Oct. 19, 2006

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -

by Larry Henry

As the men get older, the stories get better.

Remember, they'll begin, the 90-yard march to the winning touchdown in the Big Game?

Memories a little foggy, they'll nod and mutter, of course we remember, how could we ever forget? It's as clear as yesterday.

Yesterday was actually 30 years ago and the scoring "march'' might actually have been a 10-yard screen pass, but do you want truth or do you want drama?

We prefer drama

Scott Stokes

"Like all old-timers, we can't remember the plays or the scores, but we remember the guys,'' said Scott Stokes. "When you repeat the names, we start smiling.''

You never forget the guys. The players. The coaches. The trainers. You remember them and warm thoughts come to mind.

Great guys then. Great friends now.

Not old men, by any means, just a little grayer, a little balder, a little slower of step.

But the memories they relive when they get together at a reunion of the 1976 and 1996 Western Washington University football teams on Oct.21 will be forever young.

"We were good,'' Stokes said, then added with a laugh, "but on that night, we'll really be something.''

Stokes was an offensive lineman on the 1976 Western team that went 7-3 and beat Pacific Lutheran University 48-28 in the NAIA District I title game. That team along with the 1996 Vikings team, which advanced to the NAIA Division II national championship game, will be honored before the fourth annual Battle in Seattle pitting arch-rivals Western and Central Washington at Qwest Field.

There'll be hugs, handshakes and hilarity when these guys get together and start swapping stories.

Bill Mendelson was the quarterback on the '76 team that posted three straight come-from-behind victories at the end of the season to qualify for the District I title contest.

"It was really a great conglomeration of guys with all kinds of different personalites,'' said Mendelson, now the head basketball coach at Pierce College in Tacoma and a teacher in the North Thurston School District. "There couldn't have been a better mix of chemistry. Everybody was on the same page and we cared about each other.''

Bill Mendelson

Mendelson took care of his linemen by treating them to spaghetti dinners at his "football house'' several times during the season. "You've got to treat those big guys up front good,'' he said. "They never got much recognition and they're the ones who made things happen.''

Thirty years ago, the players didn't receive football scholarships, so anytime they got a free meal, it was a big deal.

Stokes remembered football back then as "more of a game and less of a business'' than it is now. "We had a blast,'' said Stokes, who served as the head football coach at Marysville-Pilchuck High School for 10 years. "Even the long bus rides were fun. As you get older you forget the parts that were not as much fun.''

The camaraderie they had then has carried over through the years at gatherings such as golf tournaments. "There's a bond they keeps us together,'' said Pat Locker, the standout running back on the '76 team. Locker was a pure freshman, just a few months out of Ferndale High School, and hadn't even intended to play football until some of the players talked him into coming out. Good thing they did. He rushed for 1,340 yards and 10 touchdowns. By the time he graduated, he had become the first college player in the state to run for 4,000 yards.

"Pat Locker wasn't exceptionally fast, but he was elusive,'' Mendelson said. "He'd give a guy a leg and take it back. And he had a good offensive line.''

That line made the rushing and passing games equally effective, with the former gaining 1,999 yards and the latter producing 1,842 yards.

Most of the passing yards were gained by a pair of receivers, split end Hoyt Gier (743 yards and six touchdowns) and flankerback Jeff Potter (695 yards and eight touchdowns).

"Gier was an acrobat, 6 feet 1 and could really jump,'' Mendelson recalled. "Potter was like Steve Largent, ran great routes and got good separation.''

Hoyt Gier

Gier started all four years and caught a pass in every game he played, 37 altogether. And, though he's embarrassed to admit it, he said he "did care'' about keeping the streak alive after "it got built up so.''

He praised Mendelson for his leadership and resourcefulness. "He probably got more out of his talent than anyone I've known,'' said Gier, who works for an investment bank in Seattle "He didn't have a great arm, but he understood the game.''

He apparently understood how to deal with his teammates also. Gier recalled that in the championship game against PLU, he ran a good route on a play, got open and did everything but make the reception. "The only pass I dropped that year,'' he said.

He went back to the huddle and the quarterback called the same play. "The second time,'' he said, "I caught it.''

That Mendelson called the play again validated what Gier said about him 30 years later: He was a "real leader.''

