Lessons and laughter all part of game

Last year we did a column on our favorite high-school anecdotes. Here are this year's favorites. We're always eager to hear more.

Uncle's interruption

In the third quarter of a November football game in 1955 in Darrington, a pickup truck drove through the goalposts at the far end of the snow-covered field and stopped in the Darrington backfield.

Play was stopped and a Darrington lineman recognized his inebriated uncle as the driver. The lineman jumped into the driver's seat, pushed his uncle aside and drove off the field. He then hopped out of the truck and sprinted back to his team.

The compassionate officiating crew didn't call a delay-of-game penalty and play resumed.

Shirts and skins

Rosalia High School in Eastern Washington had a girls basketball coach back in the 1970s who had coached boys all his life.

Early in the season, the coach was going over some things and said, "Well, obviously, we won't be scrimmaging "Shirts vs. Skins."

A few days later, the girls said, "Hey, coach, can we go shirts and skins?"

The coach said, "No way! You can't do that!"

That didn't stop the girls, who whipped off their shirts. The coach cringed, imagining the wrath of administrators and the community about to descend on him.

When the coach looked up, he saw the girls in their swimsuit tops.

Coaching in a college town

When Tim Busch was coaching basketball at Pullman High School in the early 1990s, he told a player, "I want 100 percent effort from you all the time."

The player, whose father was a math professor, replied, "My father told me never to agree to 100 percent because it's statistically impossible."

Lesson from Elway

Dee Hawkes got an icy-cold lesson in humility and when he was a rookie assistant in 1958 on the Port Angeles football staff of Jack Elway, the father of former NFL quarterback John Elway.

Hawkes had been talking about "my play" and "my defense," words that Jack Elway didn't think fit the team concept.

"I was taking a shower one day after we returned from a JV game at Forks, and all of a sudden Jack reached in and turned the water to cold," Hawkes recalled.

"It's 'Ours! Ours! Ours!' " Elway said.

Just in case his new assistant didn't get the message, he added: "You will stop using the word 'I', and you will use the word 'we' when you talk to our football players. Do you understand?"

Hawkes never forgot the lesson and went on to be head coach in Europe, at Davis High School of Yakima and at Bothell High. He also has written books about football. The Washington High School Football Coaches Association honored Hawkes with its Gold Helmet Award in 2001.

Lost in Whatcom County

Broadcaster Terry Allen remembers a football game in the 1970s when King's Garden (now King's) was scheduled to play at Mount Baker of Deming.

"The King's bus got lost and couldn't find the field," he said. "To entertain the fans, the Mount Baker band did its halftime show before the game. Then everyone kept waiting. And waiting.

"Finally, the bus was sighted from the stands but just as it was within sight, it took another wrong turn. Someone jumped in a car and chased it down."

Midnight reunion

One of the best rivalries in just about any sport is Redmond vs. Eastlake.

After a pressure-cooker boys basketball game in 2001, coaches Michael Kelly of Redmond (now at Seattle Prep) and Rich Belcher of Eastlake realized they were too keyed up to go home and fall asleep. Independently, they wound up at the same place around midnight — the ice-cream aisle of a supermarket.

"I turned the corner and there was Michael," Belcher said. "Two hours earlier, we'd been locked in this big, intense game. We just grinned and gave each other a big hug."

Field work

In 1988, Stanwood was scheduled to play Burlington-Edison in a winner-to-state baseball game in Mount Vernon on a Saturday in May.

If the game didn't get played, Burlington-Edison would advance as the higher seed.

A hard rain stopped Friday night, and Stanwood coach Scott Knight called the father of every player in the Stanwood program, including freshmen, and told them to be at the Mount Vernon field at 6 a.m. to work on the field.

"When we got there, the field was a mess," Knight recalled. "At about 7 o'clock the mayor of Mount Vernon, Ray Reep, came by. I told him how when I coached in Eastern Washington we fixed wet fields with a mixture of gasoline and diesel.

"He said, 'OK, go ahead,' and we put about 40 gallons of this mixture on the dirt part of the infield and lit it. We had a great fire with black smoke pouring out of the field.

"The only problem was that the mayor forgot to tell the police and fire departments, so they came roaring to the field with sirens and lights blazing. The mayor ran out and explained that everything was under control.

"We got the game in and lost 2-1 to a very good Burlington team, but I still remember the day as a great effort by our parents and players."

Study-hall trick

Ingenious Mercer Island students in the early 1960s listened to the state basketball tournament on hidden transistor radios at study hall.

"Every game was on the radio and we would go to Goodwill and buy a big, thick, used book — Marjorie Morningstar was a favorite — and then hollow out a space in it big enough for our little transistor radios," recalled Hairy Allper, Class of '65.

"We'd go to study hall, put our heads down over the book and listen," he said. "There was a complete tournament bracket on the blackboard and scores would get updated every quarter."

"All this was BE — Before Ed Pepple," Allper said.

Pepple was hired for the 1967-68 season and Mercer Island has made 26 trips to state and won four titles since.

You're not invited

In 1990, the Newport football coaching staff of Bill Bloomer went to Tacoma to scout Bellarmine Prep for the first game of the state playoffs.

John Fullerton, Newport's line coach for 41 years, went with his wife instead, and the Fullertons didn't join the other coaches for dinner at Taco Time.

The Knights from Bellevue beat Bellarmine Prep, and the superstitious coaches kept eating at Taco Time every week — but told their buddy Fullerton he wasn't invited.

Newport made it to the state-championship game and lost to Curtis of University Place, 30-14.

Have a question about high-school sports? Craig Smith will find the answer. Ask your question in one of the following ways: Voice mail (206-464-8279), snail mail (Craig Smith, Seattle Times Sports, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111) or e-mail csmith@seattletimes.com