Prosser Finds Identity In Football Tradition

HUNTING, FISHING and farming are a way of life for Prosser's 4,500 residents. But that fades in the fall, when the town unites in fervent support of its high-school football team. -----------------------------------------------------------------

PROSSER - Mayberry must have looked like Prosser.

You can get a nice motel room for 36 bucks and a hamburger at McCoy's Burger Ranch, the town hangout, for 59 cents. Folks say that no one has ever been murdered in Prosser.

The town's motto: "A pleasant place with pleasant people."

The air is thick and smells sweet because of the apple, cherry and grape harvests.

Autumns in Prosser mean two things: harvest and Mustang football and not necessarily in that order.

Football is more of a passion than a sport for this quiet farming community 47 miles southeast of Yakima. It's a unifying experience that brings this town together like nothing else.

The state's best football program has earned two consecutive Class AA state championships. Friday night, it extended its winning streak to 29 games with its third shutout of the season, 41-0 over Ephrata.

The Mustangs are atop every state media poll and are No. 22 in USA Today's national poll.

If Prosser can get past No. 3 West Valley of Yakima on Friday, it will have cleared the biggest obstacle in its path to winning an eighth straight Mid-Valley League title.

And earning a fourth straight trip to Kingbowl.

Entering Mustang country

Driving southeast on I-82, the first taste of Mustang football is at a gas station about five miles outside of town. The sign in the window reads "Go Mustangs" and the elderly man behind the counter can name half of the starting offense.

One minute you're in open country, 10 minutes later you're downtown, where the tallest building is the three-story City Hall building. Just a few blocks away, across the railroad tracks, is the police station. Not coincidentally, the nine officers are busiest on Friday nights when the Mustangs play.

There is no urban sprawl in this town wedged between Horse Heaven Hills and the Yakima River.

Not a movie theater or a shopping mall inside city limits.

But there is high-school football and the Mustangs have had 23 consecutive home sellouts.

When the locals don't cheer for the Mustangs, they root for the Washington State Cougars. They vote for Sen. Slade Gorton. And two gangs rule the town - the hunters and fishers.

The hunters patrol nearby farmlands for quail and pheasant. The anglers walk the banks of the Yakima River, which has a plentiful supply of smallmouth bass.

Annual Kingbowl caravan

Every first week of December for the past three years, Prosser Mayor Wayne Hogue and nearly 3,000 of the town's residents have packed up and headed to Seattle.

Downtown stores close their doors. Sixth Street, the main drag, is deserted. The high school practically shuts down.

It's as if this town of nearly 4,500 puts an imaginary sign on its border that reads: Gone fishin'.

A large caravan of cars, pickups and buses heads north on Interstate 82 and west on I-90 through the snow-covered Cascades into the Kingdome parking lot.

They come to Seattle to watch their beloved Prosser Mustangs.

"It's good to see 3,000 people come together like that," Prosser Principal Ted Young said. "It's not exactly a family reunion, but we all have one purpose. Folks feel real close at that point."

Said Hogue, "The town really slows down because everybody's inside the Kingdome. I've lived here a long time and I've never seen anything like it. Folks go crazy for the Mustangs."

Crazy enough to paint themselves in the school's colors of red and white, and to outnumber the Seattle fans 2-to-1.

Mustang family tradition

Like his older and younger brothers, Kevin McClure plays football for the Mustangs and he will say if pushed that he never had a choice.

When Aaron Sonnichsen graduated, McClure, who played defensive back, knew he would be the starting quarterback.

"That's how it works, I was second-string quarterback and I moved up," McClure said. "It's always been that way."

The Mustangs have had a different quarterback, all seniors, the past five seasons.

"To play here, you have to be patient," said Jessie Perkins, Mustang receiver. "Everyone wants to play for Prosser. I have five other seniors at my positions. There's a lot of competition."

It wasn't always this way.

Before the state championships and the winning streak, the biggest news around town was Kelly Blair, who was considered the state's all-time best female prep athlete; and Olivia the Pig, who fought City Council for residency.

Blair went on to win an NCAA heptathlon title at the University of Oregon, and Olivia was kicked out of Prosser.

No one cared much for a high- school football program that had been as unpredictable as autumn harvest. Some years were boom; most were bust.

Prosser's gridiron messiah

The turnaround came when Tom Moore arrived in 1986.

Moore, the son of a high-school football coach, left a job as an assistant at Kankakee High 60 miles south of Chicago to come to Benton County.

The year before his arrival, the Prosser team had won three of nine games. Though expectations were low, Moore set his standards high.

"I wanted to win the state title that first year," Moore said of the team that finished 4-5. "We had to do three things if we wanted to turn this thing around."

First, emphasize weightlifting. The Mustangs lift year round. Moore opens the weight room for three hours during the summer and "it becomes the place to hang out."

Second, install an offense that's fun to play. Prosser uses a no-huddle, multiple-formation offense that averaged 39 points last season.

To watch Prosser at practice is to watch a mystery unfold. Receivers zig-zag across the field. Their paths are predetermined and interwoven, and McClure delivers the football on cue.

It's a nightmare to defend.

"Hardest damn thing in the world," said Kevin Lusk, Mustang defensive coordinator and former University of Oregon quarterback. "Especially if you're not used to it and you have four days to get ready for it."

The last key to building a successful program is discipline, Moore said.

"We spend this much time on discipline," Moore said shaping his fingers into a zero. "We spend 100 percent of our time coaching football."

Shortly after he built a winner, the school district had to deny transfers from students from nearby Grandview, Sunnyside and Kennewick.

"We can't take them because we don't have room," Young said.

Fans wait hours before the start of home games. They retell the story of one Prosser fan who was so attached to the Mustangs that when he died during the 1991 season, his relatives took his ashes to Kingbowl in a camera case.

Now that's devotion.

"It's the biggest thrill of my life," said Perkins of playing before 3,000 fans every Friday night.

Recruiters lack respect

McClure, 17, will likely pass for 2,000 yards, as his predecessor did. The 6-foot-2, 187-pound quarterback will no doubt earn all-Mid-Valley honors and perhaps all-state, but recruiters from Washington and Washington State will not give him a second thought.

Too small to play in the Pac-10.

Sonnichsen, who passed for 2,374 yards and 27 touchdowns his senior year, plays at Pacific Lutheran University. Nick Shaw and Randy Carter, a pair of 1,000-yard running backs, play at Eastern Washington and Western Washington.

"I don't understand it," said Moore, who has never sent a player to a Division I school. "I'd take small athletic guys over big, hulking football players any day. It's gotten to a point where I don't even tell (recruiters) what a kid's 40 time is. What's the use? They won't believe me."

Maybe they should start listening. Moore's players may be small, but like the town they grow up in, they're winners.