The Viking coaching staff had such faith in Mendelson that they let him call virtually all of the plays. "My senior year, they (the coaches) might have called six or seven plays from the sideline,'' he said. "Many plays we just made up. We'd see something they were giving us and take advantage of it. There was a little bit of sandlot football to it.''

In the game that vaulted Western into the district title matchup, Mendelson's innovative skills kept a key drive going in the fourth quarter. With the Vikings behind and facing a fourth-and-one at - as he remembered it - about the 12, Mendelson called a play that he had seen in a high school game earlier that year

With his linemen never really getting into their stance, he went in motion on the second of three "go's,'' thinking that he might pull the defense offside. If that didn't work, he'd call a timeout. Luckily, the defense bit, the Vikings got the first down and went on to score. "I was fortunate that Coach (Boyde) Long allowed me to call that play,'' Mendelson said.

Like the '76 team, the Viking squad that came along 20 years later was a close-knit unit.

Chris Nicholl

"The chemistry was there,'' said Chris Nicholl, the standout wide receiver who was the Columbia Football Association's Offensive Player of the Year. "We really enjoyed each other, on and off the field. We took football seriously, but at the same time we had a lot of fun doing it.''

Beset by injuries to a number of starting players, the Vikings needed some younger guys to step up, and step up they did. "That team overcame a lot because we lost some very good players,'' said coach Rob Smith.

Western won a school-record 11 games that year, leading some fans to believe it must have been the best team Smith had in his 17 years at the Viking helm.

Not so. "I don't put '96 at the top,'' said Smith, who retired after the 2005 season, "but we accomplished more than any of them. The year before, we thought we had the best team in the country (they were unbeaten and ranked No.1) then Jon Kitna goes crazy on us in the first game of the playoffs'' and Central Washington upset them 28-21.

Pat Locker

Central went on to play Findlay of Ohio for the NAIA championship at the Tacoma Dome with the game ending in a tie. Smith came back from the game convinced that if his team had been playing Findlay, it would have gotten beat. "They were so physical,'' he remembered. "Little did I know that we would come back and play them the next year in the semifinals.''

Findlay came into the game ranked No.1 in the country and riding a 24-game unbeaten streak. Not only that, but the game was played on the Oilers' home field.

The Oilers were good and they let the Vikings know it. "I'd never been around a team that talked so much pre-game trash,'' said Nicholl, now the district manager for a technical consulting company in Seattle. "They tried to intimidate us.''

The Vikings would not be cowed. "Our first drive, we came out and crammed it down their throats,'' he said. "Then we stopped them and that kind of shocked them.''

The ultimate shock showed up on the scoreboard at the end of the game: Western 28, Findlay 21. "It could have been that we responded to their trash-talking before the game,'' Nicholl surmised.

When post-season awards were handed out, Nicholl - who had 100 yards receiving in 10 of 13 games - was named an NAIA first-team All-American, along with teammate and place-kicker Wade Gebers, the first time that had happened in school history.

Rob Smith

Though slightly built, Nicholl was a bull to bring down. "After the catch, he was very physical,'' Smith said.

Nicholl got his toughness from playing running back in high school. "I didn't like to go down,'' he said. "If I had had my choice, I would have been a running back (in college), but my body turned out 6-3 and thin.'' A special player is what Viking quarterback Darren Erath called him. "He could turn a 6-yard hitch route into an 80-yard touchdown,'' Erath said. Erath was a special player himself, setting five school records that year, including yards passing (3,154) and touchdowns passing (24).

On most good football teams, Smith said, you'll have some "characters,'' and the Vikings had their share. One of them was Mark Spencer, a middle linebacker from Elma. "Spencer would take eyeblack and get a little creative with it on his face,'' Smith said with a chuckle.

Perhaps the most creative thing Spencer did was make a bunch of tackles without knowing it.

Mark Spencer

In the national championship game against the University of Sioux Falls, S.D., Spencer got knocked out in the second quarter, but went ahead and played the rest of the game. "And to this day,'' said Spencer, the owner and executive vice president of a business in Mesa, Ariz., "I have no recollection of it, although they say I made 20 tackles.

"I've lived with that loss forever, but it works out kinda good because I don't remember it.''

All he has to do is wait until The Battle in Seattle. He'll get a play-by-play account of it from his old teammates.

Who knows? The Vikings might even come out on top this time.