blessed with that 6-2 height, but I was blessed with being able to throw the football and being able to make people miss. I was just blessed with different things instead of height, and that's fine."

It is noon, and Gray is sitting at a window bar at a little hole-in-the-wall teriyaki joint.

He comes here before every game for lunch, usually alone, always ordering the same dish, teriyaki beef, to go. He has cleaned his plate already as he ponders what little time remains.

Tibbetts to today, the time has passed so fast. All those memories, every one of those wins, the many time-tested friendships, everything, building toward the moment that is at hand.

"State or bust," he says, slapping the table as he stands to leave.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company