State player of the year: Ballard's Keauntea Bankhead

The two would talk every day on the way to school, the football coach and the star athlete, sharing life and a commute, bonded by their mutual desire to build a championship program at Ballard.

Coach Doug Trainor takes no credit for what Keauntea Bankhead has become, but he's happy to say he saw the changes first-hand.

"He has made himself into what he is," Trainor said.

Bankhead, a 6-foot, 208-pound senior, did everything except carry the water for the Beavers this season. He was listed on the roster as a wide receiver and safety, but it rarely took more than a half to see he was so much more.

He returned kicks and punts, lined up everywhere from quarterback to linebacker, and helped the Beavers — who never had been to the state playoffs since they began in 1973 — become the first Seattle public high school in 15 years to advance to the state-championship game.

Trainor said he and his staff figured that Bankhead scored a touchdown once every four times he touched the football last season.

That number rose to somewhere between every six and seven carries this season as opponents became more conscious of Bankhead's game-breaking ability, but he still managed 27 touchdowns and 2,459 all-purpose yards.

For those efforts, and more, Bankhead has been selected The Seattle Times' State Player of the Year for football.

"Going into every season since I was a freshman, I always wanted to be better than the last year," Bankhead said this week, sitting in the carpeted hallway in front of the Ballard performing-arts center. "And every year, it happened because I did that much more work."

And if there is a theme to this season, this career, it is:

Work. Work. Work.

Hard work has wrought a change in both Bankhead and the Beavers. It has enabled one to rise with the other — Bankhead from being a cocky and sometimes complacent freshman, the Beavers from a 2-7 record four seasons ago — until both reached the very heights of individual and team success.

"We accomplished a lot through the whole year," said Bankhead, who has given an oral commitment to play next year at Washington. "Nobody expected us to be going to state, or to the state-championship game. We did. And that's because we did a lot of work."

Trainor, who used to give Bankhead rides to school, points to the classroom to further the point, saying that, where once it used to take him 30 minutes to help Bankhead clean up a one-page report, the job now requires little more than a glance.

"This year," Trainor said, "he's the complete package. And it was really through hard work and concentration and focusing on details."

Bankhead admits he hasn't always paid enough attention to his grades. He speaks openly about the wake-up call he received when he was deemed academically ineligible and was forced to sit out a few basketball games last season.

Again, hard work was the solution. So far he has been hitting the books with the kind of force he usually reserves for opposing running backs, earning a 3.1 grade-point average last quarter and talking proudly of the twice-a-week sessions he has been attending in preparation for this weekend's ACT.

These days, Trainor doesn't even fret over the looming college-entrance standards.

"He'll qualify," Trainor said. "I'll bet my mortgage on it."

But beyond the work ethic, Bankhead brought passion to the field. He saved his best performances for when it counted most, and that was usually the fourth quarter.

"The kid really rises to the occasion, and he actually tells you he's going to do it," Trainor said. "He's done that in basically every game that was close going into the fourth quarter. He comes up to me and tells me, 'Coach, I'm just going to take this thing over right now.' "

Bankhead also had a lot to do with all that talk this year about Ballard football being one big "family." Except with him, it wasn't just talk.

One of the reasons Bankhead said he committed to Washington was so he could remain close to younger members of his extended family, so that he could help see them through the pitfalls he has already navigated.

And you might have seen him during pregame introductions, or sometimes after a big play, when he'd raise both hands to the sides of his helmet, flashing what looked to be "OK" signs as horns. People saw that and said he was showboating — a referee even flagged him 15 yards for it once — but those hand signals stood for the letter "F" in sign language, and to Ballard, that meant "Family."

"He kind of brought that to our football team," Trainor said. "He started calling us family, and our kids kind of bought into that."

Bigger and better things no doubt lie on the horizon for Bankhead. He has his sights set on making an impact at Washington and has dreams of playing in the NFL. Trainor wouldn't bet against any of it, not after watching Bankhead for four years.

"I wish everybody really knew him, so they'd know he's as great a human being as he is a football player," Trainor said. "If I had to start a company and I had to pick one person, I would pick him because sooner or later, I know he's going to be my CEO."

Matt Peterson: 206-515-5536 or mpeterson@seattletimes.com